I had way too much coffee today. It’s past 4 am, I know that I have been awake for over 2hours. My mind is spinning with things I need to do and things that I could do nothing about. I decided that since meditation wasn’t working and breathing exercises had failed that the only solution was to get up and do something. Anything!
I decided to write and deal with the past and put it to bed so that I could really concentrate on the now.
The past 2-3 months have been a bit hectic and not because of the quantity of things on the schedule but because of my own lack of good planning and a few speed bumps in the road. The speed bumps are only problems because of lack of planning.
It’s almost mid-June now and if I go back three months that puts us in mid-March, which was looking pretty good except that we had a meeting with our leaseholder in mid-February that took it’s toll on my good nature. So I’ll start there with a smidgen of background.
We used to rent a working studio space and retail space from a local corporate entity. It was open to the public and situated near the entrance of a beautiful historical 1850’s style park. Lots of tourists in the area for the summer months and it looked like a good idea when we took up space 2 years previous. It didn’t quite measure up and there were various and sundry small issues that arose periodically because of the age of the building and because there are now 3 general managers for the same institution in as few years. This will inevitably cause a certain amount of loss of continuity in planning. It was this lack of continuity that became the thorn in my side in February.
Under a previous GM we were making move to increase our corporate identity in relation to the space, our “corporate” colour and signs. We really wanted to increase our visibility in the space as we felt that the tourists to the area were obviously missing us, especially when there were folks commenting that they couldn’t find us when we were talking to them later at some other event in some other part of the region. To cut this short, we feel that we essentially got told that our identity had to go, including our colour, and that we were in all effects competing with the gift shops run by the leaseholder which is the historical park next door. Their gift shops carry a lovely assortment of items purchased at larger wholesale trade shows and sport a wide selection of extremely affordable goods not made in North America, let alone Canada.
The good news of all this is that locally handcrafted goods can prove to be enough competition to be considered problematic to marketers of mass-manufactured and third world wage import products. Enough of a problem as to call you competition and enough that they would seriously discourage the building of your own marketing identity for your handcrafts.
After this February meeting I got very vitriolic. My husband, David, who is extremely patient with me, asked if we wanted to give notice at that time, but after investing a small fortune (in my mind) in the joint through rent already paid, new props bought for the place in January and being big on commitment and/or the flogging dead horses, I determined that I had the fortitude to last out another 135 day work week, or the summer season as the park delicately calls it.
My fortitude began to weaken during and after the open studio weekend at the end of March. It was a disaster. There were more visitors present at that event than ever before. One of the managers for the lease holding park decide that a craft fair in their building would be a good idea. After getting nailed as competition, they decide they want more of it, I have to wonder. Our visitor ratio was down, as were our sales for the weekend over the past 2 years. Not insurmountable by any stretch except that after the event we once again got told “We couldn’t find you” or “We had no idea you were there” by folks that we encountered at different business events and ironically at a seminar on marketing and promotion. This didn’t bode well.
The good news is that everything is still on schedule for this time of year. The big show applications had been mailed and I hadn’t missed a deadline for anything, so it all looked manageable from there.
April is the cruelest month. I missed a deadline for a group exhibit called “Achieving Beauty” at a metal arts gallery out west. The only thing of beauty that I had was my muse and I think that it went west. I totally botched my daily calendar and missed a business seminar too. I was getting a bit distracted by the “to do” list for the studio and the fact that the place is not heated in the off season and the weather was crappy and too cold to work in the place to redo the interior and get things tidied up to start the summer. So all I did was make some ordinary jewelry and muddle along until the end of the month when we got an email from the lease holder to indicate that there would be more changes, over and above what was discussed in February.
Being that I hate surprises but love change, I excitedly asked what it was. The answer was a 15% increase in rent because the brand new, just appointed GM wanted one. So in the excitement over this, another group exhibit opportunity got missed. Instead of dropping off the item that I made for it to the appropriate locale, I went to the leaseholder’s meeting with David, my very patient and extremely diplomatic husband (someone has to be and it’s rarely me) and the co-tenant of the building, a potter.
It didn’t go very well. There were a lot of issues discussed. There was little determined to be negotiation points and since we were told, “the lease has already expired, so we aren’t bound by past agreements” we took that as an indicator that we weren’t either. I hate numbers, but I went home after this and “crunched numbers”. I didn’t like the answer. I did it again. The answer was the same. It was grim, 15% at that place, with the drops in tourism that the area has had, the lack of visibility for the place… we were screwed.
We reached an executive decision later that evening, slept on it, I slept well that night. The decision still seemed sound the next morning, so we started packing our bags, boxes, and pick-up truck. We moved out, lock, stock and doorstep, since we built it. 4 days later we had stuff in the shed at home, things piled in the den, borrowed space at my mother’s work shop, and realized that we had no place to work from yet, except the same table in the den we had been using all winter, which was now buried. The potter came to the same conclusion I might add, and her mother bears the brunt of it too.
In the midst of this I missed another business seminar, a repeat session of the one I missed in April. I guess I was a little distracted.
The up side is that we have now saved a small fortune in rent and that gave us half of the money we needed to pay for the booth at the Originals show in Ottawa in December. Oh, yes, the good news is that just after we moved out of the rented space we got our contract for the show. It’s the first time doing it as we got wait-listed last year. The exciting part is that we get to go to our nation’s capitol for 2 weeks to a huge Christmas fine craft market and we currently have no working studio space except the table in the den. We also did a one-day show in Woodstock the day after we finished moving out, with the new booth set-up, and it went great. People loved our “corporate” colour. It was extremely noticeable and sales were super. It seems they could find us. They said the same thing in Nackawic at the beginning of June, which went well too.
May was blur. It was spent fretting over the possibilities of the meeting for the first week, moving the second, vegetating the third and doing housework and laundry that had been thoroughly ignored for the past one, catching up on paperwork and accounting stuff as well as writing a several page document to the GM of our former lease-holder detailing all of the ongoing issues with the premises and offering potential solutions to the same as well as explaining our decision. My parents taught me that you shouldn’t about the government unless you voted in the last election and you can’t complain for the sake of it, unless you are willing to offer a solution. It appears that it was appreciated; he sent a “Thank you” note.
By the end of May, the flurry of emails regarding the place had stopped, all the promotional work and web-links we had in place for it for 2007 had been cancelled, the phone disconnected, and a real sense of freedom had started to descend. The problem with the freedom is that I feel that I have not been using it wisely.
Fortunately, I thought, the business seminars for May had already been postponed to June. The problem with June is that it is June and we have a grade twelve student in the house that is graduating and going away for the summer. Guess what happens to his room when he leaves in another 2 weeks…
June is almost half over, but I have not missed any deadlines or meetings yet, including the board meeting for our chamber of commerce. Yes, I joined the board, and not because I feel like I can contribute a lot, but to warm a seat and drink free coffee and maybe get to the point that I have learned enough to actually be helpful and contribute to the community that gives to us.
We have gotten to the seminars, did the show in Nackawic, been to a visitation and subsequent funeral for David’s Uncle Bob, gotten tied up in grad stuff that spans 3 weekends and finally culminates in graduation on the 22nd, and went to a meeting for a community market in St. Stephen, so that I now have something to do every Friday that we are not away to a show from the 29th of June through mid-September. I also ended up repackaging every pair of earrings and every ‘cheap’ pendant that we have made because the card stock that I had made promoted the now former summer location. I just couldn’t imagine leaving the house again with this stuff and not having that 3-day job done, of printing, cutting, re-labeling and packing done. Especially since we have a contact in Nackawic who would like to carry the same in their store. I have to go see them this week – there’s still 3 days left – and get this started. I also have to finish up a couple of small custom orders.
I did remember to get our notice of intent to participate in the One-of-a-kind Showcase in November into the Nova Scotia Crafts Council before the deadline too.
In retrospect, I realize that it has been productive, busy and chaotic; that I am not as far behind as I thought earlier this morning. There has been progress and there is still a lot to do but I have to remember to look at the short term for a while instead of trying to get to far ahead of myself, which can be over-whelming.
Time to refocus on the immediate needs of the business and to take some constructive personal time too but after I get those images emailed to Heidi and the picture CD dropped off to Shasta and … I'm blaming this on the medium double from Tim's for the drive home from St. Stephen tonight.
Enjoy!
