A little over two years ago, we moved into a building about twice as big as our original location. And it's just not working. We really, really need more room!
Right now, we have about 15 - 20 unopened boxes of new products from American Crafts, Crate Paper, Pebbles, Studio Calico, Echo Park, Fancy Pants, and other companies. There are probably 10-12 other new collections that are priced and ready to go, yet they're stacked in our storeroom waiting for a spot to open up. There's no room to display these new goodies. It's extremely frustrating.
This has been the same situation we've been dealing with for some time, and on a lazy afternoon a few weeks ago, we spent some time just walking through the store, thinking out loud, and trying to see what we could do to make room for more fixtures and more products.
Over the next few months, here are some changes we plan to attempt.
• Moving some existing fixtures to new spots;
• Eliminating one of the long rows of racks in the back of the store (parallel with the cardstock row) where only paper can be displayed;
• Purchasing some new fixtures;
• Removing the K & Company displays in the front windows and replacing them with some type of slatwall displays;
• Covering the windows into the classroom with slatwall;
• Adding slatwall in some places to form u-shaped areas and create more wall space.
Some of these improvements will require no disruption of shopping. The ones that will be disruptive will be done after store hours (helps when you have a construction guy in the family)!
We're really excited about the improvements and can't wait to get started. Along with the changes mentioned above, we want to re-configure some shopping zones. For example, we would like to have an area dedicated to Project Life-type products. Right now, we have it scattered everywhere -- stamps, stickers, cards, Echo Park Photo Freedom items, Simple Stories Sn@p items, and more. In May, we'll be getting the entire massive American Crafts Project Life product line, so we want to make it easy to find items for that style of scrapbooking.
Another area that needs consolidation is cardmaking. We want to expand what we have to offer for cardmakers, and have an area dedicated to that topic. We've tried a few rubber stamps in the past, but we really want to go big in that area, plus add to our supplies of small embellishments suited to cardmaking.
So, over the next few months we're going to do everything we can to pack more product into our existing space, but at the same time keeping it a comfortable place to shop. We'll keep you informed each step of the way!
And to keep you wondering...no, this isn't our big news! Hope to tell you that by the end of the month!
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