NLL Sisterhood : Fast Track Girl Part 4 (No Limits Ladies.com)

Fast Track Girl continues...

Opening Day

We didn't go to bed the night before the store opened, there was still too much to do. But we sent Laurin home early, so she could sleep and open the store the next morning at 10am. After the sun came up and the mall turned on the music, Debbi and I pulled down the black drape that covered the glass store front and it was going to have to be good enough. It was a very cool moment but now when I look back on it, the store was pretty bare compared to now! It was something that had to evolve though, on our small budget.

BTW...not all of that $80k went into the store, I paid down some urgent debt and we used some of it to support ourselves until the store opened and we could start paying ourselves.

I went home to sleep and stay with Laurin's daughter, Sakora, while Laurin went to open the store. Sakora's never had to be with a babysitter, except for with family, so one of us had to stay home with her.

Laurin was there alone and got SLAMMED! We didn't have locks on the display cases yet, people went behind the cases to help themselves, it was insane! The ladies from mall management hung out to act as security, while we got a locksmith up there to start working on installing locks. LESSON LEARNED!
Also, hired some employees right away too!

We opened on Friday, Sept.2, 2005, shortly after the Katrina crisis. That Saturday the media was in the mall broadcasting live to appeal to the public for donations for Katrina victims, many of which were brought to our area for housing. Some of the other merchants in the mall were donating a portion of their sales, we were new but felt we wanted to do something as well. The mall marketing manager, who LOVES our store, made sure we got a mention on the news for our pledge.

Well....we were a tad busy that day! We got SLAMMED again with people coming in saying that they heard about us on the radio! We have no idea how or why THAT happened but it was very cool!

On the following Tueday, the first Tuesday we were open, a journalist called and said she loved our store and wanted to write a piece on us for YES.

YES is a local fashion / shopping magazine (actually more like a newspaper though) that is circulated with the Friday local newspaper and it's also distributed independly through out our city, such as at colleges and coffee shops. We were readers of the magazine and were ecstatic when we got the call! They came in that Friday to do the interview and took product to photograph in their studio.

We later found out that the editor and journalist of that magazine live in the area of our store and saw that "teaser window"my designer created. I should let you know that a store designer actually has another name for those of you who may use one in the future, it's Visual Merchandiser.

Now, we knew we wanted to send out promo materials to the press, that was part of our initial plan, but we intended to wait until we had our decor finished, more product in the store, a few employees and at least a feel for our system and to work some of the bugs out before we got super busy. But they found us first!

The article came out three weeks later and was also posted on our local newspaper's website, which we were unaware of until a local TV program saw it and called us that morning! They wanted us to do a spot on their program the following Tuesday! Does this just keep getting cooler!!! Of course, we said YES! For those of you in the area, that show was Sonoran Living. For those who don't know, it's a very popular show with a huge audience of those who would want our products.

Sonoran Living was to do our interview live in their studio, so we had to bring product to set up on a table which they would then turn the cameras on when our spot came up. We had to arrive early in the morning to set up before the show started. We hired our visual merchandiser to help us, so we made a plan in advance of how we were going to set it up. We wanted the table to represent the store, so we brought fabric that was in the store to cover the table, etc. We
brought risers for various heights, a variety of our merchandise (as much as we could cram on!), lamps, pictures and other items that would give the audience a feel of what the store was like. Then we hung out in the Green Room (I know, we got to be in a green room, so cool) until they were ready for us.

Only one of us could go on and, since Laurin had more hands on with our product line and knew it better than I, she was the one who went on the air. She was so nervous, poor thing, she had just turned 23 yrs. old and success was coming at her so fast and all at once. But she did an AWESOME job, we have it on tape.

It's been a year since that taping and we STILL get new customers from it frequently, plus they do re-runs of it all the time! There's more media stories to come but this is long, it's late and I'm playing Cashflow tonight with Erin and a group of other's from this forum that I haven't yet met....that's pretty cool for us too!!!

Ladies, I hope you see how I was just like many of you...broke, lurking, and sitting on the fence full of fear for several years until I took the initiative to just take one simple little step, which led to another little step, then another....and now I have this story to tell. It's really that simple. The hard part is being committed, focused, determined, having perserverance, etc. Without all of that, I could give you my store and it would likely fail. But we'll get into all of that later and you'll understand what I mean. So far it looks like fun, and it is. But there have been, and still are, tough times and I'll share that with you too.