The Birth of Nemo: Early October Update

Not too long ago, I mentioned that I did not believe we had seen the worst of financial failures yet. The last couple of weeks have confirmed what I thought… Our whole economic system is on the brink of failure, and many foreign banks have invested heavily in US securities, backed by failing mortgages, resulting in a global economic issue. How will all of this pan out? Who really knows at this point? Our dysfunctional government is acting like they are going to do something about it, but it failed in its basic form as a rescue plan during the vote in the House. It didn’t pass the Senate vote until hundreds of millions of dollars in special interest pet projects were added. If a representative of our government, elected by the people, refuses to do what needs to be done unless they can get millions of dollars in fraudulent spending added for their state or their district, then how can any of us have faith in our government? The founding fathers believed that ‘the people’ need to run the country, and that the federal government was a necessary evil for basic services such as national security. Our government is so bloated and corrupt; many great men in our nation’s history would roll over in their graves if they knew what has become of us.

OK, enough ranting…

How does all of this impact Nemo’s Coffee?
We have not had any sales growth for quite awhile. When the worst of the financial crisis news hit about ten days ago or so, we had some of our worst sales days in a long time. It was quite discouraging. However, sales have rebounded this week and are back to where they have been averaging for the last several months. The dire situational news really scared people for a few days there… I still think things are going to get worse, but for now, people have gotten over the shell shock of last week’s doom and gloom announcements and have gone back to their normal spending habits.
There is a ballot initiative on the November ballot for Colorado Springs to raise the sales tax by another 1%. That doesn't sound like much, but that would raise our sales tax rate to 8.4% overall. The county is talking about having a $40,000,000 budget deficit without this increase in tax revenue. I am going to vote no. If they can't run the county on 7.4%, then they need to fire some people and go back to the drawing board. We don't need our prices to go up in our shop, and have the increase go to the county. Our customers do not want to pay more.

We have approved our new lighted sign, and it will go into production soon. It should be installed sometime in November. All the other businesses in the center already have their sign, but we had a prolonged ‘dialogue’ with the ownership over costs of the sign, and who was to pay for it. We lost, but the ownership is going to pay for half.

The construction at the center is still progressing. Intellitec’s new building is up and boxed in. They have nearly completed the outdoor café by our storefront. The wall is complete, the patio slab is poured, and all it needs is outdoor furniture and landscaping in the planters. They are now working on the parking lot, to reconfigure the parking scheme, add landscaping, and new blacktop.

I have been averaging about $1350 per month in photography and video projects on the side, which is helping since we are operating at a slight loss. The added income will cover our cost of the new sign as well. I just signed a contract this week with a local company that wants to use my photography for their website and marketing materials. I am charging them an annual flat rate, and it works out well for me and for them…

I had a meeting and signed a contract with an accountant earlier this week. I have learned the basics for payroll, sales tax withholding and payments, unemployment withholding and payments, etc… However, there are accounting responsibilities that need to be done, and will help us more accurately determine our profit/loss status. Our accountant also has a Masters in business, and has some marketing ideas for us. We can use the help, since we are just a couple of amateur hacks!

Tracy has more catering events scheduled for next week. One is at a medical facility on Printers Parkway, which is one of the areas in the block south of us that we want to break into. The other event is at Memorial Hospital, which is just a couple of blocks to the Northwest of us. The more we branch out to these large facilities, the better…

Here are a few recent photos… Click on any image to see a larger version.

We drove up into the mountains, to Cottonwood Lake outside of Buena Vista to take photos of the Aspens last weekend, but the weather conditions were poor. It was very overcast and windy, and not very good for the type of images I wanted to get. When we drove back down in elevation and were headed out of Buena Vista, the sun burst through the cloud cover and lit up this area along the Arkansas River. I stopped and set up my tripod and took a series of photos, bracketed from -4 stops to +3 stops (above and below an average exposure for the scene). I then used Photoshop, and a high dynamic range software called Photomatix to merge the seven exposures into one image, as you see here: