Hurray! Thanks and I appreciate the kind comments.
@Draugluin - I stay in business through people like yourselves! My overheads aren't that high at the moment as we have a good deal on storage and a spare room at home was converted to a full blown studio for the purposes of acting as our registered office and painting studio, U.K Tax at 20% is my biggest thorn but being V.A.T registered offsets a whole lot of that making it viable where it otherwise wouldn't be.
Sure, sometimes I only make £1-£2 profit an item on some of the older lines, but I'd rather make that then make NO money and my customers go to totalwargamer (who I REALLY don't know how they stay in business) and wayland games, so I NEED to be competitive. Most lines make me 10-15% profit so yes, GW margins are quite high indeed! However I believe GW makes most of it's money through people like myself, just today I sent them just shy of a thousand pounds for stock and thats on a quiet month.
It is a pain for things like paints and glue as they come in multipacks and one might not be so sure that he'll sell 6 lots of XV-88 paint, but you get them in stock as convenience for the customer and the stock is an investment, part of the business just the same as the money in the bank account is.
The biggest profit is the painting service, purely as the only real cost is time and manual labor, and with my partner recovering from a disability (one that seems to make her paint amazingly it seems -_- so unfair) its a real great feeling to see her putting that in and getting money back which in turn puts food on the table.
I do pay for a good any other things of course, postage can be a sting at times but current deals are keeping it low and occasionally (such as when the Hobbit was released) I contract in some help for a few weeks, that again is an outgoing but I am a clever guy and will never see my business go into the red.
I feel at this point that I've said too much already, but there you have it all. A great insight into my business and if needed, further proof I am a genuine hobbyist like yourself with a love of all things tabletop who just decided to make a living out of it.
In a final piece of other news, I'll be announcing an awesome prize draw raffle tomorrow, £1 a ticket for a selection of goodies as pictured on our facebook page. Something I've not seen done before and mostly just for the fun of it!
EDIT: I am glad to see Dead Marshes is finally booked up until 2014, it means I can breathe a sigh of relief and not feel bad about taking new bookings now as we're free after the end of March 2013. Although, he is I think my biggest customer so if you're reading this DMS, look out for freebies in your order
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"Leave Sauron to me."
Yes I think small businesses are much more geniune, as we have time to interact with customers and get excited about the latest releases while larger companies have to run around all day just to keep it from going wrong, too many plates to spin. I think with my setup here I am onto a winner 
