The Up Hill Climb Just Never Ends

I'm in the middle of my 4th week at Office Max and have gotten my first paycheck last week.  That came and went down the hole left by me being out of work for 3 months.  Cameron is getting paid extra for playing music for some sort of special event hosted by the BMW dealership, but, that too is going towards filling in the holes.  I even had to pull money from my business account to help out during that period.

I fear our timing for "starting over" was horribly ill-timed.  Santa  Fe is an expensive place to live in many ways and the wages seem high to an outsider but the cost to live hear is higher than we expected.  With no alternative currently in sight, we keep trudging up the hill.

Through costly trial and error, I think I have a handle on how to do business here.  I've tried pushing the online sales, but haven't had the time or energy to put all the items up on the website, and have only had 2 sales from it. I tried catalog sales, but as this is the land of tomorrow, the excited customers who took my catalogs home, never followed through and now those catalogs are lost.  Now, I'm going with the party circuit.  I've made some fairly good sales, but still not enough to recover from the past few months.  I had to purchase items for demonstrations, some rather costly, as well as all the display related items.  The parties seem to be a good way to go for now.  I have a captive audience and the group drive to make a purchase seems to encourage the "tomorrow" people to buy now.

One cool thing about being in this industry as an independent retailer is that I'm not tied to any particular company, thus, I can order from any one I choose. For example, I've been working with a blanket company to create an indoor waterproof blanket.  They have focused on outdoor ones for years and toyed with the idea of making an indoor one but hadn't made the move.  Now they are and I give direct recommendations for feel and uses and they listen!  They are based just outside of Seattle and all the blankets are US made.  Very high quality.  Another project in the works is with a local salon that makes gift baskets for their customers and they include products like mine.  Unfortunately for them, a very pretty looking line caught their eyes some time ago, but the products are not especially good to use.  Now they are trying to get rid of them and want something new to offer customers.  One more thing in the works is a connection with a company who makes pasties.  I already carry a beautiful line of them, but in order to re-use them, you must have the proper glue.  While searching for a source for the glue, I stumbled upon this company that make them and even does custom ones.  They have no problem with retailers putting their own brand name on them, either.  I am expecting a sample package of their work any day now.

Future plans include the Gay Pride festival in June.  A huge money maker, but stock is definitely needed, especially the impulse buy kind.  A friend of mine does club nights at local bars and said I could set up a table there.  Items $20 and under for quick purchases will be best for that. Unfortunately, he has stopped for the winter and won't be starting up again until late spring.  A woman who is a hotel concierge at one of the local places in town, recommended that I make up gift baskets that they can keep on site.  Most run about $75, but if mine were nice and only in the $35 range, they would be very popular.  These all require stock on hand.  A big investment.  Now that I'm employed again, perhaps that is a possibility, yet.

As far as my job is concerned.  It's OK, but the hours are killing me.  I've never understood why they have to assign different hours each week.  I never know what my hours will be until Saturday afternoon, when they post the schedule for the next week.  It makes planning a nightmare and the business difficult to focus on.   I'm keeping my eyes open for a job with regular hours so I can make greater headway on the business and not be so exhausted all the time.  (Back to back shifts should be illegal.  Closing the store at close to 10pm one day and opening at 8am the next is brutal.)  It takes me awhile to unwind after closing so bedtime is usually about 11pm.  Not much time for anything near a relaxing night.  One really cool aspect of my job is that lots of artists come to the print center to make note cards of their work or some other item.  I get to see the work of many local artists and usually I can get an autographed copy of whatever they brought in.  I enjoy meeting all the different people, but I have to watch my visiting, though I find them fascinating.

Caffeine is a good friend of mine these days.

Cameron is doing pretty well. For someone who is not a people person, he does amazingly well with the customers and establishing a rapport with them.  He had a lot of cleaning up to do when he first started as the prior service advisor had really done his part to lower the rating on this dealership, not to mention a bit of a paperwork fiasco that took months to fix.  It's been hard on him much of the time, but he keeps plugging along.  Now that they know his skills as a musician, he gets to play at several of the big promotional events that are held, two of them this week.  Today he'll be in Albuquerque and since I have the day off, I'll get to go and be the photographer and general support person.  It should be interesting.  Yesterday they had the same event up here, at the Santa Fe dealership. It's funny, they're willing to pay him decently for doing musician work, but not for the job he currently does.  It's a very weird way of doing things.

I'm very excited that Madeline, my daughter, and her fiance'  are coming to visit at Christmas.  It will be nice to have her around for brief time she is here, not to mention being able to meet my future son-in-law. I hope we get some snow for them.  It's been a very dry winter, so far.  Little rain and only a very light dusting of snow on a couple of occasions.  Quite a lot of wind, though. A very big difference from last year and rather disappointing.  There's still lots of possible snow days so we'll hope for some in the near future.

My car is in terrible need of repairs such as tires, brakes and an oil change.  All of which are way overdue and out of any perceived budget.  Cameron has worked out a deal with another mechanic and friend down in Albuquerque who has an older Toyota Tercel that he has gone through and serviced every thing.  It has less mileage than mine does and he wants to trade it for the engine from the crashed bike.  We've hauled that thing with us through every move and I am looking forward to getting rid of it. We'll probably keep the Saturn and gradually get it up to a safer level of care, and have it as a back up vehicle.  One thing that is cheap here is vehicle registration.  Just a flat $45 for each vehicle, no matter how old or new it is.  Much better than California's which is based on vehicle value.  What that has to do with wear and tear on the roads is beyond me. Santa Fe doesn't have any emissions checks, like Albuquerque does, which is also nice.

Well, this is enough for now.  I wish my spirits were better and I try my best to look to the future, but like a little kid, the present keeps tugging on me for attention.