Hey y’all. It’s Betsy.
Since we’ve announced to our friends and family that we are opening up a new store, we’ve seen a lot of the same questions over and over. It’s been wonderful to receive feedback from y’all and thank you. Many of our close peeps know that this has been a long time dream. It’s actually the reason we became bloggers!
So, I’m here to answer the questions that we have been getting from our loved ones for anyone else that is equally curious. If you have any more, we’re all about em. Just drop us a line in the comments.
What kind of investment is required for the TEOT venture?
Many of the questions we have received are polite ways of asking “how much money do you make?” or better… “how the hell can you afford to start a new business?”
I like this question the most because of the ways that people ask it, or don’t ask it, even if they want to know.
And HEY, I know its the one question that I want to ask every business owner that I look up to.
So here is a semi-transparent answer. TEOT, the shop, has no investors. Last Spring, we started out with an experiment. We took about $1,000 worth of vintage African textiles and made a collection of pillows. After turning the profits from that initial collection over a few times through more pillow sales and some vintage goods sales via Chairish, Amazon, Etsy and our own website – we arrived at a relatively steady source of income that we can measure and control. Within about 6 months, we’d hit the $15k revenue stream, all from building on top of the $1k initial investment.
I think that a lot of small business owners do a lot of crazy projections, and I didn’t want to get too creative with our estimates. At the same time, this was encouraging growth and we did see lots of opportunity to expand into other collections, and other sales platforms. For a long time after we hit the $15k mark, we still wondered if we could make this thing work. While $15k from $1k sounds like great growth for a 6 month period –it’s only net revenue growth. After you categorize all of the finances, and look back out over cost of goods and the dollars needed to level up – we still weren’t going to be putting dinner on the table with that money anytime soon.
So we DID take a loan. More on that below.
How did you know that now is the time?
It’s now or never. Why do we say that? Because simultaneously, Sarah and I both ended up free and looking for what is next. While we were looking it became apparent that this could be serendipity. What else would we wait for?
But we had been taking a soft route for over a year with minimal risk. We had experimented and we had planned and we had wondered. BUT THEN…
WE came across this for rent sign on a sweet little location just off the main drag in downtown Southern Pines, and we called. And it was legit. We realized that with the profits from our web sales alone, we were making the rent. So, we really had to ask ourselves, WHY NOT.
Will you sell more than pillows?
We got our start on an experiment with sewing up vintage textiles, and so pillows will always be near and dear to us.
But, we didn’t set out to be a pillow company, so heck yes!
Since Sarah and I met in college we’ve shared the passion for picking up select items from local thrift stores an antique malls. Vintage items, from large furniture pieces to special accessories and collectible items will be an important part of our store offering.
Meanwhile, since we started all of this, I have been bitten by the product development bug. Now we are straight up trying to design furniture while also curating the wide offering of home decor classics and global finds that the wholesale world has to offer. We have long loved the idea of traveling around the world to bring back global goods too, so believe us when we say that global goods are another important element of the TEOT shop experience.
To recap, that’s PILLOWS. VINTAGE. CLASSIC FURNITURE. CURATED HOME GOODS, HEIRLOOM PIECES. plus GLOBAL GIFTS.
Why Southern Pines, NC?
This is where Sarah lives, and she is going have to be the shopkeeper!
It’s a relatively small community in North Carolina that is in a moment of growth. There are about 30,000 in the area of the Sandhills. It sits at the crossroads of a bevy of interests from golf to the equestrian lovers. The arts and entertainment scene is legit. The homes of the historic community are a major source on inspiration and Sarah’s family company Beaver Path has been a part of the renovation effort that is sweeping the town’s distinctive craftsman and cottage architecture.
We love the Sandhills community and are very much looking forward to becoming a part of the commercial landscape of downtown Southern Pines.
How do you and Sarah split your duties if the store is in North Carolina and you are in California?
It’s actually pretty easy to split needs when you are drowning in them! There is plenty for each of us to do. There is a fair amount of work that goes into marketing, editing photos and listing products on the website. We still have the blog and all the social media accounts. There is a fair amount of customer support that goes into the web orders too.
But Sarah is going to quite literally be doing the heavy lifting. We are hoping to hire a part time shopkeeper to help her out with customer support and sales in the store. It is of utmost importance to us that the folks that drop by our shop feel welcomed and easy breezy, so having the right person there that is dedicated to that moment will be paramount. Frankly, managing the day to day with tons of web orders, shipping, new arrivals, product photography… I have a feeling its going to be a bit of a hustle. But how will we afford to put dinner on someone else’s table before we can put it on our own!
We also know how much communication we should be doing with the national design and home decor lovers community online and that requires a ton of research and salutation. We do not have any 3rd parties helping us out with marketing or advertising or press or any of that great stuff that we know we’d need if we wanted world domination.
