Closed 9/26 and 9/27

We'll be closed Thursday, September 26th and Friday, September 27th for some final painting and other touchup. The Thursday morning knit session will proceed as planned, however.

Urban Wolves classes and workshops

We're pleased to announce the following upcoming classes and workshops. More details, and an up-to-date schedule, can be found on our website so please check there often for the latest.

September
9/21, 1 p.m. – 4 p.m., Dyeing Workshop

October
10/4, 1 p.m. – 2:30 p.m., Intro to Spinning
10/7, 6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m., Intro to Knitting, Part 1
10/8, 6 p.m. – 9 p.m., Dyeing Workshop
10/11, 1 p.m. – 3 p.m., Intro to Socks
10/14, 6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m., Intro to Knitting, Part 2
10/18, 1 p.m. – 2:30 p.m., Intro to Crochet
10/21, 6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m., Intro to Knitting, Part 3
10/22, 6 p.m. – 9 p.m., Hand-Painting Yarn Workshop
10/25, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m., Stranded Colorwork Workshop (Fingerless Mitts)

November
11/5, 6 p.m. – 8 p.m., Hand-Painting Fiber Workshop
11/15, 1 p.m. – 4 p.m., Dyeing Workshop
11/18, 10 a.m. – 11:30 a.m., Intro to Spinning

Grand Opening!

If you've been following us on Facebook you know that we recently announced the date of our Grand Opening: Monday, September 8th! We'll be opening the doors to customers for the first time at 10 a.m. next Monday. We look forward to seeing you all there.

As you might imagine, we've been quite busy over the past few weeks getting the store ready (see pictures below). This week we're finishing up painting and tiling countertops and all of the other bits of things that need to be completed before we can call it done. Our furniture and fixtures are in and getting set up early this week and we're going to be completing our inventory and stocking the shelves!

At this point we've received almost all of our inventory - and we're even hopeful that we'll have our Madelinetosh ready when we open or soon afterward.

Everything's coming together and we can't wait to meet all of you! We appreciate your support and encouragement over these past couple of months! See you soon!

Working on the store and new arrivals

It has been a while since our last post because we’ve been busy like bees working on the store. We’ve almost finished patching up the drywall, have installed all of the trim, and have begun washing the walls and priming them for painting. In the bathroom, we’ve ripped out the original materials and have gotten most of the new trim and fixtures installed…and are going to start laying tile tomorrow!

 

Next week we hope to finish up the priming and get the bathroom finished. Then we’ll strip and stain the floors and finish up with painting. Once that’s done we’ll start assembling shelves, get the furniture in, and we’ll be just about ready to go!

More interestingly, we’ve received some more of our inventory! Just last week we got in a shipment of Zara from Filatura Di Crosa and a box of cashmere and cashmere-silk blend yarns from Jade Sapphire. It’s all very lovely stuff and we can’t wait to show it off. Next week we’re hoping to receive our Unicorn Tails from Madelinetosh!

There are still a few weeks to go before we can get the store open, of course. We’re still going through the permitting process with the county and are told that’s going to be three weeks at least. We’re also working with Garret Sign to create our exterior lighted sign, which has to meet the building owner’s approval before they can start construction. We’re hoping for mid-August but will keep you informed about our progress!

Weekly update!

It has been a busy week for us! If you've been following us on Facebook and Twitter then you know that we successfully completed our lease negotiations and took possession of our new store property! It has been a long(ish), frustrating(ish) road but we're finally there and ready to start working on getting the store ready to open.

So, when's the grand opening? Well, we're not 100% sure at this point but it looks as if we'll be ready sometime around mid-August. The work we have to do to get the store ready really won't take all that long but everything has to be approved by the landlord and go through the Clark County permitting process, which we're told will take about four weeks from start to finish.

Let's talk a little about the store!

First, location. We'll be located in the Hazel Dell Towne Center, the shopping center off of Hazel Dell Avenue with Target, Office Depot, and Petco. We are in the section that contains the old Best Buy store (easy to find because of the big blue fascia!) in the "L"-shaped west building. Suite 120 is at the end of the short leg of the "L". Someday soon there'll be a big sign proclaiming our existence but, for now, just look for the empty end store with lots of stuff going on inside!

The store itself is 1,800 square feet, roughly 60' by 30', with entrances on both short walls and two banks of windows on the exterior long wall. A simple floorplan is shown at right. We'll have a nice, long group work table in front of the large bank of windows, giving plenty of natural light. You can see a picture of that table in a previous post but it's a tall gathering table with bar-height chairs. We think it'll be very comfortable to work at even for a long while. We'll also have a couple of nice seating areas with leather armchairs and, of course, the "cuddle chair" for whoever wants to knit in sheer comfort. Please try to stay awake!

Our fixtures will mostly be white, with most of our stock displayed on IKEA Kallax shelving units or IKEA Lack shelves. We'll probably also have a couple of slatwall carousels with tools and notions and may display pre-packaged fiber that way as well.

The main store floor will be finished concrete stained with Valspar's etching concrete stain in lovely cayenne. We haven't selected the paint for the walls yet but have narrowed it down to a range of warm tans that complement the floor color.

Now, the restroom. First a picture of what we're working with (left). Yech, right? We plan on taking this from rest stop shabby to residential fabulous by removing most of the sterile commercial fixtures (the grab bars have to stay, of course, due to ADA regulations and to help those that need them) and replacing them with nice residential fixtures. We'll removing the existing vinyl flooring and replacing it with a nice tile and installing double-beaded wainscoting with baseboard and chair rail around the walls. We'll also be replacing the light and mirror with something a bit nicer.

Not pictured on the floorplan above is our dye lab, which will be installed in the in the southeast corner (the diagram above is oriented so up is north). Our architect is drawing this up for us right now and we'll post some specifications when we have them. Essentially, though, there'll be a countertop and a sink along with a heating device (still deciding if that's an oven, cooktop, both, or something else.)

If you haven't already, you might want to sign up for our weekly mailing list. We'll send subscribers a weekly e-mail with information about events that week and, once we're open, information about new arrivals, coming specials, and regular discount codes for use in the shop or at our online store.

Keep in touch!

We've started a mailing list for Urban Wolves news. If you'd like to sign up please look in the sidebar at right under "Pages" and click the "Urban Wolves Mailing List" link. We'll be sending out, on average, one message each week summarizing our news, new products, classes, events, and so on. You can subscribe with one click if you ever decide to stop receiving this information.

Our mailing list service is being managed through MailChimp. This is a new service for us so please let us know of any comments or complaints you have. Thanks!

A little update!

After a little light reading (a 70ish-page lease agreement and attachments) and some back and forth it looks as if we'll be signing our lease agreement early next week! We'll officially take possession of the property on July 1st but we have to do a bit of work to get it ready to be a functioning store. Most of the project is just finish work but we have to get some big stuff taken care of too, mainly a lighted exterior sign, and some of that requires fabricators and architects and other professionals and has to go through a permitting process. The short of it is that we'd like to be in and selling by mid-July but we might not be able to get approved for opening the doors until more like early-August. We're keeping our fingers crossed though!

In the meantime, we're still ordering stock and working on setting up our inventory database and Web store. Our point-of-sale system and online store provider, Shopify, has been a breeze to work with so far. We received our terminal equipment mid-week and got it up and running quickly and have begun entering the Rowan shipment we received on Thursday.

 

Progress on the online store has been smooth. We found a third-party template, Alchemy from Clean Themes, that has all of the features we need and works well across all devices (it even has support for Retina displays) and have started creating the artwork to make it our own. You can see a little preview below but we'll be doing a lot more to it before the store is ready to go live. 

Late last week we also placed an order you might be interested to hear about: some awesome cashmere and silk-cashmere blend yarns from Jade Sapphire! Now, be warned, Jade Sapphire is not cheap stuff...but it sure is luxe. You have to feel it to believe it.

In Mongolian cashmere we will have Blue Pearl and Jasmine in 6-ply (see colors here), Seeing Red and True Blue in 4-ply, and Green Tea, Japanese Maple, Velvet Underground, and Thunder Storm in 2-ply. Then there's Brigadoon, where we chose Stone of Scone, Heather on the Hill, Single Malt, In the Gloaming, and Highland Mist. Finally, in silk cashmere, we picked up (colors here) Blue Pearl, Critical Moss, Gourdgeous, Jasmine, Navy, Red Dahlia, Sandstone, Silver Fox, and Tuscan Sunset.

Almost forgot! We also picked up a few scarf kits too: for him in Alpha Maroon and Five-O'Clock Shadow and for her in Spice Girl and Violets Are Blue. We ordered an extra Spice Girl kit to knit up for the shop! These will retail for $110 but the scarves are WOW and they'd make an excellent holiday or birthday gift, knitted or in kit form, for your favorite knit-worthy person...or you can just, you know, treat yourself!

We'll be placing more orders next week, including a big one with Filatura Di Crosa, and with Bryson Distributing (we received our retailer welcome packet from them just yesterday). We're working on getting set up with Ashland Bay, Unicorn Books & Crafts, and a couple of other suppliers as well. More news on our inventory as it happens!