I think it sounds crazy to most people when I say that we really don't want to grow our Charleston Home Staging business anymore. The fact of the matter is that I'm pretty serious when I say it. Some of you in the industry understand exactly what I'm talking about though. Most of you who get it probably own inventory.
Because this kind of statement is contrary to most people's opinion, let me elaborate. My company, First Impressions Home Staging & Interior ReDeisgn owns a lot - no I mean A LOT of inventory. We are right around the 3/4 of a million mark with around 50 vacant homes staged at a time on average. Think about all the little knick-knacks, paddy-wacks and chauch-kies (yeah, I know I spelled that wrong) that we own. It kind of blows my mind. We have 3 full time stagers, 2 part time stagers and 2 part time assistants (one staging, one admin).
Like most Home Staging businesses, we do both occupied homes and vacant homes. Our business is to some degree cyclicle. (Though I can't remember when we've had less than 35 vacant homes staged. I think it's been at least 2 years now.) When the Charleston Real Estate market is at its peak, we are constantly running out of furniture. It seems every busy season we grow our number of staged properties by at least 2-5.
Two to five properties growth twice a year doesn't sound like a lot, but think about it. How much stuff can be consumed in a property? You have sofas, chairs, rugs, artwork, throw pillows, towels, and the list goes on and on. Last year, making mid six figures in sales and having a steady stream of homes staging and unstaging, we still managed to spend about $80,000 in new inventory.
This brings me to my point.... If we had not expanded our business last year by the 2-5 homes a season then that $80,000 would have been PROFIT!! So this year, rather than working on expanding our business, we are trying to figure out how to streamline it. We are studying the numbers. We are figuring out what exactly we need to do to get our profit margins up while keeping our inventory needs down.
Getting too much work seems like a funny problem to have, but actually it just is the way it goes when you do everything right. So, next on our list is actually to dial in our business demographics a little more and cut the fat. As always, I'll keep you posted on how that goes....
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