So business came to a grinding halt at the end of 2008.  It wasn’t a surprise, I guess.  My wholesale clients wanted to sell through inventory rather than spend money on new stuff, retail clients wanted to save money, not spend it on furniture.  Pretty simple.  It's what I wanted to do.  For me, the timing was ok in a way.  I was off galavanting around the world filming this series for the Travel Channel, so I didn’t have to sit in my warehouse listening to nothing happening, whistling to the air.   Spring came along with the big High Point Furniture market, and it was rough.  This is the biggest wholeslae furniture market in the world that happens twice a year.  Retailers from across the coutnry and the world converge on High Point during this time and as a result, it's a great barometer for the state of retail sales in the country and the world.  It was the slowest one on record.  Again, no surprise, but when you are going through it in reality, it's a drag.  You re-set all your goals while you are sitting there killing time until the end of the show.  You come up with things to do in your booth as you stare down empty halls.  Thank God there is wifi throughout the town.  No retailer in their right mind wanted to spend a lot of money on new inventory unless they absolutely had to at that time.

After the High Point show, there was a lot of re-assessment.  Where to spend money, where not to spend money, how to make money magically appear, how to trick money from one account to another, how to get inventory to stretch as far as possible, rather than buying new stuff.  What has really kept us going has been the custom furniture.  Nice steady orders, not large numbers, but steady enough to keep things going.  Enough to hold on.  That seems to be the mantra that small business people like me in my industry are repeating over and over around the country and around the world.  Just try and hold on. 

As for the Travel Channel show, we just sat in this on going hold pattern over the summer.  All the filming was done, all the editing, all the voice overs.  Now we were just waiting.  Waiting to get a show premier date, waiting to do pr, waiting to see what happens when it runs, waiting to see if we get enough traction to get re-upped for a couple more season.  Waiting to see what it all does.  Waiting.  Like being dressed and ready for spring prom at the beginning of the school year.

Now it’s September.  I am far from an economist, but I feel like things are starting to turn.  On the retail end of things, people are starting to ask for quotes for our custom furniture, and a lot of them are actually pulling the trigger and placing orders.  On the wholesale end, my clients are back buying things and have been for a month or two.  Not a lot of things, but very specific pieces to fill their clients immediate needs.  So a couple rain drums here, a dining table there, a console for a new home, a coffee table to replace the one they sold in the shop, a few accessories to freshen things up.  On the television end of things, we are now less than four weeks away from the Relic Hunter premier - October 3rd.  These are all good things, and I'm clinging to them like a nice puffy life preserver floating out at sea.  The good news is I think I can see the shore and feel the sand rising beneath the water to meet the beach.  Sure, I’m mixing metaphors from the tunnel one I opened with, but hey, times are tough.  Even metaphors have suffered a little.