Well we finished up 2008 with mixed results and have begun the new year with only more uncertainty.

Our operations have now entered into their 5th year and we continue to serve up an even greater number of orders to many a happy customer but internally, we've been struggling with too many problems for far too long now.

From our cashflow, to our phone and voicemail system, to our website software, there's just no shortage of issues.  And our upper management is equally culpable. Our founding chairman and majority shareholder holds 84% of the company's shares but does 0% of the work and its been that way for years now.  It would have been one thing if we were truly profitable and he'd stepped out of his operational involvement but its another to try and take quarterly dividends when you're still struggling with debt, cashflow and the like.

Now, going into our 5th year as I mentioned above, we're still struggling with debt and cashflow.  We had our most impressive order a few weeks back for nearly 2,000 yards of velvet but we lost the customer and order cause we don't have the cash on hand to purchase that large a quantity of fabric on the spot. 

Then just a week or so ago, things got really, really tough financially when the straw that broke the camel's back, finally broke, incurring hundreds of dollars in overdraft fees and cutting the salaries for me and Josh (the other two owners) in half.  They're not very impressive to begin with and barely cover our expenses;  in my case, far from cover my expenses.

Now today we're supposed to implement an even more drastic cutback of our remaining two employees hours and I'm supposed to take on all customer calls 3,000 miles from our warehouse, here in PA. 

To my horror, when calling in to change the ringdown schedule so I can direct customer calls to my phone, I discover that we still have no voicemail greeting and that any inbound call that comes in after another call in progress, will only reach a busy signal.  No voicemail greeting takes the call. Instead, that caller must keep calling back until they reach us.  And all because we had to cut costs and move to a cheaper phone service.  TollFreeMAX is our provider, look 'em up sometime and you'll see how dreadful their service, user interface and such really are.  I've fought the entire length of service with them to work things out, but to no avail.

I'm so fed up with trying to make this company work. It's so frustrating to have such great products and great customers but not have the resources necessary to deliver the services, features, and support that we should be.