10.6.07

It's been a while since last we talked. New York?  Yeah, that was a couple months ago.  Then I went home to finish up the moving sale in the store, then moved the store (still moving the store now), tried to corral shipments going into High Point from Thailand, Nepal, New York and Minneapolis.  Yes, its back to the HIgh Point show again.  Three out of four shipments made it there, which for us, isn’t a bad average.  

Next was the show itself.  I missed the first day because of some work in New York, so I cam down the previous week to set up.  In between that time and the show start the shipment from Thailand arrived at my booth, but I was expecting it.  In an unusually efficient manner I had taped pieces of paper on the floor in the booth to show where each piece should go (there were only 11 things, but they were all large).  Then the guy who was helping me unpack stuff got the Thai shipment all unpacked and in place.  Then the Sunday before market opened, the lady that worked with me last market – Sarah – came in and made sure everything was pretty looking and did quite a bit of cleaning in the booth.  Monday she worked the booth and from the sounds of it  (and the results), she did a great job.  I arrived midnight a the house I share with some friends and Tuesday made it in not knowing quite what to expect in the booth.  Everything looked great.  As the day went on, with a combination of people coming back that were here yesterday and today, it ended up being by far my best day ever at market. Even if you divided the day’s total, the resulting two numbers were better individually than any other market’s first two days (I know you didn’t expect math and word problems, but there you go . . . answers and formulas will be at the end of the blog). In part, the great day was due to having that Thai shipment that came in.  We had an example of our great root consoles as well as the straight edge and natural edge versions of our butterfly coffee tables, not to mention a number of other new things that seemed to draw people in.  And crazy enough, we have inventory to back it up that is arriving in two weeks. So the first day ended on a great high.

Then back to the house dinner and bed.

Wednesday was still a good day.  There is a qualification.  For whatever reason, it has always been the case that for me the first half of the market is when I do all of my business.  The last three days are usually a slow and painful crawl to the finish line with any sales acting as frosting.  So I need to have done all of my business by that point.  Wednesday put me well at that mark, so anything else was going to be really good frosting.  

A little aside about the house.  I think I have talked about it in the past.  The High Point show is a drag for everyone.  It's needlessly long:  both the number of days and the hours themselves.  A seven day market where all the others are four or at worst six days long.  The hours are eight in the morning to 7 at night.  All the other civilized markets are nine to six.  There are no restaurants worth talking about, and the moderately good ones seem to raise their prices during market.  Even the cheap motels that you would normally expect to film some sort of horror movie in the Vegas desert charge $180 a night.  Both buyers and sellers alike have this sort of solidarity about the market.  It sucks, but for now it's a necessary evil.  Anyway, I was moving in the direction of a point here . . . . oh yeah . . . the house.  Staying in a house is one thing that gives the High Point show one check in the win column in comparison to other shows.  There is something very nice about being able to go home after the absurdly long days to a home where you can cook and hang out with your house mates that you see twice a year in this sort of Dante’s Inferno version of Brigadoon (I want to go on record as the one person that has ever used that analogy in regards to High Point).  Each night someone has been taking a turn to cook, so we can avoid foraging for food in the Bojangles, Biscuitville or Velveeta cheese Mexican restaurants of the area.  The one night I did go out to eat was to this great little Vietnamese place, of course that is half an hour away in Greensborough.  A local joint where all of the Vietnamese community (a surprisingly large one in Greensborough for some reason) eats.  So the sharing a house thing is good.

Back to market.  The fifth day – Friday -  went by in minute increments.  Talking to Emily back at the shop on and off today, and of course as the day neared it's end, conversations would end – notably on her end – with “have a nice weekend.”  Until it dawned on her that we still have two days of the show left.  To her credit, all I got was a laugh for my upcoming two days of pain.  

Of course I didn’t even bring up the fact that I was on the edge of a long tedious High Point weekend with my wife.  She was at the end of a 70 hour work week topped off with having to wake up at 5.30 while Alex was still sleeping so she could get ready, then get him ready, haul him off to daycare, get done with work, pick up Alex at six, go home, hang out with him until 8pm bed time, then do more work until 10pm, then get up and do it all over again.  Intersperse that schedule with Alex having projectile vomit a couple times right at bedtime because of some coughing cold.  Him waking up at 5.30 am Friday morning in an unhappy baby sick manner, then going back to bed at 6.30 – obviously sick now – Lisa not wanting to take him in to daycare so as not to spread whatever is coming out of him (I would have – I think of it as helping all those other kids with their immunity systems – that and it's revenge for all the colds that Alex gets sent home with – a never ending cycle of daycare biological warfare).  Then into the weekend with 60 hours of one on one time with an unhappy 14 month old.  Fortunately she was spending the weekend down at her parent’s place so she has some adult interaction.  But I have to admit, even if he’s in this sort of state, I am really looking forward to getting home and hanging out with the little mucus producing, vomiting, crapping and clingy kid.  Plus he will probably be over his cold by then so I get to come home to him in his normal happy, giggling, playing around, go to sleep without a sound at 8pm stage.  Timing is everything.

So it's Saturday morning and obviously everything is as it should be.  9.30 am and I am able to write without distraction my usual muddled blog entry.  Tonight is my turn to cook.  I got some split on the bone breasts, some Indian Masala paste as base, then chopped up some fresh ginger and garlic, added a little curry and pepper and scored the top of the breasts and left them to marinate overnight in the fridge (hopefully no permeating everything else in the fridge with the scent of Masala), and tonight, throw those on the grill, make a little raita, and some jasmine rice.  Should be a nice meal.

Then it's on to the last day of the show, Monday mirning pack up what I can in the booth then hop in the rental car and make the one hour trip to Charlotte, catch the flight to Minneapolis, hopefully get there in time to go and pick up Alex, have some dinner with Lisa, and play hockey later that evening in my weekly hockey league.  

Then back to the new shop in the morning to continue setting it up, although that same day is our first official day open, but I have spent the last four years of retail strategically lowering people’s expectations of our abilities, so it won’t be a shock to wander in and see us still getting ready.  I’m actually quite excited about this new location.  We have dropped retail hours and gone to a by appointment thing.  It really isn’t meant to be an off-putting “we’re too busy for you” sort of thing.  We are there five days a week pretty much all the time working on our wholesale end of the business, so we are more than happy to have people wander in.  The showroom is coming together well with the stage set walls that I have talked about nicely dividing the showroom from the warehouse.  They can be rearranged easily in different wall configurations, or to shrink or expand the showroom as needed – ten feet tall in a 17 foot tall warehouse.  Kind of slick though I say so myself.  We are basing the retail end of things more on an event driven business.  Six to eight events a year.  That way we can put all of our energy into a four day event (when a container is coming in, or an art showing etc) focus our clients to come in during those days, and then when it's over, back to business as usual.  I hope the theory works because it could be a very cool set up, not just for us, but I think it could be a very cool thing for the retail customer as well to.  Each time they come in, it will be a whole new event with all sorts of “fresh off the boat” things available for their viewing (and buying), pleasure.  

Anyway, the state of Bjorling & Grant seems to be good. Now here is your answer to the question at the beginning of the blog:

The total of the two best days in my High Point Show’s 7 year history divided by two  <   the day’s total on Tuesday of this market divided by two (accounting for not being here on Monday)