END TABLES WANTED

Once again, has anybody got any end tables they want to sell on consignment? Night tables?
These are requested more than anything else in my store.

TURTLES, RADAR AND PAINFUL (GREEN) SHINGLES

Awhile ago I was driving along one of the back roads between Stayner and Creemore and there, crossing the highway, was a turtle that had to be, from the tip of its tail to the end of its outstretched nose – honest to God – 24 inches long. I’m still thinking about it, mostly from guilt, because I should have parked my car and lifted this leathery old guy to the other side of the road.

Speaking of driving, I’ve noticed that many oncoming Highway 26 drivers have reclaimed the long lost habit of blinking their lights to warn people about upcoming radar traps. I like this far better than the sanctimonious If-you’re-speeding-you-deserve-to-get-caught attitude we have embraced for the last 15 years.

Construction of Collingwood’s downtown waterfront continues and we look forward to the new development and all it will offer. I’m sure it will look wonderful when it’s completed. But am I alone in thinking that the new rows of condos, with their tiny windows and green roof shingles, look more like subsidized housing than cutting-edge urban vision?

WE RE-CYCLE

I love Yaardsale. I love the fact that I re-cycle furniture and do good, however incidentally, for the environment. And that I’m physically tired when I get home at night – it makes that first glass of red wine taste so much better. I love the relationships that have developed with repeat clients who come in here in support of my store, bringing me wonderful consignment pieces and buying likewise. And educating me. Most of my regular customers know far more about what I sell than I do, from the kinds of wood to the types of fabric.

YAARDSALE PEOPLE I LIKE

A few more clients and customers I have been privileged to meet: Valerie Lippay out of Owen Sound, Helen & Gord Clarke (Collingwood), Ralph and Carolyn MacDonald, Beth Taylor, Genny Horn, Fran Morgan, Kathy & Don Evanson, Lori Rohlig. There are many others.

NO HOLDS: BARRED

It only takes one or two customers to create new rules which hurt everyone. I no longer, as a courtesy, put holds on furniture. Why? Because a few customers have failed to come in to pay for items that they’ve phoned me to save for them. Nor have they even called back to explain why. By putting a hold on a furniture piece, I am effectively taking it off the sales floor to allow people to determine if they really want to buy it.

Another courtesy I’ve been forced to drop is allowing customers to take smaller pieces home for an evening to see if they fit in with their decors. Some time ago I allowed a customer who has visited Yaardsale on more than one occasion to take home a small boudoir chair so that she could see if it would work in one of her rooms. Almost a week later I had to phone her to see about this chair. I assumed, since she had it that long, that she was taking it and just hadn’t got around to coming in to pay for it. Wrong! She called back and left a message that she wasn’t taking it and that she’d return it. The next day she had her son bring it in without so much as a thank you for letting me try it.

Yaardsale is staying, for the time being, with its 65% to the Owner/35% to the store consignment split (as long as the owners deliver their goods to me). But I can no longer apply this if I have to hire a worker to help me pick up consignment furniture at people’s homes. In that case, depending upon the value of the furniture, the split will most likely change to 60%/40%. Eventually I’m going to have to charge for pickups and deliveries..

ANOTHER THING I DON’T UNDERSTAND ABOUT MEAFORD

I purchased a duplex here about 5 years ago. In part because real estate prices in Collingwood and Thornbury had gone through the roof. The ‘wave’, I was told, was about to roll through Meaford. And with Lora Bay being built, there was no stopping it. Well, where is it? Shouldn’t our well-defined downtown strip be a rainbow of colourful, successful shops and boutiques by now? It is as if there is an invisible business barrier crossing Highway 26 somewhere between Meaford and Thornbury. Downtown Meaford, if I am to believe some of the merchants here, is far from thriving.

OVERCHARGED ONLINE (AND MY VERY HAPPY ENDING)

I suppose, like everyone else, I’ve become cynical about large corporations and customer service. There was a time when companies like Bell were trusted institutions which would quickly make right anything they had made wrong.

But that was a generation or three ago and we have all since had our nightmares with phone and cable and online institutions. Today, if a mistake is made, no matter whose fault, the financial burden is passed directly to the customer.

Which brings me to an online outfit called Isagenix and to a friend who is, among other wonderful things, a fitness fanatic and a role model for health. She is a person who seems to, in every facet of her life, lead by deed and example rather than with words or ego.

I, on the other hand, am overweight and undisciplined in my commitment to health. So, on the day Yaardsale opened, this friend, Anita, came to lend support and we ended up talking about Isagenix, a multi-level marketing company which she belongs to. Isagenix calls itself the World Leader in Nutritional Cleansing and Anita was confident that it would be beneficial to me as a weight loss program.

Because I believed in Anita and was too consumed with Yaardsale at the time to think about anything else, I suggested we go online and order the magic elexir then and there. And so we did.

More than $300 shortly thereafter, my first month’s supply of Isagenix food alternatives arrived. But my head was totally into retailing at the time, and not at all into health. My Isagenix groceries got shoved into a cupboard.

Realizing that my next month’s supply would soon be arriving I decided to go online and push back the shipment. Which I did, or so the Isagenix website told me. And I relaxed for a month, until one night I got a phone call from UPS telling me my next box of supplies had arrived and where did I want it delivered?

I didn’t, I told them, and refused to accept the package. Next morning I phoned my credit card company (this is a secondary credit card that I sometimes use and I’m not online with it) and asked if I had more billings from Isagenix and they say that, yes, two more billings had been processed and couldn’t be reversed. They suggested that I cancel the credit card and order a new one.

So now I have two more billings amounting to close to another $600, and no product. I found and phoned an 800 number for Isagenix, which was becoming more and more like an invoicing monster than a legitimate business to me as I waited, seemingly forever, for someone to talk to.

Eventually, my line was picked up and an Isagenix representative, who said she was in Phoenix (there is no Canadian office), listened to me and told me that she would terminate my membership and that she would ask Isagenix Accounting to credit me for the two extra months. I asked her to send me an email confirming my refund but she said that she couldn’t do that as it was another department that would send back my money, and that it would take at least 30 days.

Yeah, sure, I thought. Isagenix is going to send me back my money 30 days from now. And Santa’s coming by my house next Tuesday to discuss what I want for Christmas.

Get over it, I told myself. It’s only money, not life and death. You’ve learned another lesson in life. Don’t buy anything else online. Just let go. You can’t fight every battle. And you should have known better by now than to hook up with an online multi-level marketing company in the first place.

And so, I just let go (for the first time in my life) and more or less forgot about it. Until about a month later when I picked up my mail and saw the first billing from my new replacement credit card. Opening it, to disbelieving eyes, there were two full months worth of credits from Isagenix.

Sometimes, I guess, life is fair. This time a large online corporation showed a craggy old cynic that not all things digital are bad, and that there are real people behind some of those shiny websites. Kudos to Isagenix for putting a salve on my skeptic nerve. First class. But what else could you expect from a company that’s got an endorsement from my friend Anita.

BE NICE TO YOUR KIDS. THEY’LL BE CHOOSING YOUR NURSING HOME!

Note to Helena Guergis:
I won’t be voting for you next time.

Clients and customers who brighten this store every time they come in: Susan Harpur, a woman named Burgundy, Joseph Sheffer, Julie Pecnik, Jane Logan, Sandra Coburn, Penny Young. There are others. Actually, I’m seeing repeat customers from Collingwood, Thornbury, Owen Sound, even Wasaga Beach.

Sales Report: Hey, I’ve just finished up my second month at Yaardsale. Sales have more than exceeded expectations. In fact, I doubled my sales budget for last month.

Things done right: (1) Customers constantly tell me how much they love the Yaardsale signs, and (2) they repeatedly remark about how fair the prices are.

Things done wrong: Three-month consignment contracts. Far too long. So I’ve shortened them from 12 weeks to 9 weeks. 

What’s selling: End tables (Has anybody got any end tables?), beds and bedroom sets, high chests, prints, console and sofa tables, desks, wing chairs and upholstered arm chairs, storage boxes, corner cabinets, country chic (most things made out of pine or oak), settees, sectionals, leather….

What’s NOT selling: Large dining sets and large sofas (unless they’re exceptional), traditional and French Provincial furniture, lamps, Asian pieces, rocking chairs….

Do things like this ever nag at you? How much deeper would the ocean be without sponges?

Balance: I’ve been trying to keep a balance of purchased vs. consignment furniture. For the most part, the consignment pieces have been antique or bordering-on-antique and I was coming to the conclusion that so many had warned me about: antiques are no longer in vogue. And so it seemed, until a lovely woman from Wiarton, seeing my website, came in and purchased my flagship piece, a 100 year old oak double bed with an 80" headboard, along with a handsomely carved settee which was sitting in one of my windows. And she was buying it to put in a new home she was building. So today’s conclusion is: antiques may not fetch the larger sums they did 10 years ago, but they’ll sell if the price is right.

Something I know for sure: A clean desk is a sign of a cluttered desk drawer.

Thank You: to the Meaford BIA, for the beautiful plant you sent.

You’re a bit late: In late December, and then in early January, I applied for an outside sign permit for Yaardsale, as the store was opening on February 13^th. As my deadline drew closer I emailed  to the town clerk that the permit was badly needed. No response. So I hired an expensive professional installer who I knew would do the installation to code. Last week, to my surprise, I received a bill for $75 from the Town for approval of the sign permit. Thank you, but you’re just a little bit late. Amazing that a town which has very little business needs three months to issue a permit, but you can get one in two to three days in Collingwood, which is, in comparison, booming. So I did a poll of Meaford merchants; it would seem that I’m the only one who has ever applied for a sign permit in Meaford.

And Why Can’t We… keep Governor General Michaelle Jean?

I’M OPENING A FURNITURE STORE, WHY IS THERE NO PLACE TO SIT DOWN?

I’m opening a furniture store, why is there no place to sit down?

I am standing at my kitchen counter eating breakfast, watching the early morning news.  I am standing because there is no place to sit down, other than the floor. There is no furniture in my kitchen, nor in the rest of my Meaford house.

     Financial wisdom says that, when you’re starting a new business, pay yourself first.  Instead, I have moved the bulk of my furniture into my new Yaardsale store, and I don’t have a dime to show for it.  Of course, I don’t open until tomorrow.

     But I am enjoying this empty house. It means I will have completely different furniture in a few days, and this agrees with me.  I love change of every kind: of property, of geographical residence, of vehicles, and of vocation and working flexibility.  I have never properly appreciated the roots of life, which is what small town living is all about: the grounded values and sensibilities of family, of neighbourhood, of generational homes and businesses, of social life.

     One or two friends have suggested that the daily structure and routine of tending to a store may become my ball and chain.  Time will tell.
 
Thank you, Meaford
     A warm thank you to all of the people of Meaford who, since the Yaardsale signage went up three days ago, have dropped in to say hello and wish me well.  I’ve met retailers, potential buyers, people with furniture to sell, a councillor, even Grandma Lambe (and she’s really grandmotherly…a lovely, warm woman).

     Virtually everyone has commented favourably on the Yaardsale name and on the furniture.  When I apologized to one man about how cold it was in the store – it was 8C (apparently my leased space has no insulation whatsoever) – he went home and came back with a space heater.  All I know is that his name is Helmut.  I asked for his number so that I could return the heater but he waved me off, saying he’d get it back some day when the weather warmed.  This could never happen in the city.

Airports could be more fun
     Just reading another newspaper debate about full body scanners versus pat downs?  I think the airports should hire beautiful security guards so that, if you don’t want the scan, you get a pat down from someone who turns you on.  And they should offer a Preferred Patdown Service, where you pay an extra $10 to be body searched by the guard of your choice.  And then, like they do on vacation tours, they should give you the option of buying the video.

 
Gottagettowork.  Open tomorrow.