Slow going

Everything seems to be a struggle at the moment. It took us ages to try and book a week's holiday, and seems to be incredibly expensive too - I've never really taken just a week, but we need something to tide us over til September.

Because it's only a week, you don't want to spend 2 days travelling, so we tried to find somewhere that would be warm but within 4 hours flight time. We wanted half board and a sea view. We found a hotel, one that Hubby's folks have stayed at a couple of times, so we had a good recommendation.

The problems we had booking it though! We would either have to spend 7 hours flying/sitting in a connecting airport, or not have a seaview, or arrive at 9:00 at night and get back at 1:00 a.m. None of these are ideal, but we refused to pay £855 for more convenient flights and book them separately.

Clearly these flight companies operating flights to European holiday destinations have us over a barrel.

Anyway, we finally agreed on a compromise and although it's costing us a fair whack for a week away, at least we have something to look forward to now.

Other slow going on the new business front. We have 3 suppliers that we really want on board. One refuses to acknowledge our application to be a stockist on their website. The other also refuses, but additionally the sales agent we met at one of the trade shows is ignoring my emails asking for catalogues and price lists. The third says that they don't supply internet only retailers. I am making a case for why they should bend that rule for us.

We have, however, decided on the rest of the range, but if we can't get these 3 on board then we don't have a wide enough range to even bother opening for business. My other frustration is that we are never going to make any money - although we are hoping for a 40% margin, this profit will all be sucked up into logistics costs - not us posting stuff out, but us paying someone to take delivery of stock and store it for us.

Which makes me wonder if it's even worth doing, but we've already invested significantly in our branding and website so I don't think we can walk away now. However, I am getting increasingly nervous about investing all our savings on stock to sell when worst case scenario we won't be able to sell it all, and we'll have wasted all our savings on that. Especially when my mum was so negative about everything at the weekend. I showed her our ranges and she kept saying "Oh, I can get that from Traidcraft and cheaper", or "we saw 3 shops in Wells selling this sort of stuff already". I tried to explain that the Traidcraft stuff was very different, and that we know there are already competitors out there, but that we believe there is room in the market for us.

I know that doing something like this is something you really have to work for, and at least we still have our day jobs to cover the bills and put a roof over our heads, but it's not exactly going to fund our retirement at this rate. I doubt we'll actually ever make any money from it, and if that's the case, I'm wondering why we bother.

On the running front - I am still only running 11k a time - and still struggling. I'm sure it used to be much easier when I was training for the half marathons - I was adding 1 mile a week then, but now I can't even seem to add an extra 1km. Also, with Hubby being ill this week, the 2,010km total is looking increasingly unlikely unless I start running double the distances that I currently am. And soon.

Lastly, the weight loss - I really thought I was good for a couple of pounds off this week - I didn't eat nearly as much at the weekend as I have done in the past. On Tuesday morning I was down 1lb, and I thought that with 2 more days of good eating and another 11k running that I could lose at least another 1lb. But on Wednesday I was up 1lb, and this morning back down. It just seems that the exercise is not cutting the mustard. I know I shouldn't weigh myself everyday, but clearly the exercise and points counting from Tues - Thurs is not making one iota of a difference, so therefore I need to count points on the weekends too (although you'd think that the 24 bonus points I am earning from running would more than cover it).

Still, it's a loss, and I am now firmly on the 12st side of things, which is good. I'd like to lose half a stone more before our holiday though. So I don't scare all the little children when I appear by the pool in my bikini.