.. so, children back to school, decorations down and house nearly back to normal and time to assess the Christmas season for Twice and think about the year ahead. All in all, it was probably as good as I could have expected. Sales were slightly down on my expectations but the catalogue was a huge success so, on balance, things worked out pretty well. However, people are still very nervous about what's round the corner so for us, like most small businesses, the way ahead for 2009 has to be to cut costs, and not make any unneccessary expediture. That translates firstly into not attending the fairs that we usually do - mainly because the costs involved in travelling and moving stock are huge from Scotland. We're going to concentrate on building up the mail order side of Twice and expanding our range.
I'm not quite sure what to do about workshops - it's possible that people will feel they can't treat themselves so much this year. The workshop series are expensive and time consuming to set up so I am going to send out an email to test the water - and depending on the feedback we might just wait until the Autumn and see how people are feeling then.
Just to get myself feeling a bit less wintery and sniffly and thinking about spring, the photo shows the snowdrops here last year - should be like that again any minute - can't wait!
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