Store where I have my 'Boof' (pronounciation courtesy of Little Man)
I was calling this "my booth in an antique store", but it's not really accurate. It just helps people understand what I'm talking about. The owner of the store where I have my booth doesn't even call it an antique store. There are antiques, but there are also vintage, handmade, upcycled, new, gift items...it's a mish-mosh of things.
So she now calls it an Upscale Thrift Boutique, that works for me.
Well, it's time to move again. I was asked to change booth spots and things moved pretty quickly. I discovered that my spot was open last night so today is moving day!
I thought I'd share my last set of booth pictures before I show you the new spot later in the week.
First of all, I gotta say that my Hubby is my Hero. I've said it before. He's highly supportive of my business and would actually love to quit his job and be part of it with me. I'm working on building it up and someday maybe he'll be able to! So he shops with me, cleans my items, does all my packaging for shipping, and lists his Man Finds (another post about that later) when he has time.
And... he helps at my booth.
These pictures were a couple months ago when I was right in the middle of first trimester and my energy was Nada. Zip. Zilch. I basically sat and watched while he rearranged my whole booth. (A necessary job when running a booth...gotta keep things fresh!)
Today he will be indispensible. Moving the whole booth is a pretty big job. He's got that ability to quickly see what goes where and fit it in. You should see how much he can fit in the back of our car on vacation!! When I see something at a thrift store and I say, 'Will it fit in the car?' He just shrugs and says "Of course it will."
This big oak cabinet/bookshelf just sold yesterday, thank goodness. It sold to another vendor and fits her style very nicely. It was an original fixture when we first opened the booth and was used as display out of desperation. It is super heavy, so we hadn't gotten around to replacing it. It wasn't going to survive the move so the timing of selling it was perfect!!
You can see I experimented on selling shoes at the booth. These belonged to a friend who wanted me to sell them online. I decided to try them here first since they weren't major high end brands. More than half of them have already sold, so that was good!
A lot of this is already different. See these lovely bifold doors? Hubby again. Made me dividers like this for pretty much the whole booth. It's nice to have a background and not see the back of what the next vendor is selling. In this spot, he also built me an amazing clothing closet out of a vintage door. I'll get pictures when it's moved into it's new spot. I know it's hard to picture. :)
Overall, the booth has been fun. November was a slow month. We pretty much broke even with the rent. Then December was amazing!! Then January was back to being bad. (Weather related issues..) This month seems to have started off pretty well. We should see some sales after the move as well. Things always look new in a new spot!
I don't make tons of money with this. It's mostly a hobby at this point. An experiment. And a place to keep things available for sale instead of in storage. I can't get around to listing all this stuff online at once..so it gets a chance here first. If it sells, great! If not, I can give it another chance online. Of course all my items that would sell for REALLY good money online, don't come here first!
As we get closer to Baby #2 (a boy, did I tell you?) I'll probably scale back the space. I already talked to the owner about possibly getting a smaller space for awhile. She was understanding and said she'd halve my rent and then move some of her stuff into the other half. So that should take some pressure off, come spring.
So that's my update. I'll get pictures of the new spot in here ASAP!!
