How has the economy affected me and BSP?
On a personal level….Never mind, I don’t want to discuss it. I know the economy is a great big downer so I don’t open my statements to find out how just how much I am down. I have made a decision that the best policy is to wait a year and hope it recovers.
On the other hand, our BSP Rewards business is doing all right, and getting better.
We are in the right place at the right time during a bad time. What do I mean by that?
BSP is sort of in the retail business. We build private branded web malls for all types of companies, groups, debit card issuers and non-profits…and the retail industry is getting pounded – BUT the downturns are in the brick and mortar sector and not relative to internet e-commerce. In fact internet sales are increasing, which is a wonderful thing, as we have the “Largest Web Mall in the Galaxy”.
The year is proving to be quite interesting due to the changes is our merchant mix, new clients and enhanced profit margins. At the beginning of the year we dropped our largest merchant from the program. Although they created a great amount of transaction business for us (approximately $3 million), the margin was small and the cost associated with customization for them proved not to be economically beneficial to the company. We felt we could replace that transaction volume and do so at higher margins - and we did.
During Q3 we increase the number of merchants in our mall to 764 – a gain of 28. We increase the number of mall members from 555,104 to 572,651 and maintained our year to date transaction volume at increased gross margins – even without the big merchant.
For the third quarter ended September 30, 2008, gross revenues increased 64% to $573,203 compared to $350,565 for the third quarter ended September 30, 2007 and the first nine months of 2008 resulted in a gross revenue increase of 138% to $1,767,689 compared to $742,482 in the same period of 2007.
Comparing the 2007 and 2008 nine month, after adjusting for the dropped client, the figures are even more impressive.
We recently announced additional branded web malls that are coming on board (WXEL Public Radio and Television) and Information Strategies (a large newsletter publisher) and we hope to feel a little of the impact from them starting in December. We are getting close to finalizing some significant new web malls for some major companies…. Please hope, along with me, that we can sign them.
I will keep you posted. Until later…
