Hey out there it's been a while!
I definitely fell out of the habit of posting these little updates. I guess the last one would have been 5 years and I probably didn't write one because we were in the middle of COVID or just coming out of it? IDK.
It's been one year since I uprooted my Natick shop after 9 years in business and plopped myself down off street-level and in a completely new town. If you're new here, you might be like "Why TF you do that??" and maybe you've been here since the beginning and are STILL wondering that. I wouldn't blame you. I am sometimes still asking myself what I was thinking.
I always said I would never leave Natick and after the move to Main Street I REALLY never wanted to move again. My new big store was gorgeous. It had a hand-painted mural I cried when I saw completed. Friends from out of state came to my grand opening and I had a line around the block when I unlocked the doors for the first time.
Then came the real work. Running a big store like that is a huge amount of work, energy, and expense. Work I can do, but I was starting to run real low on energy and an economic downturn meant I was getting nervous about expenses. 3 years went by and I didn't realize until later that every time I rearranged my sales floor, I was also shrinking it. I would push the shop and all my interactions with customers further and further away from me.
Then came the news: the owner of my building had sold. My space was priced unbelievably below market value and a new owner almost definitely meant a rent adjustment. Coupled with the toll running the shop was taking on me, I made the brutal decision to move.
People would come in and ask "So why are you REALLY moving..." and I don't know what they were looking for, but our answer was always the same: the building had sold and the big space just wasn't what I wanted anymore. We are gonna take a step back and put more effort into wholesale and online."
There was a third element I didn't tell anyone which was that it was Rob's and my intention to move far from the shop and I didn't want to dump running a huge store on my mom. If she (the shop) was a well-oiled machine I probably wouldn't have thought about it but we had just lost our 2 super-dependable employees and mom lives 30-40 mins from the shop on a good day. Everything was just on shaky ground.
Packing up and taking everything out was crushing. Everything happened so fast that I didn't really have time to process it all. I cried so many times. Every time I looked up at "Welcome to Calliope" I went to pieces. Later, when I would visit Natick Center, and the space was still vacant, I couldn't walk by or look inside. I'd feel the loss all over again.
When we opened in Hudson (another rushed process) we had our grand opening and someone came in and said they wouldn't have known it was a grand opening and that about did me in.
But they were right. My usual fanfare wasn't there. I didn't have any signs. I honestly thought all I had to do was just open the door and people would come and that was my biggest mistake and one I still kinda kick myself over. Moving to Hudson was more like completely starting over than I realized.
No one here knew me or my shop. I wasn't on street level; I was on the 4th floor of a mill building. Worst of all: VERY few people from Natick came. Over time I came to find out most of them thought I just closed up for good, despite saying over and over I was moving. Those first few months were awful. No one was coming upstairs. Mom and I were constantly crashing into each other because we weren't used to having NO space to move around plus all my Keep It Cutie stuff arrived and that meant any extra space we had was taken up by boxes.
More time passed and people asked me "How's the new space?? How's Hudson??" and my answer was always; "It's good! We're still getting settled but people are finding us." Most of that was a lie or a warped version of the truth which was very few people were finding us, we're tripping over each other plus crap everywhere and I am miserable and heartbroken.
I guess the turning point was Stationery Store Day. I didn't think I'd ever see the numbers (money or visitors) I used to see in Natick or have a line, but August 2nd came and I had a line that went all the way to the elevators (that's long) and I had THE BIGGEST DAY I had every had in the shop's history. I was fall-down tired and could not believe my eyes. The people came.
This was me at the beginning of the day and this was also me at the end of the day but my heart was there too.
I added a small sign downstairs outside the coffee shop and some small Ernie's to lead the way to our door. I started a Journaling Night. We've done events and a tradeshow. Now it's not a lie when I say "people are finding us" because they are and my little paper closet brings the people of Hudson a lot of joy.
We're still growing and changing and moving furniture so we ARE still getting settled but I finally feel like we're starting to find our place. Sometimes I still question my decision. Sometimes I still full-on regret it. But I decided and it's done. My old space is full now. My brightly colored stamps and snails have been painted over.
On New Year's Day this year I decided to just let it all go because the more I dwell on my past decisions the more I'll miss all the good stuff happening in Hudson. We still have days where we only make like $160 and those days are really tough to see and to deal with but every day is new.
Then another day, someone will come in and gush how my store makes them feel like a kid again or that they feel safe inside our walls.
There have been days when I didn't know if I would make it either emotionally or for-real financially but we keep moving forward. I keep planning new things and making new products and filling my shelves and I'll keep going as long as the shelves need filling and you still want to hear my voice.
I'm about to hit 10 years in business as a brick-and-mortar location and after that it seems like a drop-off into the unknown. I've been pushing myself toward 10 years as if it's some sort of end but it's not. It's just another milestone. Nothing comes after 10 but 11. But it FEELS like more to me; like at the end of The Neverending Story when Fantasia is destroyed and the buildings are floating rocks in space.
The end of something but also a beginning of something else.