I have received good news in the past few days, but I was too busy with a few new investments that popped up recently which required immediate attention, hence the delay till now.
I pretty much invested about half my net assets into the new ventures, coz I was looking to diversify away from the main biz that I had. My largest European customer contacted me around 3 days ago to resume the importing from us, but he is asking for a large discount because of the severe lack in demand from his customers. He told me the only reason that he's doing this is because he doesn't want to lose the good relationship that we've always had, and therefore we're trying to tide over the bad times with minimal margin to keep it going for the time being. Truly I'm flattered, & I've to account to my supplier too, so I'm leaning towards resuming business with him at the lower price for the time being. Once the world market starts to get better, options will definitely open up for more opportunities.
With every good news, there seems to be an avalanche of smaller bad news lying around. My restructuring plan met with obstacles recently because of a major quality problem with an existing supplier, and we ran into big trouble with our customers. My part was sorted out quite amicably as I had good relationship with my customer base, but our biz partner didn't do so well: he still hadn't managed to collect the 7containers' worth of payment. Our accts are separate, so it's not affecting me directly, but it does affect our purchasing plan from another new supplier as it means he doesn't have a customer base to serve anymore.
Adding to that, the one customer from Middle East that I was hoping could take 1/3 of the stock from the new supplier had met with slowing demand from his customers too, so basically we're left with very little alternative. Bulk quantity is very important in negotiating commodity prices, so as of now I only have an Oz customer committing to 1/6 of the new supply, and that's definitely not gonna keep the price down. Customers from Korea, HK, & Europe has basically stopped buying for the foreseeable future, so it's really baffling me on how to solve this current problem.
Letting go of the business seems very rash at the moment, as it was very profitable previously and I wouldn't be able to buy the stocks from the same supplier if we let go of them now. I also haven't found viable alternatives currently to serve as my current main biz, as all the new ventures I've invested in are only at their infancy stage, and it will take both dedicated time & effort to get 'em on track.
Arrggghhh!! Dilemma, dilemma =(
I pretty much invested about half my net assets into the new ventures, coz I was looking to diversify away from the main biz that I had. My largest European customer contacted me around 3 days ago to resume the importing from us, but he is asking for a large discount because of the severe lack in demand from his customers. He told me the only reason that he's doing this is because he doesn't want to lose the good relationship that we've always had, and therefore we're trying to tide over the bad times with minimal margin to keep it going for the time being. Truly I'm flattered, & I've to account to my supplier too, so I'm leaning towards resuming business with him at the lower price for the time being. Once the world market starts to get better, options will definitely open up for more opportunities.
With every good news, there seems to be an avalanche of smaller bad news lying around. My restructuring plan met with obstacles recently because of a major quality problem with an existing supplier, and we ran into big trouble with our customers. My part was sorted out quite amicably as I had good relationship with my customer base, but our biz partner didn't do so well: he still hadn't managed to collect the 7containers' worth of payment. Our accts are separate, so it's not affecting me directly, but it does affect our purchasing plan from another new supplier as it means he doesn't have a customer base to serve anymore.
Adding to that, the one customer from Middle East that I was hoping could take 1/3 of the stock from the new supplier had met with slowing demand from his customers too, so basically we're left with very little alternative. Bulk quantity is very important in negotiating commodity prices, so as of now I only have an Oz customer committing to 1/6 of the new supply, and that's definitely not gonna keep the price down. Customers from Korea, HK, & Europe has basically stopped buying for the foreseeable future, so it's really baffling me on how to solve this current problem.
Letting go of the business seems very rash at the moment, as it was very profitable previously and I wouldn't be able to buy the stocks from the same supplier if we let go of them now. I also haven't found viable alternatives currently to serve as my current main biz, as all the new ventures I've invested in are only at their infancy stage, and it will take both dedicated time & effort to get 'em on track.
Arrggghhh!! Dilemma, dilemma =(
posted by leonhart @ 2:55 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home