Are They Serious? Riiiiight

As I mentioned in the previous post, we’re kinda looking at another location (50 Penn Place). The leasing agent wants me to take down the post about Wish Bracelets (and our budget expectations) because he thinks it will give the mall’s owners some reason to charge me more money, or not work with me, or something.

Dear 50 Penn Place owners/managers — the above-metnioned article has nothing at all to do with you. It does, however, have a lot of relevance to our local customers, who seem to think retail space grows on trees.

It’s important that our customer base understand what happened to us in the past, why we closed, and what the mistakes were that we’re trying not to make again.

Last time, we were severely underfunded (we opened up on a frayed shoestring budget of only $5000). Yet somehow we still pulled through, and managed to start making a profit just a few weeks into the venture, plowing back every penny into new merchandise, better fixtures, and advertising.

I bought an occasional pizza, but I never took a paycheck the three years that shop was open. This go-round, I need to make enough not only to pay the overhead and buy new product and advertising, but also enough to pay myself, at least one other employee, and put aside some funds for future opportunities and/or emergencies and also stick some in a Keogh. I’m too old to not get paid this time – I’ve got to play for keeps now.

What that means, in terms of location: in order to receive the gross income that will make paychecks and savings possible in addition to growing the product lines and funding advertising, I need to attract not only my loyal pagan customers, but reach a wider audience of New Age Christians, yoga practitioners, angel people, and eco/greenies. Peaceniks and middle aged women who are on a spiritual, but not pagan, path.

They are not attracted to the kind of store I had before – the swimming pool blue walls and the checkerboard floor, DIY showing through proudly at every level. No, these people want to feel calm, protected, soothed by a metaphysical shop. I want to give that to them. Nobody else is doing it – not since Explore (OKC) closed in 2001 or Good Vibrations (Norman) closed in 2006.

I can provide both a Starwind and a Nature’s Treasures experience under one roof (although the pagan stuff will be clustered together in its own very special room). But this means a nicer location than the little hole-in-the-wall shop I had in the Asian district. And you know what? I want a nicer location than that old POS place, too, it’s not just for looks or to lure in upper middle class women. I did the starving artist thing, and it didn’t really satisfy. Time to upscale.

We’re not doing this again.

Yes, it’s really, really important for the public to understand that it is their responsibility to support a metaphysical shop if they want it to stay around. I’ve been told I’m absolutely insane for giving them a second chance after they “let me fail” during the recession.

On the one hand, I think that’s a lot of crap, but on the other – where did they go during those critical weeks in the summer of 2005? They keep finding me and they all express regret that I closed the doors when my lease ran out, but you can’t run a store without having sales to support it. I am willing to open the doors again, but only if they are willing to pull together to support the store. All the money, you know, comes from their sales – I don’t get a check from the government or a grant from a humanitarian association. Sales, and sales alone, are what keeps a retail store afloat. I kinda think that maybe somewhere in the back of their minds they had the idea that a metaphysical store is kinda like a church, or something – donations? United Way funds? Nope, only sales. If they don’t come in and buy stuff from their favorite shop, the favorite shop goes away. Such is the math of consumer economics.

So I’m very sorry, Leasing Manager or Owner, if that article somehow offends you or tips my hand with “how much I’m willing to spend” opening a new store. $15,000 is 5 months’ income to a lot of people – if they are fortunate enough to have that kind of a job. A lot of my customer base falls into that description. They are dedicated, loyal people with big hearts. I didn’t tell them last time that we needed funds, and by doing so, I let them let me fail.

I believe that if I had shared this information with them then, they would have made a determined effort to try to come in, and bring friends with them, back in 2005. We might have gone under anyway, but I think not making the process of running a business more transparent hurt me more than keeping quiet about it.

This time, every penny I can scrape up is on the line. I can’t afford to fail. If I can’t find the right place at the right price, there will be no store. So if your price is too high, you won’t be my landlord – I’m not champing at the bit to rent space in a mall that’s been dead for a decade. The math has to be right, so I will keep my weblog posts, thank you very much, because my relationship with my customers (who have followed me from market to market and show to show through the years) is more important to me than how much you think you can get from me. If the price isn’t right, you won’t matter. But the customers always will, and this blog is for them.