First of all, a big THANK YOU to all our loyal customers, new customers and referrals who have supported us through our first six months in business. We wouldn't be here without you! This little shop is a dream come true and I'm grateful to all of you for supporting small business and shopping local!
So ready for a peek into the back room during Valentine's week?
Saturday February 14, 2009: It's our first Valentine's Day, the shop looks gorgeous all decked out with pinks and reds for the holiday. Hydrangea plants, begonias, orchids, kalanchoe and roses everywhere; chocolates, gifts, jewelry--so beautiful! We're ready to rock -n- roll!
Okay, so I'm not a believer in the perils of Friday the 13th....but....if you've been following my blog you know that we've had a run of crazy incidences at the shop over the past few months that could be called bad luck, Murphy's Law, testing my metal, whatever.
Murphy's Law kick in the butt number 1: The cooler situation at the shop is suitable for our everyday order load but not sufficient to hold all the flowers we had processed in for the holiday, so I ordered an evaporative cooler for our back room (swamp cooler to those of us who remember when they were called that). It arrived in plenty of time for us to get it set up and tested before our flowers arrived but, alas, it was defective. Okay, call the company, get return authorization, have a new one sent out.
In the meantime the day is approaching fast for our 2000 stems of flowers to hit the shop when our second cooler shows up and guess what? Even more defective than the first one! (Made in China...enough said) Anyway, I had to literally call all over town to track down one to rent, got it set up the day all our flowers came in and....and....and....did the ice-filled unit cool the back room sufficiently? No, of course not! Why would it? That would mean something was going my way!! LOL!!! Okay, so you're asking why not put in a small air conditioner? Thought about it--nowhere to vent it. So now we have about half of our flowers at room temperature blowing open two days before Valentine's Day. Sigh.....
Murphy's Law kick in the pants Number 2: That was Thursday, then comes Friday the 13th, the day before Valentine's Day. Now normally I don't even give Friday the 13th another thought and this year was no exception--I was too busy trying to pull together the shop's first V-Day.
Late in the afternoon it was discovered that customers had been trying to call my shop all day and had been connecting with a land development business nearby with a phone number not even close to the same digits as ours. One of our corporate clients tried 7 times to get through to us and every time ended up connected to the same wrong number--finally got through to us on try number eight. What the? We still don't know how many customers we lost because of this problem, nor has the phone company figured out what the problem was or still is. The development company told us they'd received "a lot" of calls for us but didn't have caller ID and didn't ask what numbers the people were calling from (why would they?) so we couldn't really even track down the area of town where a relay might be bad.
Okay, so the phone company had been made aware that their screwed up relays were making my life miserable, ticking off my customers and adversely affecting (to put it mildly) my business on the biggest day of the year and they better get it fixed yesterday. Now, moving on....
Saturday morning: So the phone problem aside (really it was out of my control at this point, time to get over it) on with the Valentine orders. My awesome designer Davi was kicking out orders to beat the band (she runs circles around me at the design table!) and hectic as it was, things were going smoothly. Deliveries were going out on time thanks to Super-Ken, Brian and my best friend Sylv, customers were making a lot of last-minute purchases of chocolates and gifts, and I looked up and guess what? It was snowing! I just had to laugh. Remember when I joked during the 2-week Christmas snowstorm that it would be my luck it would snow again on Valentine's Day? I think someone upstairs has a sense of humor. It only snowed big fluffy non-sticking flakes for about a half an hour, just enough to make me smile and shake my head.
What a silly week it was. In the end, we dealt with all the orders we could handle with our small crew and, when all was said and done our customers were happy....well, with the exception of one, but don't EVEN get me started on him--some people you just can't make happy no matter how far you bend over backwards to please them.
Once again though I remind myself how lucky I am to have a beautiful shop in a quaint setting with the support of a wonderful family, great friends and loyal customers. I wouldn't trade any of this for the world and know how blessed I am to even have a small business still open in this day and age. God bless and take care...oh and keep smiling!! It makes people wonder what you're up to.
Hi girlfriend,
It was an honor to be there on your first V-day of your business! It was fun to put smiles on some customer's faces and most importantly to catch up with my bestest bud! Your shop is great, I love hanging out there even if I do feel totally in the way. I'm up for more delivering on Mom's Day. If it snows that day....
Posted by: Sylv | February 17, 2009 at 08:46 AM
Congrats on your first V day Cin! Sounds like it was a challenging one all round. I wish I could have been there with you. BTW, do you have any close-ups of the Miss America jewellery? I'd love to see them. I love the earrings particularly! Love you. Hil
Posted by: hil | March 04, 2009 at 09:19 PM