Moving In: Best Laid Plans

The first iteration of our lovely seating ares

It's the end of October, and we've been without a physical location since May. To me, this was the worst-case scenario. Maybe it wasn't, but it didn't seem feasible for a shop that relied so much on the in-person experience to have operations solely operate online, and it wasn't. Our website survives, it chugs along, but it's nowhere near a shadow of what it once was, and I haven't been giving nearly as much effort as I was when there was a place to go to.

We have a lease now, and we'll be there for the next 10 years (more on that later). Last week, the concern was if we would be getting into the space at all, now it's trying to beat the clock to be open before the holiday season begins. The list of things to do decreases, increases twofold, and the cycle repeats.

The space needed to be painted, and once that's finished we can get the furniture and inventory in. Yesterday I moved in our cash wrap, which used to be a home bar. I found it on Facebook Marketplace like I do most of our furniture, and went to go pick it up. It's solid wood, L shaped- gigantic, and absolutely not fitting through the door, nevertheless into a vehicle. Taking it apart wasn't nearly as difficult as figuring out how to take it apart. In the end, it took about 4 hours and 3 trips to take the top off, split the L into it's two sections, and get it into the shop, where it sits very happy in its new home. It took longer and was more strenuous that I was imagining, but it's perfect. 

 

The old paint job was... definitely something.

Technically this is my second time setting up this store, and I can't tell if it's easier or not. The main difference is I'm no longer shocked when something takes longer or is more complicated than I'm anticipating. Then again, since our space isn't a popup and wasn't built-out to be used for retail, we have to do a lot more from the ground up.

Our last space was completely lined with floor to ceiling shelves. This time, our space is entirely empty, and is colorblocked like printer cartridges. The cashwrap we had was built-in, spacious, with cabinets in the back and even had cubbies on the front people could shop from. All in all, it's going to take more time to get to where we were, but we also have a lot longer to do it.

That being said, every step we take in this process is five steps, at least. We (usually me) get things wrong, we do things over, we have to learn xyz from scratch, then there's the time and physical effort of moving, corresponding, planning, etc.

It's like being the new girl at work every day. I have no idea what's going on, everything is taking longer than it should, and I'm acutely aware of it but unable to do anything about it.

Other than paint, inventory, and furniture, we need window decals as well as a blade and fabric signs. Being on a corner gives us an incredible amount of window space, but it also means we'll need double the amount of signage. I'm not entirely sure how much this all costs, but it can't be cheap. Ah, the costs of doing business.

Much like our last shop, we're going for a simplistic green border & logo, but we now have 10 windows instead of 2

Anyway, for better or for worse, opening the shop this time around has really leveled my expectations. When we opened our Annapolis pop-up, I wanted everything to be perfect for the first day. The shelves had to be completely filled, we were going to be incredibly busy because people wanted to see the new store, and other grandiose expectations.

We opened on a frigid day in March, with exactly 1 transaction.

This time, I'm waiting on paint, furniture, and approval from the county. Once we have, that the door is opening. Anything 'grand' can happen later. It's not to deflate the importance of a first day, but instead of burning out chasing complete perfection, we can make changes slowly over time, much like you'd do with a home.

I'm learning that this business is one where you have to look ahead, but not be attached to any specific plan. Going into the Annapolis location, it seemed very important to do things the way I thought other people had done them, no matter how much it didn’t fit my situation and how much stress it caused trying to make a circle look square.

At this point, being so close to the holidays, it’s important to me that we open as soon as possible. I want to be able to help wrap gifts and tips the season and offer hot apple cider and have a cute late night shopping event.