We feel we owe you a bit of honesty. As you may or may not have known, we recently signed a lease for a storefront. Exactly one month has passed and it still doesn't feel real. Although our lives have always included vintage, sometimes included selling it, they now fully revolve around every aspect of it!
Let us explain. Since signing the lease and working on the shop, we've gotten so much support and positive feedback regarding our venture. A previous comment even called what we're doing 'a dream.' The truth is that it is, it's been a dream of ours for a very long time. Though it may seem dreamy to walk into a vintage store, knowing YOU are the owner and THIS is your JOB, there are many aspects to what we are going through that scare the pants off of us. This is the truthiness that we feel we owe you.
Lingering questions that we may not have the answers to for a while and that keep us up at night sometimes:
-What if we don't make any money?
-What if we can't pay our rent?
-What if no one likes our stuff?
-What if I burn out?
-When will I have free time?
-What if ______? (really, you can enter anything, and we've thought it)
Some truths that we know:
-We won't be taking any vacations for a long time.
-We can't quit our other jobs yet.
-This summer (peak season in our area), we'll be spending 7 days a week at the shop.
-We couldn't have done this without the support of Paul and Chris.
-We couldn't have done this without the help of friends and family.
-We believe in what we do.
-We don't take it for granted for a SECOND.
We are optimists. We believe that if you want something bad enough, you can make it happen. It may not always be sunshine and puppies and rainbows, but it doesn't, at least it shouldn't, matter. Who knows if we will make it a year or 10 years, there is no way of knowing. What we do know is that we are working our tails off creating this vision we've been given the opportunity to create. We want to be as honest as possible about the process, the ups AND the downs. So we'll follow up with some more truths as we go. Some we'll still need to learn.
Feel free to ask questions. We are happy to answer.
