This morning started, as my mornings now tend to do, with a delivery. This delivery was five sets of shelves (for stock) and a butcher's block (for when I finally get council approval to serve tea, coffee and snacks). The next visitor for the day was the Birch Haberdashery delivery man with a truckload of big needles and crochet hooks.
Deliveries are a major part of setting up a shop, it seems. The opening inventory order arrives and totally fills your shop with cartons and packing. Once you unpack it, the empty cartons fill your lounge room and cause your visitors to worry about your sanity. The unpacked stock, though, barely fills a single bookcase. Every time a customer comes in, you find yourself explaining that more stock is in transit and that you will order in anything they want that is not available. Sometimes you also explain this to neighbours, friends and relatives who stop by to see how you're doing. When you start running really short on stock, you explain it to cats and lamp-posts...
You will also receive deliveries of shop fittings - which is where the workplace injury comes in! In the immortal words of the sages: "Grasshopper, the shop assistant has put 17m of packing tape around that shelf for a REASON. So take it easy with the scissors, yes?". There may also have been an immortal sage who staggered around a shop with blood dripping from their nose after a shelf had fallen on it, alternately invoking Divine Assistance and describing the act of love - but probably not.
Number one retail tip: if you have bruises and cuts on your face, it is much harder to develop a good rapport with your customers. At least it stops me blathering on about stock - I am more concerned with explaining that the Womens' Refuge is actually up the road and around the corner... no - this is nothing, just had a shelf fall on me, looks much worse than it is thanks... I think about suing myself for millions and retiring, but suspect that this has been done before.
By midday, the bruise is going down nicely and the cut is almost invisible under a thick coat of concealer. Now it's time to turn my attention to our class schedule once again! Classes are a big part of what we offer - most of the point of the shop is to develop a community and to spread the word about knitting.
The Birch delivery is related to our first effort in that regard - free knitting classes on 21/9 for the High Vibes Street Festival. I sincerely hope that at least some of the 70,000+ people who come through on the day want to learn to knit and crochet, as I've got two cartons of needles lined up, ready to go. I also have some lovely ribbon - but no wool as yet. That will no doubt be tomorrow's delivery...
Yesterday, I finished working through a course schedule with our first instructor, a local spinner, dyer and artist. She is happy to teach a beginner crochet class for two hours on Wednesday nights - exciting!! October's project is a hat and scarf - November's project is Xmas decorations.
Our second instructor showed up on the weekend to talk about doing some classes - she wasn't sure what she had to offer or what we wanted. As a sample, she produced a jumper with a replica of part of the Bayeaux tapestry on it. I immediately begged her on bended knee to run cable and intarsia/fair isle classes a.s.a.p.!! She is working on it and says she'll get back to me. I am crossing my fingers, as it would be lovely to have something for advanced knitters as well as beginners.
Better go - got a delivery guy at the door and an ice pack to replenish!
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
The grand opening...
When I first started as a fiction writer, I was advised to start my stories at the beginning, go on to the end, and then stop. Later on, I grew up and became a technical writer - I started writing online help and websites, and the advice became "start somewhere that is likely to be relevant and give the reader lots of options to find other relevant things if they need to. They can stop whenever they damned well feel like it. Use lots of hyperlinks and good luck".
On 8/8/08, I opened CCCK, a wool shop in the Melbourne suburb of Northcote. If I start the story of the wool shop at the beginning, I'd start with my mother teaching me how to knit when I was about four. Like most kids, as soon as I started school, I caught every cold, flu, gastric bug and miscellaneous ailment going - plus all the primary school standbys of mumps, measles, chicken pox etc etc. I stayed home and was bored, sick and stroppy. Mum (bless her!) decided that she would teach me how to knit and do simple tapestry work. Looking back, it amazes me that she didn't decide to throttle me instead, because I must have been a major pain in the backside. But she didn't, and so (indirectly) CCCK was born...
I enjoyed knitting. I kept going, even when I stopped being sick. I graduated from printed canvas kits to counted cross stitch embroidery and moved from garter stitch scarves and beanies to more complex designs. On the train to uni, I knitted. People looked at me oddly, but that may have been because I was going through a Goth phase and there weren't that many people around with pink hair and long, black skirts. I got a job and commuted to work, still knitting. People still looked at me oddly. (Eventually, I found my dream job as a technical writer and people looked at me even more oddly, but that's another story).
Finally, almost thirty years after the first fumbling efforts to knit Barbie a stole, I discovered quality yarns. I found a Jo Sharp pattern book and some yarn in a gift shop in Olinda. Love at first sight! I bought the book and I bought the yarn. I ordered more and paid for it to be posted to my office. I started looking for good wool on the internet.
The next couple of years were the stash years. I bought up wool for projects at every sale, I made regular trips across town to visit the high-end wool shops. And finally, I had a thought - why hadn't I found this amazing stuff earlier? The answer was, because I lived in Melbourne's northern suburbs. Traditionally, this was a less affluent area and so no-one had thought to open a flash wool shop there.
From there, it was only a short step to realise that now Melbourne's inner northern suburbs are doing very nicely thank you - maybe well enough to support a high end wool shop, if one should chance to open... About six months after I worked this out, I signed a rental contract for 234 High St and sank most of my savings into stock. And, in the best tradition of online help, we end up back at the beginning - with me opening my doors for the first time on 8/8/08...
On 8/8/08, I opened CCCK, a wool shop in the Melbourne suburb of Northcote. If I start the story of the wool shop at the beginning, I'd start with my mother teaching me how to knit when I was about four. Like most kids, as soon as I started school, I caught every cold, flu, gastric bug and miscellaneous ailment going - plus all the primary school standbys of mumps, measles, chicken pox etc etc. I stayed home and was bored, sick and stroppy. Mum (bless her!) decided that she would teach me how to knit and do simple tapestry work. Looking back, it amazes me that she didn't decide to throttle me instead, because I must have been a major pain in the backside. But she didn't, and so (indirectly) CCCK was born...
I enjoyed knitting. I kept going, even when I stopped being sick. I graduated from printed canvas kits to counted cross stitch embroidery and moved from garter stitch scarves and beanies to more complex designs. On the train to uni, I knitted. People looked at me oddly, but that may have been because I was going through a Goth phase and there weren't that many people around with pink hair and long, black skirts. I got a job and commuted to work, still knitting. People still looked at me oddly. (Eventually, I found my dream job as a technical writer and people looked at me even more oddly, but that's another story).
Finally, almost thirty years after the first fumbling efforts to knit Barbie a stole, I discovered quality yarns. I found a Jo Sharp pattern book and some yarn in a gift shop in Olinda. Love at first sight! I bought the book and I bought the yarn. I ordered more and paid for it to be posted to my office. I started looking for good wool on the internet.
The next couple of years were the stash years. I bought up wool for projects at every sale, I made regular trips across town to visit the high-end wool shops. And finally, I had a thought - why hadn't I found this amazing stuff earlier? The answer was, because I lived in Melbourne's northern suburbs. Traditionally, this was a less affluent area and so no-one had thought to open a flash wool shop there.
From there, it was only a short step to realise that now Melbourne's inner northern suburbs are doing very nicely thank you - maybe well enough to support a high end wool shop, if one should chance to open... About six months after I worked this out, I signed a rental contract for 234 High St and sank most of my savings into stock. And, in the best tradition of online help, we end up back at the beginning - with me opening my doors for the first time on 8/8/08...
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