Store Rants

I feel like the biggest jackass.

Why?

Well, upon our arrival to this coast we met a nice young couple. They were super sweet and super fun and super perfect for us. We fell in love.

During the “Disneyland” period, or honeymoon phase, we decided to open an online business with them. That would be FANTASTIC! Yay, super high five. Through all of the cautionary tales of friendships and relationships gone bad due to business, we promised we would keep the business and friendship completely separate! So easy to vomit out such a sentiment so easily.

February 2009- Set up business ideas. They have the idea, we have the website building skills. My dh starts building a website using their art.

April 2009 – Hold the phone, they want a completely different order page on the website (d’oh), going to set us back a few months.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch… the missus of said couple starts getting frantic and calling me weekly, if not tri-weekly… she recently got laid off (her hubby laid off last fall) and they are very very concerned that the website isn’t up! Why aren’t we working faster, what’s the hold up… “we are TRAPPED!” She says as she bursts into tears over our ladies-who-lunch caesar salads. “Doesn’t your husband know that he’s doing all the hard work NOW, but when we get the website, we’ll be pounding the pavement and our little fingers will be bleeding with all the phone calls and emails we’ll be sending!” She tells me with intensity… I’m telling you Meryl Streep would have been proud! I feel their worry and run back to my husband… “work faster!!! I don’t care about your 40-50 hour a week JOB, THEY need you to step it up a notch!!!” I continue to elbow him as she noodles me (I find that funny). He’s starting to resent me and her… immensely.

August 2009 – DH and I are in the process of moving, but we hand them a website… which took him 200+ hours start to finish. Over the course of the month, we work on adding art and other assorted items.

September 2009 – Google adwords are put into place. Our friends announce that they may be moving 4 hours north. They’re busy working out the details. Not much being done on the business, we cut them a break.

Early October 2009 – Google adwords need tweaking, but not much is happening over on their end. We call a meeting… once again, she is frantic “We need a blog! OMG, we need to have a blog or we’ll be homeless!!!!” Because see, they are both still unemployed and they are hinging their lives on this business. My dh takes a few hours and sets up a blog.

November 2009 – We don’t hear from them for a few weeks. No blog posts on their end… We give them the benefit of the doubt. DH and I add a few blog posts to the blog.

Early December 2009 – Still nothing. We haven’t heard from them, but according to facebook they are doing a lot of traveling, she is selling a bunch of stuff on ebay, they’re participating in craft shows and they love to go to thrift stores.

Late December 2009 – We announce that we might want out of the business if they aren’t into it because clearly, they aren’t doing much. We give them an “out” to dissolve the business. They maintain that they are involved, just distracted… and we hug and make up and get pumped up for 2010.

End of December 2009 – Meeting to discuss their involvement with a search engine optimization meetup.com group. The leader of the group gave them great ideas on how to get our rankings up in google. My husband winces at all of the suggestions because they all suck, in his opinion (although, he has been known to be an internet elitist, but I don’t blame him). He’s been doing this for 10 years, and the suggestions given were… how would you say… very elementary. Instead of discussing it like 50/50 partners and having a vote, she insists that it should be done because “We need to throw shit on the wall to see if it sticks… if you cared about the business, you would just do it”. Umm… yes, and this would make the website look like shit, too. So, nerves are on edge, tension is high. Meanwhile, she’s calling my husband “their programmer”, instead of “our partner” to everyone. Another clue that we were low on their totem pole.

Early January 2010 – Another meeting after a search engine optimization meetup.com meeting, which we are never invited to. They come over for dinner and explain to my husband that we need to make all these changes to the order form because the fellow at the SEO meetup said that we needed to move it up 10 pixels, or whatever. (Oh, and at this meeting, they see our November blog posts at our house… “oh, you blogged!” This was another indicator that… wow, they weren’t even looking at their own website that they want to make dozens of changes to). So, my husband agrees, and we start setting up the changes. Husband from team B is emailing us with the art, but only after my husband had to nudge him over the course of 3 days. At this point, my husband had just about had enough and announced to me that he wanted to cut the cord.

Middle of January 2010 – So… here we are… taking 3 hour walks to discuss if we want to stay with the business or not. My husband is done done done. Not getting the art back from husband B, after all the drama, was enough to put him over the edge. So, we send them an email saying we want out… dissolve or buy us out.

This is when it got ugly. It usually does when you corner a sleeping bear and wake him up to tell him that he is a lazy bum. I guess the bear wouldn’t have to be sleeping… whatever, my metaphor holds no water. Long story short, I was the ambassador for our team, I went over to their place to smooth things over because I still liked them, but didn’t want to work with them. After 70 minutes of grumpy bear talk, as I sat their crying like a baby from frustration, I realized husband B was no longer going to be my business partner… or friend. I was on the fence about being friends with the wife because she sat there as he threw insults and mud at me. She claims I was being too sensitive. I’m not sure about that. Oh, but she did bring me kleenex and a glass of water as I was crying, so she gets a gold star for that.

It still isn’t clear if they were both lazy, if he lied to her about all the work he should have been doing or if they were completely misguided… but… after we did our part and delivered a website, they did not do their part. They had a bucket load of excuses, but… they claimed they called 30 people, didn’t visit one client and they sent about 20 emails. Over the course of 5 months. Oh, and they went to three meetups to discover changes needed to be made to the website… aka, work for my husband to do. My husband gave up his nights and weekends… they gave up nothing. Oh, and they are still unemployed.

Bitter? Yes. I trusted them. Immensely. BUT, I learned a lesson. I urge you to think long and hard before you go into business with anyone, it can get ugly.

The resolution? Instead of getting 50% of the business, or 10% of the business… (back and forth email bickering was getting old) we ended up handing them the website along with a 30 page list of how to migrate it (It had been hosted for free on my husband’s server for the last year). So, in the end… they got a free website along with clear instructions on how to run it… we ended up with nothing (a little debt, some worthless business cards) but we learned a valuable lesson.

My husband is back to his ol’ self and I’m SO happy to have him back with less stress in his life. He has deleted their info from his life, I’m still working on pulling that plug, but… in this situation, I don’t know if I can separate business and friendship… as we promised we would a year ago. It’s really sad.

Do not form a business with new friends (or friends you don’t know well… hell, just don’t form a business with anyone, really), HAVE A BUSINESS PLAN that is bulletproof, if you see signs of waning excitement… pull out and above all… keep your emotions out of it. (Again, a wonderous opinion from the hypocrite here).

I was at the nail place yesterday getting my toes done, and the lady who was working on said toes is the new owner. She is young, in her late 20′s, and has been running the store, alone, with her husband since last June. As the massage chair worked magic on my lower back, she went off on her own rant.

She declared that all of her customers were rude. Especially the ladies from New York. That they snap at her when she’s only trying to be nice and say nasty things to her. “It ruined my day and I had nightmares all night… why are they so mean?” She was whimpering a little bit as she said this to me.

My nail lady works 7 days a week. She has 2 young children and a lazy husband who sleeps on the tweezing table as she works the front. She’s coming to the end of her rope.

My advice to her? Leave for 2 weeks. Let hubby deal with the madness, drop the kids off with a sitter… take off and sleep for 2 weeks solid. Upon her return, see if she still had the entrepreneurial spirit. Who cares if they lose business. She is losing her mind and it’s apparent to all that see her and the multiple bags under her eyes. I saw something similar to this while in CA. Owner dropped his wife off at their juice/coffee bar at 6 am… he did godknowswhat, but his ass wasn’t at the store, while she made smoothies until 9pm. SEVEN days a week. AND she had a 2 year old at home that she barely spent time with. (Ladies, this is the definition of a prick/douche… take note). Smoothie place went down in flames… huh… I wonder why?

My 2nd piece of advice? DO NOT admit to your customers that you are the owner.

I used to take pride in the fact that my store was mine… “Why yes, yes… this magnificent palace is mine… BEHOLD the perfect that is my store!” Sometimes, I would gush on and on… then one day a lady marched in with a problem. A problem I couldn’t solve, even if I wanted to (She was koo-koo)… she looked at me cross eyed and moaned “BUT YOU are the OWNER!”

crapshitf*ck.

This became more and more common as queen put-foot-in-mouth here shouted from the hills that I owned a store. Customers didn’t want to deal with my helper, they wanted to deal with her royal highness. I started resenting it daily.

So, you young spring chickens wanting a brick and mortar… remember this… SHUT UP.

Oh, and don’t take things personally, it will eat you up inside. (Said like a true hypocrite).

that is all.

Another one bites the dust. Kind of.

Department 56 has been around a long time. They were a major staple for many gift stores. They have decided to cut their lines back to Christmas only. Showrooms will possibly close, jobs will be lost. Halloween is no more. Dang it, I was going to order from them next year!!

Eden Prairie, MN — Giftware vendor Lenox Group Inc. plans to scale-down its Department 56 wholesale business, according to a recent SEC filing. The plan involves discontinuing the Everyday, Halloween and Forchino collectible product lines and most of the company’s basic Christmas lines.
You can see the full article at giftsanddec.com

I’ve also received word from many of my account representatives that vendors are closing their showrooms at the Los Angeles mart, lines are being drastically scaled back and some vendors closed their doors completely. Many of my reps no longer have jobs.

I owned and operated a little boutique shop. I’m finding that many of them are closing due to overhead costs and lack of sales. Some have them have gone online. But the competition is fierce.

From my travels, I’m noticing that the gift industry is moving more towards the crafting industry. People are spending their money on craft kits, supplies and ways to personalize gifts. When you can’t spend a lot of money on a gift, you want to make it more special, personal and one-of-a-kind… or you make it yourself.

I wonder how the collectibles market will fare? Are people still adding to their collections, or is it a thing of the past?

That cute little store that you go to that’s overpriced and you visit to “get ideas”, they are either going to have to get really creative, competitive, they’ll close or they’re doing it for a hobby and profit doesn’t matter. (The profit doesn’t matter thing… it’s common!)

So, if you are thinking of opening a store right now, you have a lot to think about.

Hello there.

I’m sure there are many of you out there who used to “play shop” when you were young.

Fun little plastic items, a shopping cart and fake little bits of currency… and maybe even a cash register with a bell!

I played shop a lot. I loved it. I made it my dream to own a store.

Then I got one.

Oh boy.

It’s not what it’s cracked up to be.

This blog will explore my private thoughts while running a store. It was a great store. It’s closed now, so I feel the need to share with you every last detail.

From vendors to customers to finances to slowly going mad… you’ll hear it all!

Please come back and tell your friends. I would also love to hear about your experiences. Please leave lots of comments.

p.s… if you think you know who I am or you actually do know me personally, please do not reveal my identity. I want to keep it secret until I get that big book deal That way, I can dish it out without any remorse. *hehe*

This blog will mix my old journals, a current journal, news stories and other various rants and raves.