Towards this end, we've been cutting out substantial numbers of items in the non-bead shop sections of the catalog. We've also drastically reduced the number of suppliers we are willing to deal with. I wanted to minimize the types of problems we had during the two week period after Christmas. We've had a substantial increase in wholesale customers on-line. It still appears that most customers appear to be purchasing items they can't find elsewhere.
Many customers start with a small purchase, and then repeat with a larger purchase later on.
We have more of a track record of working with customers and responding to customer inquiries. Maybe we're just getting more familiar about how to do it. We had to make a decision about how much inventory we wanted to maintain in the store, and how much we would rely on getting the inventory from suppliers after an order was placed. The costs involved in shipping and packing were reasonable. Virtually all of our on-line customers still live outside the State of Tennessee.