Life

Well, life got in the way for a short time. Some good things, some bad things. We have a three year old australian shepherd that suffers from a severe case of epilepsy. Basically the drugs give us very little control (three of them now) and the drugs to treat her while having seizures are useless. So every 7-14 days we have a three day run of seizures. Not fun.

On the good side, today I got my driver's license!

I spent a bit of time relaxing tonight working on my Japanese fabric quilt - fabrics my sister living in Japan had sent me a few years back. One thing I learned tonight is that there is always one side of the stitches that pulls out much easier then the other. The other thing I learned is that when you are doing strip quilting pay attention to how many strips you're doing. I now have to pick apart a great deal of strips.
Oh well, lesson learned!

Competition in Business

I'm a great believer in niches. There's space for everyone and everything, you just need to find out who, what, where, and why. When I decided that I wanted to open my own store I looked at similar stores in the area. There are the typical fabric stores like fabricland and a few independents. I haven't actually been to any of them and hope to make a visit in the next few weeks. I don't want to carry the same things as they do, I'd like to be complimentary, if I can. One thing to think about is demographics. When I worked for "BIGNAMERETAILER" they actually hired a consultant who looked at population, growth, spending habits etc. Obviously I can't do this, but I can look at the populations surrounding me currently, and what they will grow to in the next ten years. I can look at the stores currently in town, and see if I can figure out what makes one successful over another. Location? Quantity of product? Customer Service? I see locations in town that have had retailer after retailer open and close in the same location, so obviously that is a big clue. I guess it's true what they say, LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION!