Game Over

Today's a sad day. I had to tell our staff that we've decided to wind down the company. There are a few mothers who were depending on the income, and 1 foreigner who needed the job to stay in the country. I told them to start looking for alternatives, and that i'd be happy to assist in any way, e.g. writing letters of reference, and that, even tho we were winding down end of the month, let's do our best and put out 2 more great issues, and go out with our heads held high.

Yes, we've decided to shut down - we weren't selling enough papers, and we certainly weren't growing. So, no point throwing good money after bad, it's costing us in the region of $20,000 every month just to keep Buy & Sell on the life-support machine - the market for private advertising in Singapore is just too costly to create. There's an axiom which states that it's easier to teach people to switch brands of cigarette, than to teach them how to smoke. In Singapore, we're teaching people how to develop a habit they've never had.

It's been quite a journey this past year, setting up the business from scratch, co-ordinating a launch campaign, managing and mentoring staff, meeting lots of great people, it's been tiring but i've certainly loved the lifestyle of running my own company and the excitement and creativity of building something we could truly call our own.

There're certainly no regrets, because at least i had the chance to actually do it - taking my idea from a daydream i had while lounging on my balcony in london, to reality, and we did try everything under the sun to make this work. If i hadn't done it, my partners and i might still have our money, but i'd be forever regretting not having started the business. The pessimists (there have been many) will get their chance to say 'i told you so', but hey, that comes with the territory.

There's also almost a sense of relief - we were throwing vast amounts of money at the business, at least now we can save ourselves from bleeding any further. We've spent a total of more than $750,000 - to put that in perspective, that could buy a ferrari or lamboghini gallardo, in 100% cash, without owing the bank a cent! It could buy a posh apartment in kensington, london, with a few grand left over for furnishings.

Where to now? I think i shall go back to the cushy world of investment banking and start earning some REAL money again, while developing and maintaining some online presence. It'd be a pain to start rebuilding a career from scratch starting at the bottom, but i will savour having a normal life again, maybe go travelling, without the constant worrying at the back of my mind.

Will I start a business again next time? Probably, yes, many years down the road. But in the meantime, I've got a living to earn!

check out my mug shot in the latest issue of this biz mag. For an enlarged image click here.

Tampines

Since i last wrote an entry here, sales have not improved.. 7-Eleven brought sales up by a bit, but then it has stayed flat.. calling people for ads, it's obvious that lots of people in our target audience have still not heard of our paper.

If they have, they're not buying. Not sure what else to do - the look/the name is as right as we can make it, no mistaking it for something else. The price is right, can't go any lower. The radio ads (which were worded correctly) didn't seem to make any difference.

So, as a last ditch market test, to see if people will buy or not, we're mail-dropping about 10k copies of recent issues to households in tampines, with a leaflet attached directing them to the nearest outlet. If we don't get a reasonable success rate from that, then i think we're pretty near the end of the road - no point throwing gd money after bad.

(above): everyone spent whole of thursday packing about 4500 papers into plastic wrappers together with a flyer - another 5500 to go today!

Next place we should target (since we intentionally over-printed the previous issue for this purpose) is perhaps somewhere in the east as well. Large malay population.

Fingers crossed *sigh*

7-Eleven surprise

Wow, trying to stay cautious about being too happy, but our sales for 7-Eleven appears to be 3 times what we thought it was, for issue 18! Issue 19 seems even higher, but that can't be right. Anyway, we count our every blessing and rejoice at the little victories.

Issue 21's out now - kickass CNY issue. M our graphics artist actually traced out the chinese-stylised dog from an american cny stamp.

Issue 18 sales were more or less on-target, so we celebrated for a nano-second, and then moved on, coz what's impt is not to relax on those numbers, but to sustain and build those sales.

Issue 20 is out in the stores now; go buy it, it's got a cute rabbit on the cover.