![]() Sometimes though, there’s conflict- both with other vendors and even owners, who (in their minds) are competing for sales. The benefit is you don’t have to do anything but keep your product in-stock and collect your profit at the end of the month. They manage the staffing and the customer service- usually a win/win situation. For those who aren’t familiar with the “booth” concept, you basically pay rent for your space (between $1 and $4 per square foot) and then you give a percentage of your sales (7%-15% plus credit card fees) to the owners each month. The mix of other vendors (about 70) was seemingly in-line with our branding strategy, while our style complemented, without over saturating the store with identical product mixes. What we found was a gem of a boutique called Status Home Design, right in our home town. The owner Leta and her team, were exactly what we wanted. We don’t sell antiques, we won’t get into pricing battles with mom & pop hobbyists, and while our intentions are to play nice in this world of “booths” and 10’ x 10’ cubicle-like spaces crammed into a warehouse, not just any location would do. Short-term profit at the expense of long-term branding strategy is not a good investment and we try very hard to avoid those expenditures. ![]() From day one we have stood on the belief that if something doesn’t fit our BRAND, we don’t do it. Several options existed and Rhonda and I dug into the who’s, what’s, and where’s of these mostly “Antique Malls” to see if we could find one that fit our brand. One thing that you will hear us preach is BRAND. The website would have to wait- we needed day to day cash-flow and as the months since Rhonda’s retirement quickly approached a year, it was clear our current direction would have us sleeping under a bridge by Summer. We weren’t anywhere near ready to open our own store and the only festivals and pop-up-shop opportunities were at least 5-hours away in Florida.įLIPPING OUR STATUS-QUO ON ITS HEAD- What we needed was a permanent pop-up-shop, but what we didn’t need was all of the things that go with a permanent location, ie lease payments, payroll expense, and all of the “things” that go with opening a full-fledged store. We just gave it a really hip and cool term, BOOT-STRAPPING, which made us feel neither hip nor cool…just broke. I’d be lying if I told you we weren’t robbing Peter to pay Paul. To be fair, this was more instinct than deep, meaningful introspective, and after all…there were bills to pay both at home and in support of our fledgling company. ![]() The start of 2019 pivoted from our e-Commerce focus to look at figuring out how to have our own physical space that didn’t involve roving from town to town like a gypsy. “Heading into the New Year, our primary focus would be dissecting the ecommerce piece of our business and developing a plan to not only drive more people to our site, but to actual get them to spend some money.”Ĭue up the sound of screeching brakes and visualize the 180-degree rotation of our entire thought process. If you recall our last blog-post, A True Appreciation For Shrimp & Grits …Part 3, our final words of wisdom in 2018 looked like this: Either way, changes are coming and while not always clearly good or bad, your adjustments can dictate success (however you define that). Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher, is often attributed with saying “ change is the only constant in life”- or if you prefer the David Bowie version, “time may change me, but I can’t trace time”. Thank you for joining us for this crazy ride…ĬHA-CHA-CHA-CHANGES…– There is a recurring theme within the lives of those that start and run a business, whether service or product based, and that is changes in direction are constant. You are not alone! In this update, I get y’all caught up to June of this year and how the first half of the year put us on our back-side and all of the things that we didn’t see coming. The entire reason we wanted to share some of the recent past is to give you insight into what a train-wreck our lives can be, just like most people- especially those that venture into their own business. I know, I know- it’s been a month since the last post and for that I apologize…again.
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