What Have I Gotten Myself Into?
It’s opening day, and I have all the feels!
In case you hadn’t heard, I am opening my first ever retail spot inside Third Thursdays, which is a vintage market located inside Merchant Square, an antique mall in Independence, Missouri.
I’m a little bit excited, a little bit nervous, a little bit overwhelmed, a little bit confident, a little bit unsure, a little bit country, and a little bit rock and roll. (Sorry, I had to!)
And I’m a whole lot tired! It’s a LOT of work, paint-stained hands and sanding dust covered shoes and pants! A ton of preparation has gone into this event. And it is an ever changing, ever evolving, and never-ending process. Which is partly why it is so much fun! Each month at this market is going to be an entirely new and different theme, which means I get to do more digging through people’s cool old stuff for fresh product, more driving around town, more cleaning up of said product, sometimes refinishing or repurposing, pricing, staging and more waking up thinking “crap, I forgot to…” Also involved will be a bunch of running around my house like an insane person shouting things like “where the heck did I put {insert random object here}? I literally just had {random object} in my hand like 30 seconds ago!”
Any number of items fall into the ‘random object’ category. Take for example the oh, say, 1,489 pairs of scissors I own, yet can never find. Or the 21 rolls or Scotch tape we packed when moving across town 15 years ago and promptly lost 1 month later. True story. Couldn’t find a single roll, anywhere. Had to buy 2 more. And then there were 23, 22 of which are lost! But I digress.
Anyway, I understand now why things cost so much, which is another topic I’ll probably talk about in another blog post.
I’m very proud to have been selected to be a vendor at this market! The other vendors all have AMAZING finds! I feel I’m in very good company! I’m not gonna lie - I’m a little jealous of all the cool things they have, and how much they have of it! It’s mind boggling how much stuff some of them have brought in. I have to keep reminding myself that some of these people have been doing this for a while, and this is my first time!
I’ve learned a ton during this whole process, but the most important lesson is this:
I need to trust my gut!
I’ve bought a few things not knowing much about them or if they were a good buy, and it turned out they were. I’ve also passed on a couple of things I really wanted because of that same reason, only to regret it later. The most recent example was an beautiful OLD violin in it’s case. It looked like it was in pretty good condition, but I had misread the price and was taken aback when I went to pay for it. So I passed. Bad decision. I’m still sick about it! It was gorgeous and would have gone perfectly with my theme. Live and learn.
And do it all again next month! Wish me luck!