Brian's Corner... 

Why Your Support Blesses Others

Change.  That's what's on my heart (and Hot Momma Char, too) the past few weeks...  99.87483194% of all feedback is positive through emails, Facebook, and my personal favorite - the always in-style face to face :-)  I couldn't even *begin* to tell you what's out there on Twitter, or Google+, or Google- for that matter (I am a neophtye FB user at the moment, barely an infant!)  Did you see my last attempt at posting on our LLaL wall???  It was hilariously inept.  Almost embarrassingly so!  I didn't know the "enter" key = post, for example, and not the "blank line now for a reading pause effect" I like to employ...

See?  I "paused" right here...

But NOOOO, FB has it's own rules.  In fact, the grammatical rules by which I am familiar, by which I have grown accustomed to, are changing quite dramatically.  My own boss wrote me a one-letter email reply:

K 

That was it.  I felt like a dweeb but I had to ask my co-worker what it meant and was informed in "txt speak" it's shorthand for "Okay."  Which actually makes sense if you think about it, but still caught me by surprise.  And being a lazy engineer  (face it, engineers design stuff like sit down lawn mowers so they don't have to darn well mow the grass by pushing!) one would think I would have embraced this txt speak YEARS ago ;-)  It elates (and saddens) me when one feedback we receive says "WOW! Your store is not like it used to be in SR and has WAAAY more selection than ever!" and then another says "WOW! Your store is not like it used to be in SR when it only took a week to process my items!"  The challenge, of course, is finding a balance.  I cannot express (or tried and did poorly on FB) just how difficult finding that balance has been... 

And for better or worse, the "finding" in the preceding sentence is verb (or for those prose gurus, technically it is a gerund but AHHHH don't remind me of those 8th grade rules we all forget until our kids are 8th graders!!!) and verb/action therein implies Change.

Even after I tried correcting my first FB post, I *still* erred in my SECOND FB post (FB scares the dickens out of me as I can't reread things 1000 times like these blogs.  Once you send POOF... DANGER, Will Robinson!  DANGER! :-)  As an astute reader corrected me, I said we now have over 400 consigners.  WRONG!  It was *suppose* to say over 1400 consignors now!!!  And if you think we've grown to that number evenly in our 4+ years in business, you never read my very first email comparing our "leap of business faith" to careening down a mountain in a blizzard blindfolded on a train.  In the caboose. [any "old" timers out there remember that article? :-)] So do the quick math: Let's estimate ~1200 came from 24 months of business, which is about 50 per month or just over 10 new consignors per week.  Per Month.  Per Year.  Every week, week after week, for 2 years.  If week one we only had 1 person, it's NOT 1 person the next.  It's 1 + 10.  And the next week it's 11 + 10 etc.  So not only do we get repeat customers (y'all) but a whole slew of new friends, too!  I believe the expression is "viral". 

This is a good problem to have, but one that must be managed and to be frank we had NO IDEA how popular we'd become :-)  But boy has that been a challenge to manage/anticipate/predict.  Why don't we take these shoes when the others are just as good on your floor?  Why isn't this shirt OK to accept when there are no stains on it?  I honestly don't have all the answers.  But I CAN tell you that believe it or not you ALL want us to change, just perhaps not as dramatically as we have in 4 years  :-)  Ponder this: if we didn't grow in size/selection, we would never take on new consignors and always "recycle" from the same "batch" of clothes our "static" consignors had.  So by the very basic definition of consignment we MUST change/grow/explore our inventory/process/store becomes stale, obsolete, worn.

So I just wanted to let everyone know that we've heard and appreciate some of the constructive feedback y'all have provided :-)  I don't think any feedback is negative, but I do think presenting these ideas in a positive fashion with some suggestions is *so* much better to grow with, even if the suggestions sometimes contradict themselves.  Yours truly here thought it would be a GREAT idea to put benches near the shoe racks but didn't think about putting the shoe racks so darn close to the play area with idle little hands!  DUH!  And people ask why can't we increase staff to help process Drop Offs faster- we have! from 4 to over 20 moms as of today - y'all are buying (and still saving) more each season so we have had to put more moms onto the cash register, and still more at the Drop Off area!  And we've barely raised our prices in 4 years, trying to be "lean" and efficient and keep your profits max'd and costs min'd.  

So yes, we're unfortunately back to 6-8 weeks before we can process to bins, even after quintupling staff.  Riddle me THAT, Batman!  And yes, we've stopped clothes Drop Offs with over 300+ people still in the queue (many of them new consignors who will soon think we're doofuses - or is that doofi for plural?) because every time we think we've expanded staff *enough* and kept costs in check - well - it's quite the cycle to tame (but we're still taking big items.  Best just to check out our website!).

So we're categorizing our "changes" into 2 groups: da big ones and da little ones.  We're not going to move the shoe racks till January (along with some other store layout things - like I miss greeting everyone and saying "HI" in person instead of hollering it from our LLaL cash register location!) but we're trying to teach our 20+ moms to all do Drop Offs at similar speeds and levels of consistency (see the "irony" in asking us to grow in staff but stay the same in individual opinions? :-)  We'll hone the smaller changes, like increasing and training staff, and try to save the big ones for our two seasons (Jan and July). 

Wow, this is a long article :-(  But I share with you our good, bad, and even ugly - all from the heart.  We're going to correct several things (thanks for all the kind words and suggestions!!!  PLEASE keep them coming in your emails and don't be bashful in helping us grow in FB :-)  We really do listen even if we can't jump on them immediately.  And if you think your support is helping mostly my wife, my two boys, and me, you are hugely mistaken and have much to learn about business... 

It's common knowledge you don't break even in any new business venture till at least year 3 (closer to 4 in our case).  Then you're rolling in the dough!  WRONG!  What most people do not realize is for the NEXT 3 years or so you are paying down the debt/investment you put into the FIRST 3 years.  You are not only "broke" for 6 years, you put in your own money for most of those years to supplement the shortcomings.  That's why I work so damn hard at THREE jobs and bend over backwards to help anyone and everyone - it's investing in the future.  My wife is the lowest paid employee on staff, and she *just* started taking that puny pay this season.  <wifey Char's comments: the business has been challenging on SOOOO MANY different levels and I am learning to grow and change because of it.  I also have not taken a salary to help reinvest the funds to pay debt or bring on additional moms.  I am thankful for everyone who works for us and shops with us.  Thank you!>  Some of our bigggest "discussions" have been just how much we've had to invest (guy's perspective) and fork out (wife-trying-to-feed-her-family's perspective) in this business, and would it survive let alone succeed.  And how can we pay off the incurred debt?  I'll write a book on Faith, Planning, and How-NOT-To-Start-A-Business some day, but until then everyone reading this *has* to understand a simple yet poignant truth:

As my new Bear Cub Scout has learned, we'll always try to "Do Our Best" which doesn't always mean "Do It Right."  That's no small part as to why we'll ALWAYS send most of our special coupons, sales, invitations, and announcements to our loyal email customers first.  Anyone see the LEGO(R) event announcement that only y'all can attend?  :-)  I'll be bringing more bricks than most kids see in one place...  I don't know how else to say "Thank You" but to serve as best I can :-) 

Please continue to encourage Hot Momma Char and our staff as they put up with my zany ideas and occasional incompetence (THEY see a heckuva lot more snafus than y'all do!).  Charlene thrives on words of encouragement, and being married to Mr. Entrepreneur, believe me she needs as many as she can muster!

Love you, Hot Momma!  And I love YOU, reader, but in a much more platonic way.  And if you're a guy reading this, it's waaay more like I really respect you, gruff, loogie-hocking, snow-pee-writing kinda way. ;-)

Yep...  And sentences like that is why my wife and store manager don't let me blog publicly toooo often! *I* think it's quite funny.  Them?  Not so much... :-)

 

-Brian

Brian Meny, Owner