Tuesday, August 27

Almost Done!

I had hoped to finish shipping the Kickstarter rewards last week, but with a long weekend camping and my daughter’s birthday I ran out of time - so in the end I’m five copies away from finishing, which I hope to make tonight and then post on Wednesday. With that out of the way I’ll be able to spent more of my evenings with The Wife for a couple of weeks until I get the stuff I need from Paul to fulfill the pre-orders. I’ll also be able to spend my lunchtimes on the Kickstarter instead of multiple lunchtime treks to the Post Office per week!

It’ll be good to focus on the Kickstarter - it’s taken a back seat (and rightly so) to the fulfilment so it could do with some love!

Monday, August 19

It's The Cash That Is Gonna Kill You

When running a business there's two things you need to keep a close eye on: profit and cash. Profit is the money you make when you sell something, either before (gross profit) or after (net profit) taking account of overheads. Because we're doing Eurydice Games in our spare time and not drawing salaries from it, our overheads are very low, so despite a low gross profit (small print runs have few economies of scale) we have very good net profits. We're making money and this is, in it's current form, a viable business.

Cashflow is the money going into or out of the business and is what kills most companies apparently - including Reiver Games, my first games publishing company. Cashflow isn't as closely related to profit as you might think. For example, our cashflow was very positive in December (when Kickstarter released the funds) but has been negative since - we've bought a laser-cutter, all the raw materials for the print run and then being paying for postage and packaging materials every time we post a copy. Every time we sell (ship) a copy we make a small profit but our cash decreases.

At the beginning, just after the Kickstarter, we needed to make a decision about how many copies to make. We needed to make at least enough copies to fulfill the Kickstarter rewards, but we could make more. The more we made the better the profit per copy, thanks to economies of scale, but the worse the hit on cash flow as the total cost for the raw materials would be higher.

At that point we didn’t know exact shipping costs, how much Royal Mail would increase their prices in April and how much we would be spending on tape, bubble wrap, etc. I had to make an educated guess.

My guess was poor! Even with a number of post-Kickstarter deluxe upgrades and a decent number of Zombology sales during the year, money has run out. We’ll rebuild it as we fulfill pre-orders (which haven’t paid yet so will boost profit and cash simultaneously) and when Kickstarter releases the funds from the second Kickstarter, if we’re successful. But for now we have almost nothing in the bank (<£10!), so to support the second Kickstarter, Paul and I will need to lend the company some more money.

Monday, August 12

California!

I spent most of last week in California for work, which it turns out is a very long way from Newcastle.

The good news is, as suspected, I coped poorly with the jet-lag and woke very early each morning (between 02:30 and 03:40) so I had some jet-lag hours to work on FlickFleet before work. My main focus was trying to flesh out the second Kickstarter page, but I also spent a little time on the website (which still needs more work!) and ran #CraftWednesday starting at 04:00!

Over the weekend I returned to FlickFleet crafting and we have just two weeks of crafting left to finish the Kickstarter rewards - we’re still on track for shipping them all in August.

After that I’ll be reaching out the the pre-orderers and seeing if they want immediate fulfilment at full price or to wait for the second Kickstarter and a discount.

We’ve also got the first of the second wave of Kickstarter reviews from Dan Thurot over at SPACE-BIFF! He was smitten!

Monday, August 5

Week Off!

I'm writing this blog post at 4:45am in an airport lounge while awaiting a flight to Amsterdam, and then a connecting flight to San Francisco. Which sounds pretty glamorous, but the reality is that on arrival in San Fran I'll be whisked to a hotel on a business park in Pleasanton where I'll spend the next two days probably awake from midnight to about 6pm and working (on the same business park) from 9 until 5. I'll not see much of California at all.

Being awake for most of the night with jet-lag does mean that I'll have the jet-lag hours of midnight until 7am to work on the next Kickstarter and other computer-based tasks, but obviously there'll be no crafting until I get back. Last week the crafting finished early too as I needed to find our camping stuff in the boxes in the garage on Thursday and then we were camping Friday and Saturday and I needed an early night on Sunday because of the 3am start this morning.

I've only got 37 more copies to make, so my current plan is to make seven one night next weekend, and then three nights of six the following week. That leaves just twelve to do the following week, which is another two nights' work - just as well as we're off camping again at the end of that week.

If everything goes to plan I'll have finished the crafting by the 22nd of August!

After that I'll have to knuckle down on the next Kickstarter and (at a slower pace!) make up the last of the Zombology stock and some FlickFleets for the pre-orderers who don't want to wait for the Kickstarter.

For now though, I've a plane to catch!