10 August 2011

It's been a while - I miss all of you!

What I wouldn't give to have those lazy mornings back ... the ones over the winter and springtime where I could sit in my pj's well into the morning, and have coffee while catching up on you lovely bloggers. <3 Regardless, 3 months of hard work, sacrifice and a few bumps in the road and this is the result:





(Taryn my everfaithful employee, a true godsend let me tell you)




These photos were taken prior to our official opening and before I had a chance to unpack all of my smalls etc. It's much more stuffed, now. :)

Now, I'm not trying to brag but I will tell you all this, we opened our doors on Monday, officially. Today is Wednesday. As of today, most of the larger pieces are GONE and have been replaced with fresh pieces. Yes we sold them, and our heads are spinning over the sheer volume of people who have come in, armed with tape measures and cash. We have barely advertised, yet we have people waiting at the door when we open, people walking in when we're trying to close, and people telling their friends to come by and then meeting their friends there so that they can geek out over what we have.  The neighborhood is perfect for this type of store, the businesses have been super nice, helpful and excited over what we're selling.  The residents are a mix of young families, young hipsters, and gay couples with (clearly) great taste. Some people come in and just pull up a (Heywood Wakefield) chair and talk with us while we work about... well ANYTHING. Everyone is all so nice and I wish I had more time to actually spend there as it's such a fun place!! Taryn said her shifts are the quickest 10 hours she's ever had and she seems quite happy to be there. I will sing her full praises sometime soon; she is incredibly smart and helpful and rather sad that everything seems to be selling itself, she doesn't have to keep her selling skills honed... :)

I will take more photos soon, as the front window with the teal chair is pretty much revamped since almost everything in it has sold. We have an authentic Starkey Labs Egg Chair with working speakers to display starting this weekend ~ and a set of 3 Thonet chairs etc. Truthfully, the climate of the neighborhood isn't that of purists or label-whores. They just care about the quality and uniqueness. However, we couldn't resist the iconic lure of the Egg Chair.

It's been so long since I've had more than 3 hours of sleep a night, I've been a stressed out, forgetful, scatterbrained WRECK but after today, seeing the almost the whole entire floor change after only 3 days of business, well I feel like I can breathe now. A little. :)

The store of course has the basic web presences:

www.era-atomica.com
facebook

and a twitter that i'm actually forgetting the name i used on it (told you - scatterbrained and tired!) but it's ok, nothing really to see there at the moment... we've been too busy to promote! Crazy!

Ok I really need to get to bed. I wish I could read my blog feed but there's no way, I'm falling asleep on myself. I hope everyone is doing better than well and  I will try at catch up tomorrow.

x0
stacey

5 comments:

jamie@midcenturymania said...

Congratulations! How very exciting to own your own MCM store. That would be my dream but in my neck of the woods, it's not all that popular...the up side is of course that I'm one of the few who snatch up all the MCM goodness. Your store looks absolutely fabulous. Hope you catch a few hours of sleep.

Dana@Mid2Mod said...

Fantastic!!! I'm so thrilled for you. The store looks great, and it sounds like you're off to a wonderful start. I wish you the very best and hope you have as much fun with your store as we're having with ours.

It's great to sell that much, isn't it? We're still having to completely re-set the floor a time or two a week because things sell so quickly. What a thing to complain about, huh? LOL

My SIL just got back tonight from a buying trip out of state with another load. He just rented a warehouse for our excess inventory, and he's only been in business since March, so get ready to grow, grow, grow!

Again, I couldn't be happier for you.

stacey said...

Thank you for your awesome comments, ladies. (i can't sleep like i wanted to) I'll be honest ~ this was a dream of mine as well but the whole process *did* burn me out a little about MCM. I got a little sick of looking / dealing / arranging furniture. Going to hunt for the smalls was becoming a chore. Thankfully that has passed, and I think it's in part to the sheer enthusiasm coming from Taryn and the people who stop in and want to talk about it. My passion was renewed thanks to these people.

Dana ~ that is an amazing turnaround time for you! When you first opened I wouldn't of even been able to comprehend how great that is to refresh most of it 2x a week, but now I get it. I really thought the pottery and glasswares, lamps etc would be the big sellers but no one seems intimidated to get down and dirty to measure large pieces and carry them out. Another stroke of luck is that the homes and apartments in this neighborhood have narrow little staircases, tight turns, smaller archways etc. and the slim-lined furniture of that time period makes for not only easy moving, but rooms scaled better, with the modern, puffy sectionals gone and clunky breakfronts replaced with slimmer ones. We're using this as a huge selling point, and also utilizing this fact to now look for smaller, lower coffee tables, end tables etc.

since i'm up again, i will read the feed and see what everyone is up to! i kept meaning to post a thrift find monday post, as my (personal) finds have been insanely good (hall-mack, starburst doorplates, interesting planters etc) but maybe this monday i'll be able to!

monogirl said...

Congratulations Stacey! I had been wondering what happened to you and it's good to see your success!

Mr. Modtomic said...

That is so cool. I wish I had the hutspah (sp?) to open a shop...or an etsy store...or even sell on eBay. ::sigh:: You rock, obviously, and I wish you all success and luck.