​Revenue 2M, no profit for owner

Hi – I’ve been running a business for 5 years. Our progression (revenue) has looked like 180k->400k->750k->1.1M -> looking like 1.8-2M this year.

I have nobody to talk to who has similar experiences to lean on for advice. The issues are that every time revenue increases, it seems like labor, insurance, expenses, etc creep up too. I mean, that’s expected -> but I still can’t quit my job and go full time into this because I would end up replacing Some of the manual labor component only to be able to pay myself, and would essentially not have enough time to do the Ecom / marketing / sales component which I think has got us here in the first place.

Why? Well, to increase revenue every year -> we add more SKUs. More SKUs = more inventory => more $ to buy inventory needed. More labor needed to package, ship, and take deliveries, build pallets, organize inventory etc…

I just purchased another industrial printer for 8k. I just installed two HVAC systems for 14k. I just bought 2 shipping containers for 4K. Another forklift for 15k. Etc..

We’re running out of room at our 10ksqft warehouse and have resorted to using shipping/ocean containers as additional storage outside.

I thought by now there would be diminishing requirements/ crossover for labor needs. I mean, it almost seems like it’s a direct 1:1 for new revenue -> more labor required. I’ve looked at automating the business with respect to packaging the products automatically, but those machines are 80-140k domestic, and that’s just for the packaging component only…

Additionally -> we need insurance and are in a high risk industry, so my insurance is 13k on 1.2M revenue. I can only imagine it being 20k next year…

You might say “why not raise prices” -> I’ve noticed a direct correlation to raising prices and seeing SKUs drop to 0 revenue overnight. We have competitors and they’re able to sustain at this pricepoint, in the same type of business model. The only thing I can potentially see as an issue is shipping costs are sometimes 30-50% total gross revenue… so maybe I could do some recon on our competitors and see if they get cheaper rates. But we have FedEx + UPS reps and are a little bit better than ShipStation rates for example -> which are pretty aggressive.

We have had companies cold outreach us for our services and one large F500 company invite us to their HQ to see how we could work together, asked about cash infusions / buyout -> but I don’t want to give up, and a buyout of a company doing 2M with minimal net profit is probably a shitty payout. Maybe I’m not seeing the forest for the trees and should just keep onward with this path.