Well, whatever bad karma we felt before the weekend, it all changed and we are back on track.

As I already said, we made a decision on friday night, that turned out to be right this time. We chose a product that turned out to become a bestseller and brought us back in the profitable zone. Here it is:

Right. An Oscar Trophy. Well, admit it. It looks almost like the real one. This beauty is almost 27cm high and made of 100% plastic. It weighs 67 gramm and has 12 additional labels packaged with it, that display slogans like “for the best lover on this planet” etc. You can pick whatever slogan you like best and stick it to the plate below the feet of oscar. Truly remarkable idea for a present. At least our customers think so. And that is probably, why they buy like crazy and why we have as of today, Tuesday 22.08.06, sold 6 of them already. We have ordered a box of 24 total, so we expect to realize a nice profit margin over the next 20 days or so as we will place 1 oscars to EBay each day to not make the same mistake again to overload the market. This way, we keep attraction on a controlled level as there is currently a high demand for this good.

But that was not the only good thing happening to us. On Monday, H. came back to the office, and although we had chatted every day several times a day on the phone, I have to admit, that I was happy to see him again, although he seemed to have gained a couple of pounds. So, our next idea seemed perfect to take care of that problem too.

As we had seen on EBay, that the customers where not really coming toward us regarding their interest for canned flowers, we decided, that we had to go then to the customers instead. This meant for us, that we would start a cold acquisition, by walking into each store on our street next to our office in order to sell at least one package of canned flowers to the owner. Well, Death of a Salesman was anyhow a favourite novel of mine, so I thought it might be interesting to spent a couple of hours in the footsteps of Willy Loman. I was fundamentally wrong.

As we gathered in front of the first shop, better yet victim, we broke out laughing. The situation seemed to be just too ridiculous. I mean, we were dressed for office which meant that we not really looked like some stranded salesmen that were desparately trying to sell their stuff. So, we decided to throw in the pitiness-factor. We switched ties, and so H. had to wear a brown tie to a blue suit and I decided to wear no tie at all. This way, we looked a little bit more convincing. We entered the first shop, which happened to be…a flower shop.

It started perfectly. Some clerk, who turned arrogant as soon as he figured that we intended to sell anything and told us to wait since his boss was just having lunch. We told him, we’d be back and left. It is really funny. As soon, as this guy realized, that we were no customers for today, he turned arrogant. He was too simpleminded to grasp the concept, that we would have probably bought something ourselves while we were to wait. He would have had enough opportunities to get us into buing something and he should have judged by our clothing, that we could have afforded to bring home some flowers for our wifes. Instead, he was bound to think in a classical role-scheme, where he this time could feel superior against someone being lower in the sales hierarchie than him. He at least had a shop he could stay in, we had to walk the pavement to make our business. Good lesson.

Now, we kept on. Shop after shop. Mobile phone shops, korean bakeries, asian videostore, auto repair shops, clothing shops, fast food restaurants, more mobile phone shops (there were at least 10 of them on that route)…we met all kinds of friendly people, not so friendly people and plain assholes. But we did not meet anyone willing to buy anything from us. They were interested, but mostly feared, that they would simply not have the customers for this kind of item.

But we were dedicated. There was no coming back to the office without being successful. H. begged for simulating a real salesman to that extend, that we would have to enter a bar now were we would call it a day and get drunk. But finally we put ourselves together and walked on. To the trainstation. Our last resort.

And then, it happened. Some nice lady in some nice shop (Imbaerium by the way, will post a link later as soon as I found out whether they are online at all) had mercy with us. She was a very kind person, listening to our proposal, seeing her advantage, and finally paying us 25€ for our samplebox of 12 canned flowers. We finally did it, after 3 hours. Only 2 more boxes or 24 cans to go. We went back to the office and were more than satisfied with our results. We were back on the tracks, our account was showing positive figures again.

The next day, today, we kept on planning the further steps and contacting other resellers. The Oscars are selling well, so we know, that soon we will have a three digit budget but not more time to spent on selling. This means, that we need to turn our attention toward the more valuable goods in order to make a higher amount of profit with the same number of trades. Maybe jewellery. Maybe designer clothing. We’ll see.

Anyway, the day had a nice ending to it, as we sold another box of flowers for 20€. This was no profit for us, but no loss as well. As Hegenberg had agreed in the meantime to pay us back 1€ per can and to refund 10€ on the broken salt’n pepper mills, we came unhurt out of this canned flower desaster.

The fifth stage has been reached, the 32€ barrier been broken. 59.09€ cold hard cash are ours. 22 more business cases to realize. Maybe it is time, to order this porsche catalogue now. I have no idea, how long they need to deliver.

Here is a goodie. A Photo shot today. Enjoy it, we did. Lol.