Prioritizing is becoming a more difficult task lately. It includes both where to direct the corporate funds when they come in as well as what the CEO (that’s me) should do with his time. The main priorities lately have included:
Catch up on Toy Fair leads and orders. We finished sending out all the confirmed orders this week, and all the other inquiries were emailed or sent catalogs. The next round of shipping is getting catalogs and price lists out to all our reps, and we’re about halfway done with that project. In preparation for seven large distributors’ purchase orders, we have to fill out quote sheets that basically tell the distributor how much inventory we can spare, how much it will cost them, and how much space it will take up in their warehouse and on their store shelves.
Return the new liability insurance application. Now that we’re getting more and larger distributors who want to carry our games, they want some assurance that they won’t bear the risk if an unhappy customer sues them over one of our games. Some of the companies who issued quotes jacked up the premium thousands of dollars a year just because we are moving most of our production to China now without taking our extensive quality control into consideration.
Assemble 400 copies of Zombie Attack. Seriously. One of the new potential distributors wants as many zombie games as he can get for a special end cap in all their 200+ stores in mid-March. That will clear out our inventory, if I can find space and time to do the assembly. It becomes trickier, because we still don’t have the purchase order, and they might want inventory shipped in 2 weeks or less.
Send out review copies. Since The Climbers came out December 11, between Christmas and preparing for Toy Fair, there hasn’t been much of an opportunity to get copies out to reviewers. We have had two good reviews and a half-dozen other mentions, but I’m considering holding off on the publicity until we can announce the reduced price with the new production run, because, as you may have guessed, we are waiting for a purchase order from a distributor who wants to clean out our inventory on that game.
Respond to inquiries from investors. Evidently, the 60-page prospectus our broker sent out was insufficient information for some banks and lenders. They ask what our profit margins are. They ask if there is any way we could change our strategy to get more profits in 2010. They ask where our 2009 taxes are (see below). I spent an hour at a local bank this morning just filling out all the paperwork — much of it seemed obsessively focussed on determining whether I might be engaged in money laundering.
Clean up all the errors of my previous accountant and file 2009 taxes. I located a good accountant last month who has experience and time to work on my tax issues. As a bonus, she only charges half what my old accountant charged and she really likes working with small corporations like ours. It’s hard enough to even find a CPA who is taking new clients here in New York City.
Send the CEO on a one-week vacation. Nah. We’ll probably have to scrap that one. Did you see how long my to-do list is?
Mark Salzwedel
Tags: accounting, catalogs, distributor, insurance, investor, production, publicity, sales, sales reps, strategic space, The Climbers, Toy Fair, Zombie Attack