I've never stocked food and drinks but change would probably be good. It's new and exciting.

If your getting a lot of business now, I say dont switch.

I probably would not switch if you are concerned about profits. At least, when I stocked wearables as a standalone shop, I made loads (but I did almost 100% restocking from the Neopian shops instead of SSW restocking, so my profits were greater and I could SSW price for profit easily) -- I gave up wearables because I was sick of it and I moved to plushies & toys, then to food & drinks - I was food/drinks and on multiple 4mil ads and still did not make as much as I was making with wearables & NO ads. I did have a lot of fun stocking food/drinks (which included bakery & sweets), but profit-wise it was a bad move for me. Now I'm just trying to get back IN to wearables, which is a tough category for malls because it's never open! And I don't want to leave my mall.

I've always been an advocate of stocking what you love. So if you're getting bored with wearables/grooming, I'd say go for it and switch. Whether or not you switch to food is another issue. I've been selling food for about a year now and I love it. I added bakery/sweets to my shop earlier this year. I don't remember exactly when. There's so many interesting food items and I like looking for new things to add to my shop. Here's the downside of food/drinks. The profit margin isn't very high. I make about 100,000 nps a day, give or take. I don't use the portal because I have a Mac. :( But I do make sure to get at least a 25% profit on each item. I buy my items from the Neopian shops so my profits range from 25% to 500% for items. You can really do well in this category if you stock higher-priced items, 5k and above. I've been able to snag some unbuyables from shops. I also stock about 100 different items for under 1,000 nps that I consider "basics," that people would buy a lot. These I make sure to price well on the shop wiz. I never price lowest on the wiz, though. I go about 150 nps higher than lowest so that I still get exposure but my items don't sell out super fast. A lot of my basics that don't even show up on the shop wiz end up selling really well, too. It's a lot of experimentation with pricing and items to find what works for you, but there are so many food and drinks that the possibilities are endless. There's still many items I want to add to my shop one day. I'm concentrating on saving for Main Market right now. But as soon as I have all that space, I'd love to fill it with more yummy items. Now hits: My shop is currently getting about 100 hits a day. Back in April I averaged 400 hits a day, but I think summer ending had a lot to do with the drastic shift in my hits. I'm just concentrating on stocking my shop, so perhaps with some advertising it could be higher. I used to do 4 million NB ads. I loved the exposure but the hits I got from the ads weren't enough to justify the cost. I am just an occasional filler person for ads right now. I used to post on the Shop Ads board every day and that would get me maybe 20 hits. I don't have the energy to do that right now. Restocking isn't too much of a chore for me because I like to buy things in bulk and just restock from my SDB as they sell out. For higher priced items, I just restock from the shop wiz if I can make enough of a profit. But back to my first point--If you think you'll have fun stocking food, give it a try. Good luck with whatever you decide.

I just posted this on another thread: **Statistics - Overview - 22/10/2009 to 25/11/2009 (35 Days) 1,978 items have sold for a total of 3,213,243 NP You have spent 1,552,244 NP This is a profit of 1,660,999 NP (107.01%) That's for food/drinks with about 30% SSW priced items. In other words, about 600 of those were SSW priced items. ~ Mimi ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ~ temps_bons graphics ~ http://www.neopets.com/~Mimi_Miaulement

Nice job, Mimi!

Mimi, that's amazing! But yes, on topic, definitely stock what you love. I stock bakery/sweets, and I couldn't imagine stocking anything else. I would get bored and not want to rs if i was stocking something I had no interest in. If you do things the right way you can make a lot of profit. At least give it a go, that way you won't sit there wondering 'what if' all the time. :) =--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--= I am the Cupcake Queen! http://www.neopets.com/browseshop.phtml?owner=sarahhsixx