Store Rants

“imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”…

Sure.

When I opened my store, there were a few people who were miffed at me.

Two of my old bosses, for starters. They owned gift shops and I worked for them. One for 5 years, one for one year. I learned a few things about running a retail store from them. Namely… balloons are a must on open house days and remove the “Made in China” stickers, if you can.

I also learned a whole lot about what not to do. But 90% of it… I learned on my own through lots of (fun) blood, sweat and tears. (Have I mentioned that owning and running your own cutesy store is HARD???)

I guess I’m very grateful for these two individuals when it comes to how I ran my store. Perhaps I didn’t thank them enough because both of them never stepped foot in my store and when I saw them, they were rude to me. Years of service to them, I succeed out on my own… they stop talking to me. Nice! (Oh, and another thing… I find that this industry is a tad cut-throat and nobody wants to share secrets).

I’m getting to the reason for this post in a minute, I swear.

I’ve had several, if not dozens, of the items I’ve created and sold copied. Blatantly. By people I like, too. I was okay with it.

One woman purchased some of my handmade silver charms (cost me $1200 to make… lost wax casting with a fimo original etc etc) and had them made in CHINA. That stung.

One lady took my LOGO, erased my business name and added her name and marketed it as her own design.

I got over it.

Okay… so the fact that my friend who helped me at the store occasionally is opening her own store in a month… I’m angry, or jealous… or ????

She learned about all my vendors, where to get the best merchandise, where I got my insurance…. almost a decade of research on my part… she gets to benefit from for free. I kind of wish I wouldn’t have included her on so many decisions.

There are other details I won’t go into, but… I feel like an immature baby about this. Every time I get another email asking about my trade secrets, I want to scream.

This entire rant makes me look like an a-hole… lol.

She did send me a lovely note saying that my store gave her purpose and was the only thing that made her happy in a dark part of her life. It made me cry. So, I guess I get it. But… I’m still grumpy about it.

Maybe this is why I’m crazy… once, my Mom accused me that I should give her all the credit for all of my past, current or future successes because I got the talent from her… gene-speaking. I wonder if they could graph out my DNA and I could give her and my father each a percentage based on my income for the year?

Pffft.

Polymer Clay… an epic retrospective journey…

It’s 1993… I’m enjoying a good bottle of strawberry kiwi Snapple and listening to the Red Hot Chili Peppers or Pearl Jam… possibly wearing a flannel… you probably were, too.

I’m fiddling with Fimo, a polymer clay that you can mold and bake. At the time, it was being made into little plain shapes or you could mold several colors together to make “canes”. I tried both. (Please note, all the following images are NOT things I made… all of my creations are looong gone)

The first thing I made… cliche little red and white polka dot mushroom necklaces. My friends think it’s pretty neat. So, I buy a book on the world of Fimo to dive in deeper.
	Two blocks of color turn into several dozen… had to have every color.
Normally with Fimo, you take individual blocks of color and put them together to make large “canes” of one design that you slice. One cane could take you hours and hours to WEEKS of work to make. You then had that one design to work with until you ran out of that cane. So, you would make as many canes as you could and have a library of images to “slice” from.
	You can make simple mosaic pattern canes…

Or get into some really ornate canes… like this dragon here…

So, I’m deeply obsessed with Fimo at this point in 1993-1995. I’m making Fimo canes and slicing them and sticking slices of said canes onto anything that doesn’t move. Frames, light switch plate covers and other assorted home decor things. Mushrooms, stars, moon faces… lots of celestial beings and sunflowers. A local shop sells my things on consignment… I did pretty well with it.

Then, all of a sudden, Fimo beads start emerging covered in psychedelic patterns and icons. It went hand-in-hand with macrame hemp jewelry. It was showing up all over Lalapalooza, head shops and frankly, it was everywhere besides the cute boutiques I sold my items at. So, at that time, Fimo lost it’s fizzle for me.

After my kneading fingers couldn’t knead any longer (I never did get the pasta maker to flatten and roll out the stuff for me) and I was a bit turned off by the new Fimo movement, I started working with Fimo’s softer, lazier cousin, Sculpey. Sculpey became my friend. I started making little sculptures, ornaments, book covers, figures, jewelry and other little things. Sculpey was great because I would roll it out, add shapes, bake it, sand it, then paint and seal it. I used soft pastel colors and I had the flexibility to change designs and add things you just couldn’t do with Fimo. I made tons of rosettes and three dimensional things. It was pretty great!

Sculpey came in a larger box. It was plain white and oh-so-soft compared to Fimo.

Of course the art of Fimo canes reached China and you can find cheaper designs all over the place. In finished beads, pre-made canes that you slice yourself. Apparently (I’ve been out of the loop so long), they even sell canes of different designs for use on acrylic nails. There’s even Chanel Fimo slices available. How about that.

…

I think my favorite Fimo use has been miniatures. Mini food things for jewelry, doll houses, etc. The work here is really impressive!

…

…

I’m not a fan of “serious” grown-up Fimo jewelry. I like the whimsical stuff. But this bracelet and necklace set… is impressive:

Admittedly, I’m completely intimidated by all of the above Fimo work. You have to have some amazing skill, tiny tools, great hands and GREAT vision to accomplish that stuff. But it may be a fun challenge to tackle? Upon further investigation however, the mini food pieces sell for under $10.00, jewelry pieces sell up to $50.00 but… not much over that. That’s a LOT of work for $10.00.

And Sculpey… I found a few fun things made of the stuff (the rest was mostly dragon sculptures):

I haven’t picked up polymer clay in years… until recently. I was asked to participate in an art show and I decided to use Sculpey. It was food-themed, whimsical and a little silly. I did a few sculptures and some jewelry in the theme of the Art Show. It was received well, although only a few pieces sold (and they didn’t sell for very much). There’s this optimistic voice deep down inside me that says… “do mixed-media art sculptures! One-of-a-kind folk art pieces!” But alas… not sure if that’s the direction I want to go in?

So, as far as bringing polymer clay back into my business plan… hmmm. Buy it in bulk and sculpt all day long? I don’t think so. The time spent vs. the money made using the stuff doesn’t seem to pay off. I’ve seen a lot of work done with it that is phenomenal, but… are there buyers for such a thing? I’m not going to put it away completely, but I don’t want to spend 8 hours a day with it either. Perhaps… as a hobby?

Fimo… I love you, but I’m not in love with you.

p.s… cool polymer clay review & idea blog: Craft Gossip

I’ve worked in the retail gift and home decor industry most of my life. I have many years under my belt as a buyer and merchandiser and have a passion for creating beautiful displays. I have also sold my handcrafted “it” for many many years. I followed trends, whims and whatever seemed fun at the time. Jewelry, bath products, furniture, paper products and so much in-between… I could never focus on one thing. The “it” evolved and changed as I did.

With my brick and mortar closed, the economy helping to slam those doors, I took some time to wallow in self-defeat and wonder what went wrong. I have opinions, but I can’t be sure.

We are flooded with things that are made in China and although the prices are excellent, we’re not getting a lot of unique things anymore. What you see at Target is also at Walmart, Home Goods, Big Lots, Macy’s and it’s also in those sweet little retail boutiques that are becoming an endangered species. The lines of “exclusive”, “unique”, “limited edition” and “designer” have been blurred, mass marketed, ripped off and licensed out to death. China can reproduce something in the blink of an eye for a fraction of the cost.

Before I opened my store, I sold in a little portable ten foot by ten foot booth at street fairs… outdoors, under the sun. Dirt, children with sticky fingers… kettle corn and Peruvian flute music abound. I felt like a modern day gypsy. I made the majority of everything under that EZ-up. There was a lot of pride in that, and a whole lot of work, too.

After a year of tortured bliss owning my very own store, I realized… hey… I could BUY more things and sell them for a profit! Handmade is great, but… how am I going to fill this space, all by myself? So… that’s when I got 1000 square feet of “Made in China” merchandise. Most of my customers didn’t seem to notice… or care… why should I? My deep respect for handmade was sort of… squashed. Why pay ten times as much for something that looks almost identical… but it’s made in China? Made by me or made in the USA didn’t matter anymore. At the time, to me, a full store was a happy store. I no longer had to struggle to keep up with my inventory demands or care where it came from. End of story.

All eco-landfill-social-global-economy-buy-american rants aside… why wouldn’t you want to save money? Why wouldn’t you want to have the newer and shinier… and get in some much-needed retail therapy time? As a store owner… why wouldn’t I want to showcase the new gotta-have-its and make my customers happy? It made sense. Everyone was pleased (yet, a wee bit ignorant).

So… now that we’ve maxed out our credit cards and filled our storage bins with SO much stuff… how could we ever go back? Have less things? How do we start respecting the handmade again? Smaller quantities… keep for a lifetime, not a season… supporting our local friends. There is a culture and a movement going on but… I was queen of consumer whore-ism… how do I change my ways? How do I convince my customers to change their ways? How do I not look like a total hippie? I’d like to buy handmade as well as BE that handmade vendor that people want to buy from because I’d rather not be a hypocrite, thank you very much.

So, I’d like to be a better/different consumer. I’d also like to be a better/different supplier/vendor. But I have NO idea where to start. I guess I’ll start with what I sell. I’m liquidating everything I didn’t make myself on ebay and I’m going to start fresh. A new look, a new philosophy. Ugh. I’m completely overwhelmed.

With that all said, I’m on a quest to find a new handmade medium to pursue. Over the course of my life I’ve worked with so many different types of arts, crafts and materials, but I feel like I have not mastered any one thing. So, I’m going to re-visit my crafting history… one medium at a time… and investigate its trends, popularity, appeal, longevity, profit potential and basically educate myself (and you!) and/or convince myself if this is the direction I’d like to go in. I will investigate a new medium every week. Here I go!

This economy sucks.

I’ve been in retail for… oh wow… 18 years. I have to say, this last holiday and everything that followed was the WORST on record (for me, anyway).

I ordered 1/4 of what I normally order for Halloween/Fall/Christmas and I only ordered from 2 of my favorite vendors. I still have 75% of that inventory from one of those vendors (who is usually quite popular, I might add!). It’s so irritating.

On a normal “slower” year I would just throw that on the Bank of America Business Mastercard and throw the inventory in storage for the next year, but wouldn’t-you-know-it, BofA cut my credit last year. As did Citibank… on both of my accounts.

My credit is excellent, I just bought a house… but my credit limits have been cut, every single minimum payment has gone up and my APR’s have doubled.

And now… I’m inventory poor. That’s right, I’m full of santas, jack o’ lanterns and snowman sh*t, but… I can’t pay for it. The vendor is trying to work with me as we speak… but… it’s June. Very very irritating.

This year I sold at craft shows, on my website, via Amazon, ebay and etsy. I’m paying SO much in store fees on Amazon and ebay… ugh.

So, time to restructure my business. When it started in the late 80′s we mostly did handmade items, then we went to brick and mortar retail and furniture… guess it’s time to get back to handmade? I did dozens and dozens of craft shows every year for almost a decade. Lugging my stuff around in rubbermaid containers from the mountains to the coast to the Masonic Temples on the edge of town. Tagging, putting up and taking down. Wow. Makes me really love the internet* (I’ll revisit this later). In any case, I can use my hands again. But I might need new glasses.

Time to dust off the ol’ glue gun, too.

Jumping back into the world of handmade has been… frustrating. I have experience in SO many mediums, I know my crafting world… but the new world of etsy and those Rock n’ Shops and the Craft Mafias… well, I’m intimidated.

Gorgeous 20 and 30-something moms with their bangs, cat-eyed glasses, handmade smocks and covered in tattoos… I have no idea how to compete.

My usual customer is in her mid to late 40′s or 50′s and loves vintage in a way that her pocketbook can express. These girls that are buying at the “new” craft show want up-cycled, re-cycled, gluten-free, fair-trade, proceeds-given-to-charity, lead-free, baby-proof felted pieces of WONDER for under $15.00. In a perfect world, I would LOVE this idea… but how in the hell will this pay my mortgage?

So… I’m staring into the dawn of a new crafting age. Do I stay-the-course and do what I know, hoping that my 40 and 50-something regulars will find me online (most haven’t heard of etsy), that the 20 and 30-somethings will appreciate AND pay for my offerings… or do I put on the power suit and enter the 9-5 workplace?

I’m a gypsy at heart… I really want to adapt. I’m going to try my hand at evolving… perhaps I’ll start with some gills.

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.

We’ve been working on another business… it’s not another retail endeavor, but we’re very excited about it.

I truly miss retail. I find myself wandering the local stores and cleaning up their displays and merchandising for them. It’s built in, I can’t shut it off. I still have my website but I’ve been so neglectful. Even customers are writing to me giving me advice on how to spruce things up. I’m in denial.

I’ve sold on ebay since 1999. I sort of broke up with Ebay last spring when they stopped letting sellers leave feedback, raised their fees, cut back on power seller perks and generally told all of the small businesses to go to hell… but in a nice way. Donning my rose-colored glasses, I recently opened an Amazon.com shop, listed one thing and sold it almost immediately. I like the idea but wow, do they charge a lot for commission. This is how it works in a nutshell…

• Sign up and pick a store name. Give them your credit card and banking information, prove you are real. Voila, you’re in business
• A basic account is free but that means that you can only sell things that they are already selling. For example, if you are selling books, you find the book already listed and click “I have one of these to sell!”
• You list your item with a very short description. Less than one sentence to the effect of “Great condition, never used but has been opened”
• Amazon gives you a shipping allowance. They determine how much shipping is and give you that amount to cover shipping costs. I found that it is very conservative. Make sure to look into this, it could really bite you!
• When you sell your item, about a week or so later you can request a check for the amount due to you from the sale. That amount is the sale price minus about 15% plus your shipping allowance.
• If you want to sell things that aren’t listed on amazon.com already, you’ll have to get a premium account and pay a little extra per month for the privilege of adding your own new items to their ever-growing inventory

Again, it’s amazon selling 101 in a nutshell….but I was surprised that they were comparable to Ebay, as far as fees go, after you factor in Ebay’s purposely confusing multi-tiered fee system and paypal fees (Ebay has created a paypal monopoly recently, too. You have to use Paypal or your own merchant account. Period.). In my humble opinion, Amazon’s reputation is far superior to Ebay’s these days. But… that may be just me Ebay was good for the bargain and obscure item hunters. In this financial climate buyers are definitely looking for a bargain, but do you think they are searching for obscure treasures or items that remind them of their childhood? Ebay has a “hot list” showing which items are most searched for and which items are most purchased for any given month. I’m really curious… what’s been selling these days? Is Ebay still on top of their game after alienating their small business “work force”? Anywho…. there’s a good article regarding online shopping trends in 2009 via MSNBC…
Report: Online retail could reach $156B in 2009 by RACHEL METZ.

And Fortune magazine did an article about Amazon’s semi-recovery this January after a bleak holiday season. That’s promising.

I’ve never claimed I was a full fledged entrepreneur with a sharp business mind. I’ll say that again. My head is in merchandising, art, customer service and optimism (with a twist of bitchy)… not so much crunching numbers and writing business plans. Over the weekend, we met with the step-father of our business partner. He has started and sold multi-multi million dollar companies and he is quite brilliant. He openly admitted to sort of having a few false starts and stumbling his way through at least 10 other businesses, but a few really good decisions with his businesses have made him a wealthy man. It was fascinating to hear what he had to say. In short…S corps are tops, always have a business plan and never use the word “conservative”. Neat.

So, as we move forward with a non-glitzy online service business and I figure out how I’m going to re-do my online retail shop… I’m faced with all sort of questions. “Do I have the energy for this?!?” seems to top that list. Getting the momentum to move forward and keep it moving is an art in itself.

Some light reading… an article on customer service and Baby Boomers via newsfactor.com:
Boomers at Retail: A Cautionary Tale By Matt Thornhill

Retailers should view Circuit City as a cautionary tale. Media reports say that the self-inflicted mortal blow occurred back in 2007 when the company fired some 3,000 top-earning store sales people as a cost-cutting measure. Customer service did more than disappear: It got hired by Best Buy. Deep cuts in costs are de rigeur right now, but short-changing customer service could prove fatal.

On a personal note regarding that article… I worked in retail for a sporting good store for a number of years. At one point, management and the shareholders decided that their highly experienced, motivated and highly trained work force was too expensive and started cutting back hours to hire minimum wage workers. I watched our tight-knit group of co-workers leave one-by-one or get laid off abruptly. Some of them after being there over 20 years. We were a great group… outdoorsy and energetic skiers, runners, avid fishermen, campers, scuba divers etc etc. We loved sports and loved learning about the new equipment and it really shined through when we presented it to our customers. Our store was making the most net profit of any other store in the state (there were roughly 27 at the time). But, we were the first to start getting 15 and 16 year old kids with little to no sporting background to replace the “old timers” of 20+ years. It was completely evident that this new group didn’t care about selling sports-related items at all. For example, the first replacement in my department was a 16 year old pregnant girl with a beautiful display of hickeys on her neck and chest who dropped out of high school and was trying to get her GPA… God bless her. My first guess is that she hadn’t recently been in a pair of skis or enjoyed in-line roller skating on a regular basis. So, as sales started declining, management still didn’t think it had anything to do with their decision to shoo out the last generation of employees. First, the image of the business changed. More extreme and very “Mountain Dew”, if you catch my drift. Then, the salespeople on the floor were required to wear fluorescent yellow vests. That failed to revive the declining sales, too. One of my friends worked at the corporate headquarters and I got the latest scoop for years, but he left after getting fed up as well. I’m SO glad to hear that customer service is still paramount to a successful business. I know the owner started this business by wanting the latest and greatest skiing equipment, and a knowledgeable, passionate and ski-centric staff to run it… funny how that changed and funny how it could very well kill their little empire. Makes me chuckle just a wee bit because they sort of deserve it.

So, I won’t get my retail store until at least 2010… but at least I’m not stuck in a long lease, like so many. So many small shops are closing… it really breaks my heart. And something I never thought of… with all this retail closing, who is paying sales tax?

As the economy continues to tank, and as consumers tighten their grip on spending, there are fewer and fewer pennies flowing from shopping malls to cities, resulting in dramatic shortfalls in sales tax revenue — “the bread and butter” of general city funds. If a consumer spends a dollar and is charged 8 cents sales tax, cities generally get a penny of that.

And I betcha most cities were planning their budgets based on prior, golden years. Smart. Very smart.

And lastly… more projections from Bloomberg for retail and Walmart. This year’s forecast calls for more doom and gloom. Go team.

Not too long ago I mentioned that I opened my Washington Mutual statement, now JP Morgan, and my 11 or 12% interest rate was jacked up to 23.99%. I assumed I was late in a payment or went over my limit. I called and was told that they just “decided to raise the rates of some cardholders”. So, I quickly moved balances around, determined not to give them one red cent.

Then, my Bank of America account, which I opened just to do a balance transfer, decided it was going to jump from its “reasonable” rate of 18.99% to 24.99%. For no reason. And, when I called, they couldn’t tell me what happened either. I’m waiting for a call back (ha).

About a week later I got a letter in the mail from Citibank. I have 2 cards with them. The card that had a $12,000 limit was being brought down to $11,000 because of my credit score.

I panicked.

My credit score had taken a dip, but I’m not sure why. But a month later, it’s the highest it’s ever been. Ever.

Very curious. Think there could be some foul play at hand by any chance?

Did some searching and found a great article by Forbes Magazine:

Holiday Surprise: More Credit Card Fees
Liz Moyer, 12.05.08, 04:35 PM EST

Reaching for the plastic to pay for holiday presents this season? Expect to find a few surprises in your statement next month.

Credit card issuers, struggling with falling profits and rising loan losses, are jacking up interest rates and adding fees, not to mention cutting back on credit lines just in time for the busy gift giving season. This coincides with rising joblessness and uncertain economic times that are making consumers feel a little anxious, if not a little desperate.

The combination makes consumers vulnerable to bad credit card deals. “If you’re not careful, you’re going to get yourself in a fix in a hurry,” says Curtis Arnold, founder of cardratings.com and author of the recently published How You Can Profit From Credit Cards…

…The card industry has spent the last year bracing for bad economic times. Earlier this year Bank of America (nyse: BAC – news – people ) told thousands of card holders, even those with good payment histories, that they would see their rates jump from 9% to 28% if they didn’t pay off their balances and stop using their cards. More card issuers are raising interest rates, even though the Federal Reserve is cutting short-term rates.

That’s a far cry from the days when card companies were stumbling over each other to woo new accounts. Bank mergers have consolidated power among the very largest card issuers, including JPMorgan Chase (nyse: JPM – news – people ), Citi and Bank of America, and stand-alone companies like American Express (nyse: AXP – news – people ), Capital One Financial (nyse: COF – news – people ) and Discover (nyse: DFS – news – people ). All of these companies are facing profit pressure from rising credit costs.

According to Consumer Reports, credit card balances as of September reached $971 billion, up from $825 billion at the end of 2005. The 30-day delinquency rate of 5% is the highest since late 2002. As the publishing and research company notes in its annual financial education campaign, “there’s no ‘bailout clause’ in your credit card contract.”
What better way for banks to make up for credit losses than to start charging for stuff they haven’t been charging for? JPMorgan, for example, told customers who carry large balances every month they will have a $10 monthly charge in addition to all of the other regular account fees and will see their minimum payment increase to 5% from 2% monthly.

The bank explains it constantly evaluates the risks and costs of funding credit card loans. The fee, which goes into effect in January, affects less than 0.5% of accounts and applies to those who have carried large balances over two years “while making little progress in paying them off.”

Remember the annual fee? That disappeared in the years of heavy competition for new customers, but it is likely to make a strong comeback, according to Aite Group consultant Adil Moussa.

Card companies make their money in three ways: fees, interest and the fees that merchants pay them to accept their cards (the interchange fee, in industry parlance). Congress is debating whether to pressure card issuers to lower those merchant fees and otherwise limit the ability of banks to charge punitive fees, like late charges and over-limit fees, leaving banks with no choice but to resurrect the annual fee.