As Promised here are the monthly stats as well as a crap load of info that could be used to help someone start a business. I welcome any comments both positive and negative. I open this up for 3 reasons.

1) To help others looking to start
2) To get help myself
3) Tao Heavy Industries will be raising capitol in IPO form and this will allow the investors to see my style

This was the first full month of sales. I have factored in some days in Jan to account for the short FEB. A few things of note...

1) The company was just getting started at this time.
2) I only settled on my location 3 weeks into things
3) I only started classified 4 weeks into things

I feel overall that the month was an amazing success, this has allowed me to grow the business in stages as well as fund some other diversification options. I am close to outgrowing a 512 piece of land, not due to its size mostly due to its prim limit. This kind of sucks as its an amazing piece of land with a long side facing to a road and the back side facing to a body of water. I love this piece of land, once land prices start to tank, I may try to buy this piece of land from the owner. Currently I am renting it. I signed a 3 month deal to get a good discounted rate. I have no idea what I am going to do regarding the land. I know its stupid to value roadway access in a teleport point to point world but this just looks so nice.

Ok Numbers:

My Product line for this Business is Textures. I have a product line of 51 packs of textures. I grew this product line in spurts. I have spent a literal ton in upload fee's. I still have about 25 packs to release.

SLX (My BEST Source of Sales)
40 Sales - 14.341 NET Sales - Between 30 and 80 Views A Day

SLB:
14 Sales - 8,180 Net Sales

In Store:
8 Sales - 3,000 Net Sales - 21 Classifieds Clicks

Metaverse Mart:
0 Sales

Total Sales 25,521$

This has been an expensive month for expenses as I had the outlay of rent to pay up front, the vendor systems (Apez which I upgraded from free to pay), the building, the advertising and corporate branding. I have also bought a good deal of toys that I may not use now but will use later like the individual texture vendor more on that later. I have also used the cash to fund some scripting projects that I am having other people build to spec that I will sell. Core expenses where about 50% with the other 50% being discretionary. Core expenses are lower than 10% of income in normal operation.

Upgrade Path:
Well its obvious that I am coming close to outgrowing a 512, I wish I knew at the start of the month what I know now. To properly display and handle the vendors as I want them I need about 400 Prims just for the vendor structure. This is mostly due to needing about 10 "Individual Texture Vendors" as cramming 5,000 textures into one vendor for browsing 16 at a time is a nightmare for the user to search through. These units are 23 prims each. Rent on a 4k plot should run about 1600 but I am loath to move the store even though I could do it. I LOVE THIS PLOT. Then again I could use it for other things, I also don't want to mess up my traffic... Then again better to do it now than later. I will most like wait until I release all the packs that I have geared up to release and then consider moving. I also think that moving now would be premature. With the obvious land crash on the horizon it may be best to wait, plus I have some things I can do in the mean time.

Expansion:
I do not feel that expanding to multiple stores or purchasing "vendor" space at other locations would assist this project any. I do feel that expanding to SLQuery and SL411 and SLTree are good advertisement options. I will also continue to tweak my classified keywords and do product release posts on the main forum and the forum at SLX.

Diversification:
Chao Mu Textures is an entity under the cooperate umbrella "Tao Heavy Industries" I will also operate a few other brands. I will be releasing the gadgets this month (march) as well as a line of t-shirts that I will be selling out of purchased vendor space. There is a further diversification strategy but that is not public knowledge.

Business Value: I would put business value at 100k. I am not looking to sell.

I welcome comments, questions, suggestions, idea's and criticisms

For the record Chao Mu is pronounced
COW MOO and is a take off of the joke "Mu Said The Chao"

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