During their busiest times Hooked on Solar manages hundreds of installations per month. About 35 team members access their inventory, but their parts warehouse needed optimization.

Considering that Hooked on Solar has 23,000 products in inventory, something had to change.

Trying to find the right inventory system

When Vice President Roger Stephens joined the company he first tried a leading cloud inventory program. Although that solution helped, he identified a serious gap in how it handled stock levels.

If the stock levels in the software were incorrect, Hooked on Solar technicians would have to “fake” a purchase order before they could take parts out of inventory. And they’d often have to do this from inside a van parked at the jobsite. These faked transactions needed to be corrected back at the warehouse, costing them more time and introducing the potential for errors.

On top of that critical workflow issue, Stephens realized that inventory was spread across six separate spreadsheets. This made it more difficult to get a complete picture of their inventory in one place.

In a previous role Stephens had actually written a custom inventory management program himself, and he was beginning to wonder if he’d have to do that again.

What sets inFlow apart from the competition

Then Stephens found inFlow while searching for inventory management solutions. What impressed him was inFlow Inventory’s simplicity and user-friendliness.

Stephens said, “I’ve looked at nearly 30 different inventory packages. When I got started with [inFlow Inventory] I thought, what the heck? This is super-easy. The first guy who went out and put 25 items in inFlow, I only spent two or three minutes training him.”

inFlow’s ease of use made it easy to train staff members on how to put-away, pick, and count inventory items, increasing the team’s efficiency.

Outcome

Stephens rolled out inFlow Inventory at Hooked on Solar and rapidly saw the benefits.

Before adopting inFlow Inventory, the company had up to 250 unsorted pallets on the warehouse floor. With inFlow that number is down to just three.

Stephens finds inFlow’s powerful sorting and filtering features helpful to rapidly locate items, searching multiple fields for one keyword. “When you get organized, you can find stuff a lot better,” Stephens said.

Since the rollout of inFlow inventory started, Hooked on Solar’s installation teams are more efficient. The installers can check an inventory report and be confident that the parts listed in inFlow are actually in the van, ready to install. “In other words, they don’t have to run to the store as much,” Stephens said. “They don’t have to go to the supply houses as much. That all costs money.”

The combination of more accurate stock reports and an easy-to-use interface have started to generate ongoing savings for Hooked on Solar. “I was able to take our cost of goods from 40% down to 32%,” Stephens said.

Those savings add up quickly when you recall that they have 23,000 products to track.

The post How a Solar Company Reduced COGS by 20% appeared first on inFlow Inventory.

Research projects required extra tracking because the IT spend on each project had to be accurately allocated and reported. The IT department also has to track the serial numbers of computers and other high-value pieces of equipment.

To manage all of this inventory, the IT department relied on an Excel spreadsheet and Claris Filemaker, a database and custom app platform. But those systems were so difficult to use that only 10 per cent of the IT equipment—including the highest-value items—could be fully tracked. 

Juggling multiple systems wasn’t working

One particular challenge was tracking items that were supposed to be returned to the stockroom after use. Juggling two systems made it tough to see which items were due back, and on which dates. There was no support for ordering new items by sending a purchase order to a vendor; that process had to be done outside of the inventory systems. 

“Before we were doing everything manually [using spreadsheets],” said Karen Fortier, a Financial Analyst at MGB’s Wentworth-Douglass Hospital. They maintained a stockroom of commonly-requested IT equipment and processed special orders for other equipment that was required from time to time. 

Similarly, shipping items from the stockroom to other sites required a different set of tools the IT department was using.

inFlow streamlined inventory management

After comparing offers from multiple vendors, the IT department tested and adopted inFlow Inventory, to handle purchasing, tracking, transferring, selling, and shipping inventory in one system. inFlow’s web, Windows, and mobile apps made it easy to see up-to-date information from anywhere. 

The IT department at Wentworth-Douglass Hospital uses inFlow to send purchase orders to vendors whenever they need to restock. inFlow tracks the serial numbers of high-value items to ensure that the right pieces of equipment are sent (and returned from) MGB sites and research labs. And inFlow Inventory provides an easy way to flag overdue items and get them back to stockroom shelves. To report on IT spend for research projects, the IT department organizes items into sublocations based on each research project to track costs accordingly. 

Shipping is now simpler for the IT department, since inFlow’s integrated shipping and label printing features make it possible to create a shipment and print shipping labels from one system. Even labelling boxes on the shelves is easier thanks to inFlow’s built-in Label Designer, which the IT department used to make labels that clearly show the contents of each box. 

inFlow has also helped them to simplify reporting to quickly call up inventory counts and valuations by location and by product type; it’s become much easier to see the IT equipment that each site or research project had been issued.

Last but not least, overall inventory levels can now be properly tracked thanks to inFlow’s built-in reports. With a few clicks the IT department can see which site or research project has equipment on loan. 

inFlow increased inventory tracking by ten fold

“I would not be able to do what I am doing” without an inventory system, said Fortier. “It was a huge benefit.” 

With the new system, the IT department could track 100% of the items they stocked—up from just 10% when using their previous system.

They were also able to cut down the number of required steps for inventory tracking by roughly 50%, shaving significant time off of their everyday work.

In fact, processes that took 15–20 minutes using the old systems were completed in just three minutes using inFlow.  “It’s been an invaluable tool,” Fortier said.

“I had checked out other applications,” Fortier continued. For inFlow’s price point, with serial numbers and sublocations, “It’s worked well for us.”

The post How Inventory Visibility Increased 10-fold at Wentworth-Douglass Hospital appeared first on inFlow Inventory.

This is the mantra that Sjaak’s Organic Chocolates lives and breathes. As a small business based out of California, Sjaak’s Organic Chocolates aims to change people’s minds about vegan chocolate. 

They want to prove that going vegan doesn’t mean giving up what you love, like really delicious chocolate.  

How did Sjaak’s Organic Chocolates get its start?

Sjaak’s Organic Chocolates is a family-owned and operated business with a rich history. Founder Jacques Holten, born in 1943 in the Netherlands, had already begun to hone his craft by making pastries and fine chocolates at the age of 13. Before long, Jacques became a master of old-world recipes, and the demand for his expertise grew. He spent several years collaborating with aspiring chocolate makers across Europe, including Spain–where he met a lovely American girl who was studying abroad. 

In the late 1960s Jacques was given an exciting opportunity to relocate to Aruba to launch a restaurant and bakery. Before heading to the Caribbean Jacques decided to make a stop over to visit the American foreign exchange student he had met in Spain. Once he was in California, he fell in love and never left, settling down in the quaint town of Blue Lake with his new wife.

In 1988, in old town Eureka, Jacques opened his first chocolate store, Sjaak’s Fine Chocolates. It wasn’t until 2004 that Jacques went into business with his daughter Jessica. Together they opened Sjaak’s Organic Chocolates, a new endeavor committed to crafting organic, vegan treats using timeless recipes. Over time Sjaak’s business grew and developed into a family of dedicated workers who love what they do. 

Where is Sjaak’s today?

When Jacques turned 77, he decided it was time to retire. This was when Nicha Leaser and her family happened upon the business. They saw it as a great opportunity to tell Jacques’ story and continue to provide the community with high-quality vegan chocolate. Today, Sjaak’s Organic Chocolates is a minority women-owned and family-operated company that believes in balancing between purpose and profits. 

The products they create are meant as a reminder to be better to yourself and the world around you. For them, this means carefully considering every decision, whether it’s related to their team, partners, customers, community, or the environment. A healthier planet and a better world start with mindful decisions. This means keeping their food clean, conducting fair business practices, and protecting the planet. 

All the ingredients sourced by Sjaak’s are certified organic and non-GMO, which means they have not been genetically modified. Additionally, their products are certified by EarthKosher, a majority of them are gluten-free, and their cocoa comes from Rainforest Alliance-certified farms. These farms work to achieve better livelihoods for farmers and workers alike. They create safe places to live and work where human rights are paramount.   

The team at Sjaak’s believes that happy people make great chocolate. This is why they provide above-market wages and cultivate a work environment that encourages education and development. The goal is to make each and every employee feel heard and valued.

A vow to be climate positive

Keeping their recipes free of animal products means that Sjaak’s can avoid the negative impact animal agriculture has on the environment. Even the sugar they use is bone char-free. It’s their way of showing respect to the planet and the animals that live on it. 

They have vowed to go beyond carbon neutrality, aiming to double the offset of their carbon footprint. One of the ways they do this is by continuously optimizing their packaging to follow a strategic sustainability cycle. The packaging on their 2oz Humboldt bars, for example, is completely biodegradable. Additionally, 5% of the profits that come from the sale of the Humboldt bars go to environmental non-profits. 

Sjaak’s doesn’t just want to protect the planet, they want to inspire others to do the same. The design of their Humboldt wrappers was created to celebrate the natural beauty of Humboldt County by showcasing iconic locations in the area. The idea is to inspire people to get outside and experience the world around them, giving them a better appreciation for the environment. 

The software that helps them reach their goals

Achieving such lofty goals is all about efficiency, visibility, and automation. With this in mind, Nicha and her family decided inFlow would be a great option for their inventory management. Before inFlow Sjaak’s had no inventory system to speak of. They relied on a chaotic system of eyeballing and ordering items only once they’d been depleted. Using inFlow helps them with reordering, sales and invoicing, and calculating their cost of goods sold. 

Inventory software gives Sjaak’s visibility into their available stock across multiple locations, which is something they desperately need since their operation is split between a factory in Blue Lake and a fulfillment warehouse in Petaluma. With inFlow their production team can purchase ingredients and create work orders to craft products like Earth bars and truffle boxes. Their sales and fulfillment team can enter and pick sales orders. Management can regularly run reports to look at what’s being sold, what’s forecasted, what sales are coming in, and more.

Watch this short video and hear first hand how inFlow has helped Sjaak’s!

Above all, inFlow’s ability to calculate the cost of goods sold (COGS) is what Nicha and her team simply couldn’t live without. Because Sjaak’s uses pallets of ingredients to make massive batches of chocolate, sometimes 800 lbs. at a time, having a system that could automatically calculate the cost of each individual box of chocolates was a game changer. With all of the functionality inFlow offers, it’s something Sjaak uses from the very beginning of their process all the way until the product leaves their warehouse.

The post How This Ecommerce Business Balances Profits and Purpose appeared first on inFlow Inventory.

Who do you work for and what do you do?

Hello, I’m Kris and I work for Schneider Electric, the global leader in energy management (yes, even in Canada). We’re one the biggest companies you’ve probably never heard of.

My team operates the internal print-on-demand service for North America, printing and distributing everything from coil-bound training documents and brochures to large format murals and signs.

Additionally, my team also handles custom document creation for the sales teams in the US that are distributed either digitally or via a paper copy. Between the two functions we manage upwards of 20,000 requests for service a year spread over 800+ internal teams (customers). Our entire business is either support function cost, which we do not charge for, or an internal cost, which our finance team transfers monthly from one account to another. At no point do we do point-of-sale or collect single instance payments.

For the first seven years of our operations the two functions were split over many fragmented tracking systems (MS Access, QuickBooks etc.). Getting a total snapshot of the operation was almost impossible, since tracking both digital only jobs (with labour) and jobs that required printing and fulfillment in one existing system was just not possible.

As a side note, we also stock meeting supplies (flip charts, badge holders, notepads, etc.) so keeping up with that inventory (over 200 item codes) was a challenge too.

What were you looking for in an inventory system?

I tested many systems to try and meet our needs. Most of these were centered around the printing business, since that is over $2.4 million of my operation annually.

After extensive searching, PressWise from SmartSoft seemed to be the front runner at the end of the day. However, after shelling out almost $14 000 for the system we quickly realized there were deal breakers. For example, we could not input variable labor, or track non-production items like meeting supplies. Plus, it couldn’t handle requests that only involve digital files and no physical inventory. Those were hard pill to swallow considering the budget.

Eventually, after months of searching, I came across inFlow. My criteria and what inFlow can do aligned almost perfectly.

Here’s specifically what was I was looking for:

• Be Cloud based or hosted on a local PC (too much drama to get server space with our IT team)
• Able to track stockable goods sales as well as variable sales such as data
• Able to monitor inventory easily as well as variable price changes with little or no interaction
• Able to produce reports to help forecast shipments (more on that in a minute)
• Able to handle 27 unique users simultaneously over a virtual private network (VPN) (14 of my team are remote)
• Not require a computer science degree to set-up or operate
• Have the ability to customize terms to align with our internal lingo
• Be light on the PC processor since we multitask with very large programs already
• Allow me to add custom fields in the process to meet my reporting / tracking needs
• Contain the functions to manage my operation if we expand to multiple locations or if we continue to experience the double digit growth year over year (YOY) like we have so far (we run all functions in “simple” instead of “advanced” mode at this point)

It turns out that inFlow Inventory met all of those needs. And, even more importantly, when it came to the discovery phase, I was able to test the Premium edition of inFlow at no charge (busiest 30-days of my year in 2013 as I tested it out).

So after setting up all of our inventory, labor and customers, we launched inFlow in early December 2013.

I’m not going to lie – it was a challenge. Finding a way to track 23 different types of services along with potentially over 300+ items we sell via sales orders was daunting to say the least.

However, it was surprisingly easy to train my team on it. Took less than one day with very few follow-ups to get my team using the system.

Flash forward to today. Most all of the kinks we came across due to the unique nature of our business have been worked out. The system has performed as advertised and is the single platform that tracks and manages every request (sale) my team processes each day from order to final shipment. We have up to 27 users that are in the system for three to four hours each day (some in it for a full eight-hour shift).

How could inFlow Inventory be improved?

Being that we support so many teams with so many various accounts, reporting is a big part of what we do and is the one area I’d like to see improved in the system.

We are able to get what we need, but we really had to customize the way we input customers and items in the sales order to pull it off. I know, however, a lot of it has to do with the nature of my specific business. Since we’ve relied on MS Access for so long, I miss some of the options for creating queries and reports that my database had in it.

(While we’re always working on ways to improve reporting, there are ways to access your database outside of inFlow and generate custom reports. We don’t officially support this since you’ll need some knowledge of SQL Server, but we do have an article that sheds some light on how to do it.)

Also, I know inFlow is an inventory system more than anything, but a couple small additions to the way it compiles reports so you could easily open the door to it being an invoice and billing system for small business too.

We have actually been able to work with the options in reporting and do all of our monthly statements and invoicing in one big sweep at the end of the month with the system. It would be nice to be able to quickly go in and “receive payment” on multiple orders, as well as have a true functionality of bulk printing of invoices and statements at the end of a cycle.

(Great news, the next version of inFlow will have the ability to track customer credits and batch payments, so you’ll be able to receive payments on multiple orders all at once.)

Any final thoughts?

Beyond those two points, all I can say is “You have a GREAT product” for my needs. We knew no single system would be able to do everything we need, but inFlow came the closest out-of-the-box, and with the ability to customize it easily, it’s really does look like an internal system we created.

The post The Biggest Company You’ve Never Heard Of : Schneider Electric appeared first on inFlow Inventory.

As a newly self-professed entrepreneur-wannabe, I enrolled in graduate school and took masters-level classes in Entrepreneurship to get a stronger understanding and feel for the business world.

Meanwhile, my mother left her accounting job and followed her passion to start a small chocolate shop in her basement. As she traveled the world, she learned of recipes, techniques, and procedures to consistently improve her business. She continued to grow the business, from purchasing a few molds to brand new equipment. It seemed as though she almost had a semi-industrial factory in her basement!

This is where I came in. I looked at different venues, but I decided that I wanted to be in the consumables industry because I’d be dealing with on ongoing purchases. So, I looked into how I could take it from a mom-and-pop shop to expanding it into something more.

Chocostyle started growing significantly in 2007 and in 2008 when we financed some leases to open up retail shops with bigger production space. However, in 2008 as you know, the economic downfall did us no favors. Chocolates are a luxury item and luxury items are the first ones that consumers stop buying in hard economic times. We really had to focus on what we were doing and manage our assets, cash flow and inventory.

It was imperative that we took note of what we had in stock, what we were going to produce, how we were producing all while keeping tabs on everything. Our situation is even more unique since the chocolate we buy gets melted down (it’s not like a traditional business where you buy an item, sell an item and simply rebuy more).

We’ve tried many softwares in the past, and we found it very difficult to put in the required effort to make them work the way we needed. In 2008-2009 we decided to shift our focus and stay with just one retail shop and center our attention on wholesaling. It was during this transition that we found inFlow.

Before inFlow, our systems were working half-half and our old POS (point of sale) system was slow. We also needed to separate our accounting documents from our inventory control and to help process items more efficiently.

We use inFlow as a POS, and while it isn’t a “click and go” type of solution, it suits our needs well. For example, not only do we have to sell items, we also have to wholsale, have two points of invoicing, and of course, everything that doesn’t sell has to be re-melted. Therefore, there are returns and loops that aren’t so obvious.

inFlow has a lot of cool options that allow us to personalize the system in a way that is very helpful to our business. Of course we have a feature wish list too.

What does your business offer?

It really is a worldwide market. The chocolate industry is controlled by two groups – the big guys and the artisan masters. This makes two different types of products. First, you have one machine that you use to throw your product in one end and it comes out molded at the end. Second, you have the product where you put a lot of passion behind it and go through the steps. Everything we make comes from the melting of raw materials from the cocoa nib (a small piece of raw chocolate ready to be molded).

Our signature products are what we like to call, “Bouchees“, which are our French chocolate-filled bon bons. We have 32 flavors, including everything from spicy jalapeño, sea-salt flour caramel, pistachio, apricot to strawberry basil (just to name a few).

As an extension of these, we have also found techniques where we can print our own images with cocoa butter ink onto a sugar sprayed acetate. This enables us to create images out of high quality 75% Belgian chocolate. In fact, we do a lot of personalization of the chocolates for many companies and corporations with their logos and images.

To take it one stop even further, we also create 3D molds of chocolate. One of our best sellers is are chocolate life sized high heel stiletto shoes. We try to be unique to stay ahead of the competition. Being a small company, our competitive advantage really is our creativity.

What are some other day to day challenges you face?

Just as with any business, there are many challenges. Yet, at the end of the day, it’s not really about the problems, it’s about the solutions.

When you’re an entrepreneur, you have to enjoy looking for solutions because problems are inevitable. You need to be the type of person who is motivated by making things work out. If you are just motivated by money and not by something you are passionate about, you’ll just get tired of it and crumble.

Our biggest challenges are the economics of scale from the Wal-Marts and the dollar stores of the world who sell cheaper products. Of course, we have issues just like other businesses with gas prices, shipping, and breakage.

What is your advice for small businesses?

There’s no time to pause. If there is a company that thinks it’s in pause-mode and think, “Ok, I’ll just go on with the customers that we have”, then they are going backwards.

Change is inevitable; economies change; the weather changes; everything changes. An entrepreneur needs to learn how to embrace the change and learn from mistakes while always looking forward. Ask yourself, “What you are going to do tomorrow?” and not “what you did yesterday?”

As an avid entrepreneur, this is not my first company nor will it be my last. Right now it’s my 4th company, and I’m happy to say that I’m at a 60% success rate, and I’m happy to say that because I learned more with the 40% failure than the 60% success.

How do you get your small business information?

I think there’s a lot of good advice to be given when you talk with other people (even more so than just business or industry blogs).

I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn, networking with people in my industry. I found that learning from people who have time to give you advice provides you with the ideas you need to move forward.

I love motivational speeches like Steve Job’s commencement speech or all the Robert Kiyosaki books, but we really have to look inbetween the lines. The message they are really trying to say is, “Go get it! It’s one life that we live in and we don’t want to have a boring life!”

We’re no longer in the 70’s or the 80’s, where you got your job and that’s it, your job for life. It doesn’t happen anymore. Today’s world is about you being you and you don’t want to work until 80 or 90 years old and say, “Yeah, I had a job, I did that, but I really lost out on some ideas I had…things that I wanted to do”.

I never saw myself in chocolate! Come on! I’m a 38 year old man, and I’m from a computer tech background, what am I doing in chocolate?

But you know what? You learn to love it, then you learn to hate it, and then you learn to love it again. Now I’m better for it because I have a new perspective on a new industry. As you keep learning, you find many industries have similarities and share characteristics. It all falls into place.

Any final thoughts?

No matter what, remember you are an entrepreneur. You could be a pastry guy, a machinist, or an architect, or whatever, but in the end, you are running a business; you’re an entrepreneur.

You have to learn everything in your business—whether it be accounting, or toilets, all the way to the big deals. You have to dabble in everything and your staff has to be good. The CEO or president always has to have his seat cold. He has to learn and supervise and see how people are doing so they can improve their techniques in working and moving forward. If his seat is hot, then he has been in the office too long.

The post How Entrepreneurial Passion Led to Artisan Chocolate Mastery appeared first on inFlow Inventory.

We were successful in doing this and the whole process started to grow quickly along with the help of social media. We caught our first big client when the third biggest online retail store in Europe, Neckermann, agreed to carry our products. Because of this, we were in the need for a better computer program since we were starting to handle larger stock quantities of products. That’s where inFlow Inventory came in to help.
We are in 5 small retail shops as well as one test phase to see how the consumer likes our products. The feedback we’ve been receiving is very good and looks promising. Our friends and wives are also involved in the company, making it a bit of a family business too.

What inspired you as an entrepreneur?

There are many reasons I wanted my own business; the first, namely for the free time. Don’t get me wrong-we work a lot more hours than we used to, but at least we get to determine our own hours and in meantime enjoy what we do.

Strangely enough, the ongoing crisis is also an inspiration. In the Netherlands we normally work until you are about 65 to start enjoying a well-deserved retirement. It seems this isn’t realistic anymore and I would have to work till I’m 82 years of age to be able to be set for retirement. Even social security is not something that is so ‘secure’ in my country. It’s like receiving a very small cigar out of your own box. So, I decided, let’s combine our thoughts and power and try to make our own business instead of working for a boss and seeing what happens in about 30 years…

My inspiration also comes from writers such as Mr. Jos Burgers in the Netherlands and of course, Steve Jobs. My favorite quote from Steve is, “Why join the navy if you can be a pirate?”

One of our favorite quotes of Mr. Jos Burgers is “Flowers do not grow faster by pulling them”, and that’s one quote that is really close to us. We want results tomorrow, but sometimes you have to let nature take its course and sometimes it takes longer then you want it to.

What are the some challenges you have faced?

Don’t be afraid to start. Seriously. If you want to achieve gold, you should go all in. A lot of people fantasize about what it would be like to just quit their job and start for themselves. You have to stop fantasizing and just do it. Put your life and passion into it and it will work. There is one thing worse than losing, it’s quitting.

Also, don’t be afraid to use your charm and develop your networking skills. Even if someone is not interested in your business, don’t be afraid to talk to them. You never know what connections you might make.

What makes you unique and different?

Our import consultancy and forwarding services are different because of our personal approach and out of the box thinking. Our clients like our passion and commitment and the fact that we offer solutions before the problems even arise.

In cosmetics it’s the touch and feel of our products that make a big difference. They are very high-end, like French cosmetics and yet are still natural. For example, the baby line is 99.3% organic. You don’t find many cosmetics like that in the Netherlands.

We are also always open to new ideas and new partnerships. For example, we are looking to open our own home store this year. My plan is to see if there are other companies who want their products in the Netherlands and we will offer them shelf space. They would do the same for us in their home countries. It’s all about reciprocation. We get a lot of requests from India, for example, but they have to wait on being tested for the European market. We can also help them with that.

Due to the recession, everybody is stepping on the brake here, nobody wants to do extra investing. I want to be unique and do the opposite. As Warren Buffet said, “When everyone else is greedy, be afraid. When everyone else is afraid, be greedy”.

The post Shining the Spotlight on a Successful Distribution Business appeared first on inFlow Inventory.

So we said, “Let’s try something else and enjoy what we do”. So we did just that and started off with approaching day care centers, nursery schools, and resource centers offering children’s books, toys, and games from about five different companies in Canada and the US.

We first started off with Usborne Books and they supplied us with all types of children’s books. We also work with Discovery Toys and another company named Family Past Time Games who make cooperative board games. The idea is that everyone has a goal, but you work together to solve it. There’s no one trying to be a winner and nobody becomes a looser if everyone works together as a team. This concept was a hit in the day care centers and nursery schools. These games were particularly appealing since children where at that age when they’re able to play together and work as a team, instead of just knocking down someone else’s blocks or what not.

A year later I was laid off from my previous job. I was working at a GM dealership and we said, “Let’s just jump right in and do this full-time”. So we did and we never looked back. We do literacy fairs, home shows, and exhibits to nursery schools day care centers, churches, any organization that wants us to be there. We set up all of our stuff and of course we use inFlow, which is just incredible with keeping track of all our inventory and printing of receipts for our customers. I just bring my laptop and a printer with me and it becomes a point of sale. The customers come in and they say, “We want these four items; we want these five ones…” I print off the receipt if they want a copy; if not, we can just email it.

What does your business offer?

We sell mainly toys, games and books. We also have magnets and what-not, but it’s all geared towards children from infant to early teen.

What makes you different or unique?

We go in with a positive attitude; we don’t call you up and we don’t put pressure on schools or your home. We have a monthly newsletter if you want to sign-up; we’re not constantly in your face saying, “This is what we have…Buy, buy, buy”. Of if you want to buy, you can go ahead and buy; if not, you don’t have to. We’re a more relaxed-type of business and people really like it; they keep coming back!

What are some of the day to day challenges you face?

The day to day challenges when we started this off was finding reliable software that could handle everything we dealt with: the handling; the shipping; the tracking of things; whether from our vendors or going to our customers, not to mention the inventory and the invoices to our customers.

What is your advice for small business?

First off, get inFlow Inventory. It will save you so much time. The next thing would be you have to have a realistic goal and stick to it. We have a sign here in the office that says, “You will win if you don’t quit”. No matter where we are in the office, we can see this sign. You have to stay positive and not get discouraged. It will be tough and slow in the beginning, but not everyone can be an overnight YouTube success. Just stay positive and your customers will pick up on that positive energy.

The post Escaping the 9 to 5 – A Toy Business in Oshawa appeared first on inFlow Inventory.

So, I created my online store, Widesmile, to supply them specialty products that aren’t generally available from local supermarkets. For example, we sell special mouthwashes, electric toothbrushes, and other items similar to those you may be able to get at a pharmacy.

What does your business offer?

As with most small businesses, I started off with a small selection of items but have since grown to include many different products and treatments. It’s beyond just a toothbrush, it’s actual medication. For example, I have treatments for people that suffer from dry mouth, canker sores, and other sorts of things which can be really uncomfortable.

We sell all across New Zealand . I actively work as a hygienist during the day and I do the product side of things at night.

It’s really all about looking after people and making their lives more comfortable. If you say to people, “My job is a hygienist”, the first thing that they do is shut their mouth and put their hands over their face. But, if you say, “My job is to give people confidence to smile again”, that changes the whole concept of what you really do.

What are some of the day to day challenges you face?

The challenge I face is getting inventory in and finding the appropriate tools to help customers accomplish what they want to do. This is kind of how I found inFlow Inventory. I had trouble keeping track of what I had, where it was coming from, and what processes I was paying for. I had to go on Google and hunt down a solution that was available. At that time, inFlow was the only product that I found which I could download and use straight away. As a bonus, it was independent of an accounting system which was important to me. I’d already used an accounting system and every other inventory software option seemed to be attached to another accounting system, which I didn’t like.

What is your advice for small businesses?

Well, when you feel like you want to pull your hair out and wonder how you’re going to fit everything into a day, go away, take a break, come back, and then just carry on. Stick to what you believe in, get up each day and just carry on.
I tend to “Google” a lot of things I don’t know and also have a Facebook page to get information out there. I also look at Facebook business groups which are quite helpful.

Also, we have informal local business meetings where different small businesses get together and have a glass of wine, a few crackers, and do a little networking. Sometimes you just go for the wine and crackers :).

It’s a good way to meet other people, get ideas from them, and share some of your ideas, trials and tribulations. It’s amazing how you can kind of help each other out, actually. Everyone’s small business is like their little baby and it helps to surround yourself with people who have common goals, all trying to help each other.

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Eventually, I came across a manufacturer that had really great products and customers were asking us, “Where can I buy these?” I eventually had the idea to contact the manufacturer and see if I could come up with my own make up line. It was the best decision I ever made.

My inspiration also came from my mother. She always loved stage makeup and makeup in general. Not many people know this, but I named the company after her. Žômiah was a name she used when she was doing professional dancing. I made the decision to start the company about 6 months after her passing. It seemed I woke up one day and it just hit me that I should do this.

I really love what I do now. Although I don’t know everything about how to apply makeup, I have spent countless hours around professional makeup artists and have always listened and appreciated their feedback.

What does your business offer?

My business is an online store and we offer a wide range of cosmetics for sale. Other companies have wide product ranges including skin treatments, but we have decided to focus solely on cosmetics for now. Our company has been in business for almost two years now, and continues to grow at an acceptable rate. We are very proud of this fact and thanks to the high quality of our products, our makeup brand is gaining acceptance worldwide. My vision was to provide a product with very reasonable prices along with the best quality. I want people to know that they don’t have to sacrifice the quality when they buy something for less. It really is an unfortunate misconception that the more expensive something is, the better it should be. This is not necessarily the case, and Žômiah Cosmetics® is a great example.

So far, our philosophy and marketing approach has been successful as we regularly receive positive comments from people around the world.

What are some of the day to day challenges you face?

One of the biggest challenges we face is dealing with prospective buyers from foreign countries. We get a lot of interest from resellers wanting to carry our brand but we have to deal with different country importation rules which can get complicated.

Even though this is the case, we still sell to individuals internationally. Thanks to the magic of the internet we receive orders from all over the world including Asia, Europe, Australia, the United States and Canada.

I have always been an entrepreneur at heart but I had never dealt with the operations side of a business. In the very early stages, I tried to figure out how to keep track of everything that was going on. I started looking for help and I was very fortunate to find inFlow Inventory. It’s been a lifesaver! It makes it easy to see all the results at the end of the year. I am really happy with the software.

What is your advice for small businesses?

I would say that persistence is one of the things that I live by. Don’t let your shortcoming put you down or stop you. With enough persistence, the biggest obstacles will eventually fall and the most ambitious achievements are well within your reach. Persist, and small actions lead to big results. When you truly want it, prove it with persistence and it will be yours.

For more information on Žômiah Cosmetics®, please take a look at their website and be sure to give them a like on facebook.

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It ended up becoming something I enjoyed since I liked having the time to myself. I also liked seeing people smile when they got home from work, knowing that they didn’t have to go mow.

In 2008 I started up my own business with some small customers around the neighborhood. Within the next two years, through word of mouth, my small business grew to about 80 clients.

It’s all family operated. It’s me, my mother, my two brothers, and my nephew. We do projects around houses, take care of lawns and do total landscaping. All of our customers are glad that they went with a local business instead of somebody from out of town or a franchise.

What does your business offer?

We offer everything from just regular mowing to doing full backyard projects. This might include a big landscaped patio, backyard, or even a fireplace built into the back yard. We also started doing commercial projects last year.

What makes you unique?

I think we stand out because I try to build personal relationships with my customers instead of just being some high profile million dollar company who doesn’t care if they lose a customer or not.I probably talk to my customers on a weekly basis, regardless of whether or not they need lawn care. We’ve had a few older folks who call just to say how glad they are to have us working for them. They have never seen another business that spends so much time just to check in with their customers to make sure they are doing alright.I don’t see many companies out there that take time to build relationships and that’s what makes us unique.

What are some of the day to day challenges you face?

Two years ago, when the gas prices rose to the $4 range, we were challenged to with making profits. In fact, sometimes we ended up dipping into our own pockets since I did not want to charge the customers more. I know a few businesses around here will change their prices even with the slightest increase in gas prices, but I didn’t want to do that.I believe that customers would start thinking twice about your company and maybe even loose trust if you start playing with prices that much.

On a daily basis, the biggest challenge is getting everything done by the end of the week. Since the weather doesn’t always cooperate, sometimes we have to work long hours. When we get tired I have to remind people that it’s not just about doing a job, it’s about doing it right and making people happy in the end.

What is your advice for small businesses?

Our primary marketing is through word of mouth but there are other opportunities worth looking into. For example, we went to a local radio station and found out that they were willing to give us 50% off the recording because we were a new business just starting up. Don’t be afraid to ask for a discount.

We also make sure we purchase everything locally. Everything from the vinyl lettering on our vehicles to our lawn equipment, we try to keep everything within the community.

We probably can find better prices out of town, but “buy local, shop local” is a motto that would help everyone in this economy. There are probably parts in your town that you drive by and don’t even notice all the small business opportunities around you.

To see more examples of our work, please visit the B&B Lawncare website or give us a call at 765-967-0922.

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