This past year...closing the store

I have hardly written in this past crazy year, it was a year ago now that I bought the store.  A year ago that we started an adventure and a very tough year of loss.

When both of my kids were about a year old I would start looking for a job, something about that year mark was when I would start to get stir crazy and want out of the house.  But I felt torn and mommy guilt over leaving my children, I couldn't imagine spending an entire day away from them! So when the store came up for sale I thought it was perfect.  I could work, selling maternity clothes and spending my day talking to pregnant women about babies (my favorite!) while still having my kids with me.  I was the boss, I could do what I wanted!

Customer after customer would comment on "how great it is you can bring your kids to work with you!"  And while I could feel good about having my kids with me, I also felt guilty about keeping them from their home, keeping them from playdates, and afternoons at the park.  They had to come to work with me and I had to learn how to always parent in public.  When you own a store you want your customers to feel comfortable and have a nice time shopping, when your kids are hitting each other and screaming and you are trying to calmly tell them to stop, it's not quite the experience you are hoping for them to have.  Having the kids with me was so much harder than I thought it would be, it wasn't the fun and enjoyable thing I imagined, for me or for them.

I quickly learned that the previous owner may not have been entirely forthcoming with how the business was doing.  While it continued to support itself the entire time I owned it, we were never able to bring home a paycheck.  And while it was fun, at some point we all want our work to be rewarded.  With how we thought the business was doing I would be able to pay others to work a day or two, I only ever did that when I had to be somewhere else.  But I made two really amazing friends while finding people to help with the store.  Two people who made the store their own and supported me and did EVERYTHING they could to help.  They were always finding me baby items for great deals and telling people about the store wherever they went.  Without them I would have never made it as far as I did.

Right after we bought the store Bryce's Grandpa died and then soon after the pastor that performed our wedding ceremony died, he was a close family friend.  After Christmas a close family member had a miscarriage and then a cousin had a still-born baby.  In May we experienced our own miscarriage, it became too much to deal with, spending my entire day with pregnant women.

In June I made the decision that the store maybe wasn't the right fit for me.  It was not what I had imagined it would be and the store had been open for three years, yet we still were not making money.  I tried passing out coupons, advertising at events, and bringing in items people were looking for.  But it would take much much more than that to get the store to reach the level of success I thought it should be at.  And I didn't have it in me, managing the store, my family, my house, the losses in our family and the constant things that each of them needed was more than I wanted to deal with.  We put the store up for sale in June.

Several people looked at buying it, all of them came back and said that it didn't make enough money.  One woman's financial guy even figured out that I was making about $2 an hour.  It didn't feel like I even made that much!

At the end of September we contacted the owner of the building to let us out of the lease a year early. He very kindly agreed.  So we spent October selling as much as we could out of the store.  The last week was spent packing up what was left and then painting (part of the agreement to get out of the lease early).  It was an especially hard week.

I cannot tell you how many tears were shed over wanting to buy this store, and then again over making the decision to close.  It wasn't exactly what I wanted, but just because you want something doesn't mean it always works out that way.  It was an adventure I had, where I made a bunch of new and great friends.  I learned so much about running a business, I bonded with other business owners.  One of the greatest lessons I learned was to be happy with what you have, and to do things to take care of yourself.  It's hard being a mom 24-7, sometimes we need a day off and we need to not feel guilty about taking one (thanks to all you Grandma's out there).  I do not regret my year of being a business owner, it may have been a bit impulsive, but it was still a pretty great adventure.  So many of you supported me in so many ways, by listening to me talk about the store for hours, by listening to me cry about it when it wasn't what I wanted anymore, by sending me cards and flowers of encouragement, by shopping there, by spending your Saturday's helping me out and working or volunteering to work, helping me pack it all up and then spending days with me painting.

Many friends have kindly asked if this has hurt us financially.  Thankfully, we were able to make back a large portion of what we bought the store for in our sales and we still have fixtures and inventory that we will try to sell in the coming months.  Since it was able to always support itself (kind of an amazing feat for small businesses I now know) we never had to spend any money there.  But most importantly our "loan" came from a family member who will thankfully let us spend the rest of our lives paying them back if that's what it takes (we also don't owe very much).

It can be so sad when something ends, but there is always something new that begins.  So here is to what comes next...hopefully that includes some more frequent blog posts so stay tuned :)