Sunday, June 8, 2014

Location and inventory update!

Another week and our location wrangling continues *sigh*. We'll get there eventually! We're continuing to discuss the downtown property with the landlord and his contractors but still don't have a counter offer back so we'll see what happens with that this week...hopefully. We've been pursuing a couple of other spots in newer shopping areas in Vancouver. They cost a bit more but are newer, nicer locations and have the benefit of more, cheaper (free!) parking. Any of them could be quite nice. We're still hoping for a mid-July opening date but still don't know for sure. Please stay tuned!

In the meantime we'll be placing an order for some Madelinetosh and SweetGeorgia tomorrow, since both of those brands take a bit longer between order and receipt.

From Madeline tosh we'll have a selection of 32 colors of Tosh Merino Light and 35 of Tosh DK as well as a complete set of Unicorn Tails! We see that a lot of retailers are marking these products at above MSRP...we don't have any plans to go beyond what Madelinetosh suggests we charge. We're also ordering a set of sample rings. The nice thing about Madelinetosh is that you can add to your order up until the point it goes in for dyeing so, if you like something we don't have on order we can special order it for you. It'll take a bit of time but we can get you what you want...and with 200+ colorways on their menu there's a lot to choose from!

From SweetGeorgia we'll have 20 colors of Tough Love Sock, 10 of Superwash DK, 10 of Superwash Worsted, and 10 of Superwash Chunky. The SweetGeorgia sock base blend includes 20% acrylic for better wear. Also from SweetGeorgia we'll have a small selection of hand-dyed fiber in a variety of colors and blends. We'll see about expanding this depending upon customer reception.

We'll post more about our opening inventory as we order (and receive!) it but won't be placing any more orders until we have our store lease figured out. Hopefully that will happen *very* soon!

What else has been going on? Apart from boring tasks like picking out fixtures and ferreting out the best point of sale system and figuring out what to do about a Web store we've been reaching out to representatives of manufacturers of spinning wheels, carders, and other essential equipment with an eye toward carrying several models when we open. We're also looking to Ashland Bay, a local provider of natural and dyed fibers, to help us fill out our unspun fiber collection.

More news as we have it!

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