Can I save my failed gift basket business?

Hi everyone,my mother & I opened a gift basket business, primarily home & internet based last year. While we have had some sales, it has not been enough to keep us going.Most of our supplies expired and we are out of money to try to keep going. While we bought enough supplies to make a nice variety of baskets, we didnt go completely overboard...or so we thought. We thought we were doing everything right but I guess not.We have talked to other owners on forums like this one and it seemed as if we were doing the same things.We marketed the business in local newspapers, attended a tradeshow (home tradeshow...maybe not the best type to attend?), did a couple radio ads, handed out promotional pieces at major events and walks, donated to other events, did presentations at real estate office, etc.We have even priced our baskets below what most business are asking for so I cant see the price being the problem.We took out about a $10,000 loan and its all gone and we barely made 1/4 back.
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Sounds like you have a good general approach to business, but you're ignoring your market. Who buys your products? Where are they located? How can they find you? The problem with home based and web based is the trouble in being found, visibility is low for both, especially the web. If you want to sell using e-commerce try selling on ebay, it already has the traffic. Think about ebay as being a mall full of people, and your website is just a random place on a random street. Point is you have to advertise a lot more to get people to even see where you are, whereas through ebay you get the people just "walking by" as it were. The same goes for real world. Have you considered branching out of your home? How are people to find you there? Do most people feel comfortable just stopping in at someone's home to get a gift basket made, or do they feel more comfortable at a mall for instance? One great place for your product that'd probably be lower cost is a flea or farmer's market. People go there for handmade stuff, authentic stuff, which is what you have to offer, with the added bonus of it being customizable. So my advice is that if you're gonna go further, go all out. Branch out of your home and out of your website on the web. You can still maintain both. Get a stall at a flea or farmer's market, have a bunch of pre-made gift baskets and also supplies to make one up and offer easy customization. Then get an account on ebay and sell pre-made gift baskets there. So your business is fairly good, but your locations are wrong. You need the foot traffic, both real world, and online. Without that natural traffic you end up trying way too hard to bring them to you, rather than just letting them find you.
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