Hello people of the internet! Welcome to the final Weekly TES of 2023! Since it’s the last one, I thought I’d do a sort of “recap” type email and talk about what’s gone on with the business the past year. Ok, perhaps it’ll be a bit of a boring newsletter, but some of you might find it interesting.
I will say before I start, that a bunch of this will likely come across as me being negative, but I’m not moaning or anything like that. Just being factual and honest.
Weekly TES: End of the Year Recap
I don’t think anyone would be shocked if I said the business has had a pretty rough 2023. I know that’s a very accurate picture for many businesses across the UK - despite the fact we’re not technically in a recession. Yes, I call bullshit on that.
The reason I call bullshit on that is because energy companies and food companies still count towards the economic figures of the country. So say you had £200 spare every month in 2022, but now you need that £200 plus an extra £40 just to pay for food shopping and energy, that’s £240 being spent - which is an increase in spending - but it’s not going where it used to: leisure, hospitality, luxury etc. So in essence, with high inflation, it’s actually a little harder to have a recession.
That’s my boring two scents on recession figures.
Time for some numbers
I thought I’d throw some numbers at you from the past year just for shits and giggles.
First off, let’s go with orders.
In comparison to 2022, we’re down roughly 40% in terms of overall orders on the year. In 2022 we had 12341 orders, whilst this year it’s down to 7252 - which puts us almost on the same number as 2021. Obviously if 4000 of you reading this decide to go “Ha! You liar Ross, we all just ordered” then I’ll come back and say sorry for talking shit.
Essentially, it feels like we’ve lost a year’s worth of “growth.”
To be fair, 7252 still averages out as 19.8 orders per day, which still sounds a bit mental.
Oh, and in fairness, we did start on TikTok shop in April. I don’t know how many orders we’ve had on TikTok since we started, but TikTok has equated to around 10% of our total sales on the year.
As you might be able to guess though, almost everything in terms of numbers is down this year. From online store sessions, conversion rates, and of course, total sales. One thing that is actually up quite a bit is our returning customer rate. For 2023 it’s 50%. For 2022 it was 32%.
2023 in products…
Have you been sat there wondering what our best selling products were for 2023? Well it’s time to tell you!
To be fair, I’m not massively shocked. The thing we’ve sold the most of this year has been 4 hour tea lights, followed by liners.
The best selling Teddy Pot was actually the Mystery pot - no shock when people sometimes buy 10. But the best selling scent was… SNOW FAIRY! Shocker. But here’s the top ten selling scents:
Snow Fairy
Black Cherry
Starry Night
Baby Powder
Fresh Unstoppable
Alien
Bedtime Baby
Dettol
Fantasy
Hundred Acre Wood
I probably wouldn’t have guessed that list. I certainly wouldn’t have said Black Cherry as number two! Which makes it all the more annoying that we accidentally switched oil for it and the new one just wasn’t the same. We will be back to the old Black Cherry though!
As for brownies, our best selling one was Salted Caramel, which we sold 340 of. I’m not really shocked it was our best selling one since we made it most weeks. It’s like that with Snow Fairy. If a wax melt is available all year round it’s probably going to do better than something that’s only available for a short while - like Halloween scents.
Here’s some proper mental numbers…
Did you know that we have 480 people who have ordered 10 or more times since we started Teddy Eva Scents. I’m not sure if you’re able to see your order history or not, so you might not know how many you’re on, but there’s 480 of you out there.
That’s not the mental part.
The mental part is that those 480 people have equated for 9465 of our TOTAL orders since we started. We’ve had 31287 orders as of this writing. So 480 people - roughly 4.15% of the people who’ve ordered from us - have been 30% of ALL OUR ORDERS EVER.
Unlike previous years though, we’ve just REALLY struggled to be found by new people. It’s a similar story on socials too, and not just the website.
I don’t massively keep track of numbers when it comes to social media - I did it up until May because I did monthly recap newsletters. For the most, though, it’s irrelevant.
Back in the day it mattered more as social media companies would actually show you to your followers. So if they sent your content out to 15% of your followers and you went from 2000 to 20000 followers, you’d get seen by a lot more people every single time you posted.
These days, most of us consume content openly, meaning you see a LOT more stuff from people you don’t follow. TikTok and the whole “FYP” thing changed the game across the board. These days it’s all down to how good a piece of content is. Which isn’t always a bad thing to be fair.
But you can easily see accounts with 750,000+ followers get a few 1000 views on a TikTok video.
But, with that said, we haven’t grown much this past year.
We started 2023 with 88,000 on TikTok and finished the year on 97.8k. We actually hit 97k in May. So we’ve basically stayed flat since then. Same with every other social media platform other than Facebook - somehow we’ve gone from 4.4k to 7.5k. So there’s something 😂
Sometimes I take it to heart…
It’s hard with things like that as content is basically my main job. So if we don’t grow much then I kinda take that as me doing a shit job. Maybe I’ve run my course and people like me less - wouldn’t blame you, I’m a bellend. Or maybe I just suck at manipulating social media for attention. I don’t really do a lot of “controversial” stuff - which is almost always a foolproof way to grow.
I can’t be fucked to think of “hooks” to get people to watch. I don’t massively like attention grabbing tactics, and I want to stab someone through the ball sack when they say “here are three things about X, you won’t believe the last one.” I’ll literally skip as soon as I can. Fuck off and stop telling me to wait for the last point. It’s probably a shit point but you want the sodding watching time up.
Looking ahead at 2024 - signs of optimism
To be fair, I am a little bit optimistic about Teddy Eva Scents in 2024.
For a start, we have the whole “rebrand” thing that we’ve been working on. We’ve already rolled out our newly designed notebooks, plus we have the candle boxes - just not the new candles yet. We’re still waiting on room sprays, reed diffusers, candles, and 3 different sex toys - priorities like.
We’re also designing aroma oil bottles - but we might be a few months on those yet.
Then we have our social media assistant position. This is something I’m most looking forward to as I’ve basically done ALL of our content solo for the last four years.
As much as I love doing it, producing 2/3 videos DAILY plus editing, doing photos, stories, newsletters and everything else - it’s been draining at times, but I’m fortunate that I love it. I think it’s the fact that there’s everything else in the business that needs work on too; like accounts, ordering, admin stuff, and all that jazz.
So having someone to help out on the content side will be interesting. Hopefully it’ll go ok and it’ll take some of the mental strain off me. After all, what’s the point of having your own business if you can’t switch off a little more and enjoy time with the family.
It probably doesn’t help that I almost certainly have ADHD - not getting a diagnosis as I can’t be arsed. Rachel’s currently reading an ADHD parenting book - we suspect Archie might have inherited it from me - and she read one part that basically just sounded like it was written about me.
Squirming and fidgeting in their seats whenever they sit down.
Possessing lots of physical energy.
Running, standing up, walking, or climbing during inappropriate moments.
Being completely unable to play or engage in any activity quietly for more than a few minutes.
Interrupting others when they are talking.
Talking continuously on a topic that interests them without regard for the listener.
Blurting out answers or opinions impulsively before the question is even completed.
Being unable to wait their turn for something.
Always acting impulsively without thinking about the consequences.
Yep. Point by point describing me as a person. The last one is why Teddy Eva Scents started in fairness, ADHD does have its benefits. Sometimes I love having it.
You chuck 3 kids into the mix and I’m a psychiatric case waiting to happen.
I think it’s going to be a fun year!
Either way, I like to think that 2024 is going to be a good year! I bought that calendar and got fixated on it VERY quickly. Immediately, I was obsessed with putting as many cool things on there as I could. I managed to find some proper cheap weekend caravans with Park Dean for example. We had to rearrange Disney Paris to 2024, so we have that. We’ve had a couple of “Red Letter Day” type gift cards so Rachel and I are actually going to FLY A PLANE in 2024.
Rachel loves planes, but she’ll probably shit herself. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a Boeing 747, but still.
Other than that, I’m just going to continue to enjoy running Teddy Eva Scents.
I want to thank all of you for being here the past year, whether you’ve ordered with us or just followed along. Whether you’ve actively followed or silently gave us your attention. We appreciate all of you for making Teddy Eva Scents possible.
Thank you, and Happy Near Year!
Much love,
Ross & Rachel x
Happy New Year to you and your Family!
I’m not surprised Starry Night was in the top 10! It’s my favourite as reminds me of my Dad who passed away a few years ago to Mental Health.
I’ve just seen you have it in candle form as well as melt so as soon as I’m paid I’ll be placing an order for it!
Hope Business Booms in 2024 for you!