Life of an Online Business – My Pillow place

One thing that is affecting everyone in the US is the price of gas.  As a business owner, and one that uses FedEx and UPS to get products to the customers, the cost of gas is killing everyone.  What we’re seeing is that people have less disposable income because of the necessity of gas to get where we need to go.  So, naturally businesses such as ours will see a decline in sales, even though the number of visitors is increasing every month.  The second thing is that when we ship products via FedEx and UPS, they are now adding in expensive gas surcharges which are eating away at our profits. 

Most of our products ship for free, so every order that ships across the country is getting fleeced with gas surcharges and hurting us.  If we were to decide to pass that cost on to the customers (which we haven’t) we would be looking at even slower sales.  I just keep hoping that somehow, there is some gas price relief and things go back to the way they were.  Unfortunately, its possible that we may never see $2.50 gas ever again.  And on top of that, where I live near Chicago, we now have the highest sales tax rate in the nation…over 10%…we have Todd Stroeger to thank for that who decides that increasing taxes as opposed to cutting spending on frivolous government programs is the better way to go…but I digress…I usually don’t get political, but I’m getting irritated. 

I will end with this note (my last political statement) Illinois has produced the most corrupt politicians I’ve ever seen…

On a lighter note, I’ve updated some of our floor pillow pages in terms of format and fabric selection…specifically our round floor pillows and rectangular floor pillows .