Post-Holidays Feelings
It’s been two months since my last journal entry because, 1. we have been busier than before the holidays and 2. I have been busy pulling things together for tax season 😑.
A lot of people are asking, “How’s the business going?” and I am happy to say we are doing quite well! Before the holiday season in December, we were busier every month we were open, but we weren’t breaking even or anything. Finally, December arrived and it was like a switch turned on and people found us.
One day, in the first week of December, Chloe called me and said we sold out of almost all our holiday stamps. I thought I had bought a lot, but now I see that I only bought about 20% of all the stamps we would sell in December. So, I went to the local post office and stood in line for 40 minutes to buy them OUT of all their holiday stamps. While the postal worker went to the back to get the stamps, the lady behind me said, “I thought I recognized you (she had overheard me say to the worker that I owned a store that sold stamps), what are you doing here?” I explained we already ran out of stamps, “…but the real question is what are YOU doing here?” She said she was shipping internationally and I told her we shipped internationally. Then I took the opportunity to talk a bit louder so others in line could hear, “If you need to ship any packages and don’t want to wait in line, come over to Arden Dispatch at the corner of Watt and Arden across from Arden Middle School. We ship USPS, FedEx, and UPS!” I spit it all out as fast as I could before the postal worker returned with my stamps. She stepped out right when I was done with my spiel. I turned around and acted like nothing happened. 😊
Another day, four people came in one after the other and they all shared this story: they were in line at the Bel Air customer service desk. The line went outside into the parking lot when a lady was passing the line as she went in for groceries and said, “Arden Dispatch down the road doesn’t have lines.” Those four people got out of line, and we helped them immediately and efficiently. None knew we existed and all are now our customers. Thank you, lady who shops at Bel Air and supports us!
I wondered what life after the holidays would be like for this small, independent shipping/gift store. Would people continue to come here for their business needs? For shipping? Did they like our customer service? Did our gifts entice them to shop here in the future? The answer is yes. On average we have doubled our monthly gross income since the Fall, and we hope it continues to increase as the year progresses.
Thank you to everyone who has put out amazing reviews and support our small, family business.