You gotta spend money...

...to make money.

Boy do I know it now.

I'm really only able to brag that Abbamart is a debt-free business because my co-owner graciously left the remaining inventory he had provided in the business when he decided not to continue supporting this branch anymore.

Abbamart has been doing fine on its own this year because of that, but I'm going to have to think bigger if I want it to continue doing fine without dramatically raising product prices.

One cringe-worthy expense Abbamart is suffering right now is SHIPPING. Oh. My. Goodness. DHL does have pretty darn nice customer service reps, but that's probably because they're rolling in dough. MY dough. Every restocking shipment I've received has shipped for a price tag of about 30% the value of its contents. That is one swift kick to the financial knee caps right off the bat.


What I really need to do is go through the dirty business of ocean freight shipping again. It's a scary world of humorless customs brokers and and a guy named John Wu down at the port who keeps x-raying my boxes every 3 days for 2 weeks before letting them through, but my shipping to product value percentage drops to about 7%. Ahhhhh. Even with John Wu and his x-ray machine in the picture, I'm breathing easier already.

The only problem is a freight shipment has to be significantly large with a minimum value of about $5,000. That's a lot of clams. And even if I save up my clams for one mega-shipment, the be-all to end-all is... where am I going to PUT IT?

Which leads us to the next logical step in the 'spend money to make money' equation - more room. It always seems to come down to more room.

More room more room more room. How to get more room? Hm. I bet spending more money would help!

Yep, I definitely know it now.