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It's been a good month and a half since we last shared our start-up experience with you. What an amazing journey it has been! Between the opening of ella + elliot, on November 20, and December 31 — despite the lack of marketing — we managed to meet our sales target, especially with smaller items, as we were in prime holiday shopping season! We were pretty excited about that. We didn't mind being open seven days a week. Starting in 2007, we decided to close the store on Mondays, like most retailers in our neighbourhood, to have a little bit of time for ourselves. However, we haven't really seen this "free time" yet as there is a lot of things to do (i.e. pay bills, place orders, accounting, etc.) and we had a lot of work to prepare the "grand" opening we had for ella + elliot on January 18th! The event was filmed for "Opening Soon: By Design," which will air on February 12 on HGTV. Thanks, Clare, for making that event as smooth as possible, and thank you Ashley (our part-time sales associate) for being such a great help that evening! We organized a silent auction, with proceeds going to Roots of Empathy. Giving back to the community is important to us, and we hope to partner with Roots of Empathy over the long run. Our suppliers were generous with product donations for that auction.
There seems to be quite a buzz for ella + elliot out there, as suppliers, friends and customers relate the information back to us. Word of mouth seems to be working!
Preparing such an event, combined with PR, takes a lot of time (I can attest from previous experience), and it was not easy, since I also have to man the store certain days and do a lot of other things. Now that the first 45 days are over and that we were happy with the results, our focus is to continue marketing the store (The Globe and Mail published a nice article on ella + ella this past weekend - thanks, Tralee) and cost containment (angst is creeping in). Welcome to the entrepreneurial world, I guess.
We also have the Interior Design Show coming up next month. We are going to showcase a new line from Europe. However, these products are being tested as we speak for the Canadian market. So, let's hope they will meet Canadian safety standards so we can showcase them...
So, we are very busy, and there is no sign that it's going to slow down. As I was thinking that I hadn't been sick this winter yet, our son got sick last week, then Suzanne got sick, and I got sick last night. That's when you realize that there is no back-up plan: I have to open the store, no matter what. I can't call in sick.
There seems to be quite a buzz for ella + elliot out there, as suppliers, friends and customers relate the information back to us. Word of mouth seems to be working!
Preparing such an event, combined with PR, takes a lot of time (I can attest from previous experience), and it was not easy, since I also have to man the store certain days and do a lot of other things. Now that the first 45 days are over and that we were happy with the results, our focus is to continue marketing the store (The Globe and Mail published a nice article on ella + ella this past weekend - thanks, Tralee) and cost containment (angst is creeping in). Welcome to the entrepreneurial world, I guess.
We also have the Interior Design Show coming up next month. We are going to showcase a new line from Europe. However, these products are being tested as we speak for the Canadian market. So, let's hope they will meet Canadian safety standards so we can showcase them...
So, we are very busy, and there is no sign that it's going to slow down. As I was thinking that I hadn't been sick this winter yet, our son got sick last week, then Suzanne got sick, and I got sick last night. That's when you realize that there is no back-up plan: I have to open the store, no matter what. I can't call in sick.
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