*This post originally titled: “The House Of Rave House, Literally” (but removed for search engine purposes)
I recently just bought a house which will be completed in October/November, and I have decided to pay for the house entirely from HouseOfRave.com.
It will quite literally be a Hous e – Of R ave House!
I started this business in high school as an eCommerce experiment, and it has lasted since first opening its virtual doors in 2001.
I got serious about HouseOfRave not too long ago, and realized it can make several thousand a month easy. With a little love and care, HouseOfRave was making $6,000+ a month in profit….more than enough to pay for the mortgage and associated costs of a house.
My mortage on the new house will be approximately $1,400/month after tax and HOA fees, and I want this all to come from HouseOfRave (and later on some renters).
PROBLEM:
HouseOfRave has been suffering some growth issues, not from my side by my supplier side. I have also been working like crazy getting this last course done which has distracted me big time from HouseOfRave duties.
During the 2006 Halloween season I had a large increase in orders which the supplier could not handle, and bad things resulted: Chargebacks, angry customers, lots of refunded money and the loss of repeat business.
Then in November 2006 order pace started growing again with the holiday season rolling around and the December rush just compounded that problem. I was happy about the large volume of orders, but the supplier did an awful job of sending out orders and notifying me of problems. LOTS of orders were wrong, had missing items, were late or just plain didn’t go out. I also never got the final invoices for those crunch months, meaning I STILL didn’t know exactly how much profit was made or lost…not knowing how much money you made tends to be a small problem when doing things like TAXES. I was not happy about this, and it isn’t the first time this is happening.
WHAT REALLY GOT TO ME were the empty promises I kept giving (justifiably) angry customers such as “I’ll PERSONALLY send your order out today…” and the supplier would not send. I was pissing people off and sometimes just plain scamming them (from their perspective, which is the perspective that matters). Over the last few months I’ve been refunding money like crazy and found a new supplier who can handle a large load of orders.
If you run a crappy operation, it won’t be around for long, and lately that’s what HouseOfRave has been until I got the new supplier. Now I get orders, and they send them out….NO EXCUSES IN BETWEEN.
So it’s nice to focus back on growing the businesses rather than dealing with unnecessary problems.
THE RESULT:
House Of Rave has experienced a decrease in orders and is going through a big inventory change, meaning all the staple products that used to consistently make money are being shifted around and often completely removed.
THE PLAN:
Over the next 6 months I want to rebuild the HouseOfRave reputation and start making $5,000+ per month again. I also want to save between now and November approximately $8,000 for spending on the new house for all those home-associated costs like furniture, washer/dryer, fridge, hardwood floors, new fixtures. Basically all that stuff I used to ignore when my parents bought, I now understand!
I want HouseOfRave.com to quite literally pay for my entire house. It’ll be nice to have just ONE side businesses covering the expenses.
I predict getting HouseOfRave back to the $5,000+ mark will take 3 months. With the new supplier I have to change around all aspects of the businesses including the whole inventory, accounting system, ordering method, shipping prices and genre of products.
$5,000/month will be an attainable but difficult goal for 3 months time, as for the first time in 6 years, HouseOfRave might go into a loss this month!
On another note: I still have never been to a rave.
