It's the end of our 8th financial year on Tuesday.
We've done well to last this long, Reiver Games only managed 6 years, and it was on life-support for the last two.
If you run a business there's two things you really care about.
Cashflow.
And profit.
Historical we've done ok at the second one, managing around 11% profit on average over the last 7 years.
But cashflow was always a challenge.
Our overheads were initially small, but our web sales outside of campaigns were tiny.
We stayed alive through crowdfunding campaigns and the occasional convention.
But that put us on the clock - we needed to crowdfund frequently to keep us going.
Then Paul lost his job and we started paying him a (tiny!) salary.
Larger overheads meant worse cashflow - more pressure.
The last few years we've had to lend the company money a few times to keep it alive.
This year I've focused on fixing that.
Building up more cash in the company and trying to leave it in, not take it out.
Spending money on ads to boost website sales, so we can cover our monthly overheads.
And in some senses it's been successful.
Web sales are near double last year.
We've much better cashflow than the last couple of years.
That's awesome!
But the ads weren't as profitable as I'd hoped, and as I scaled them they got worse.
The ad spent brought in enough sales to cover the overheads and keep us afloat.
But not profitably.
Every year until now we've shipped a full crowdfunding campaign.
But this year we carried nothing over from last year and only shipped about 10% of the rewards of this year's campaign.
So sales are much lower.
Coupled with the fact that we've paid the costs for a crowdfunding campaign this year: ads and fees.
So with the unprofitable website ads compounded by all of the costs and very few of the sales of crowdfunding we've made a massive loss this year.
That's awful.
I'm hoping next year will be better.
We've a lot of crowdfunding to ship in the next few months.
And I'm working with someone to improve our web ads.
Fingers crossed.
Something needs to change.