Happy New Year To Our Followers
2025 was rather a roller coaster for Angus Oliver Sheepskins, we have the online business plus we have our gift shop and showroom located in Wabamun, Alberta.
We bought our commercial building in Wabamun two years ago, the community is well know for its huge lake, waterfowl, boats, and fishing, we didn't know anything else about the area and had no idea if we would see much foot traffic. As this location is only 40 minutes west of Edmonton, our strategy was to entice Edmontonians out of the big city to come for a great day out by the lake. This plan would entail a lot of social media posts, and ridiculous amounts of money spent on advertising.
There were days that we sold only one bar of fudge in the gift shop, and there were days that we sold lots of sheepskins or cowhide rugs. Spring and Summer months felt like we were going to die a slow death, surviving on sales from the gift shop, a mug here, a pair of socks there and of course fudge. Then Fall and winter arrived and we again could pay our bills.
Online we had further reach, about 92% of our customers were Canadian and 8% from the USA. The sky was the limit, the more we spent on advertising the more sales we got, the more customers we gained. Then the tariffs hit, no more sales to the USA. Canada Post also went on strike again which affected our rural customers the most.
By October I was worried, we had made zero profits yet and were almost maxed out on credit cards and our line of credits. We had been so busy building our gift shop into something that we thought was big enough to become a main attraction that we almost put ourselves out of business.
Our customers saved us in November and December, along with a hefty sum of $14,000 in advertising fee's for both months but we pulled through, paid off debt and learned a lot of lessons.
So for 2026 we will be doing things differently. Angus Oliver Sheepskins offers gorgeous sheepskin rugs, sheepskin cushions, and sheepskin items. That is our focus, no getting side tracked on gift shop items other than our best sellers.
We also cleared out one of our commercial bays and leased it out, it was lovely having the extra room but we became so worried about the business in early Fall that we decided we needed more help with income.
January 2026 we are currently expecting the delivery of 258 single sheepskins rugs, 44 double sheepskin rugs, and 80 sheepskin cushions. Customers have been asking us for sheepskin gloves that aren't pink 😍 so they will be arriving soon also.
Make sure that you subscribe to our emails from the website so that you get to be some of the first to hear about new sheepskins arriving.
We are your sheepskin rug experts!
