Looking Ahead - We're Moving One Step at a Time

DH has now decided that we will hire Travis, the Retail Sales Pro guy, to help us with our store liquidation and closing. This is excellent in many respects, but we've got a lot of work to do before we can actually hire him. I'll be contacting him or his office today to get things rolling, and with my summer schedule, I'll be looking at an end of October close. I'm not sure if that will jive with his internal schedule, but it's mandatory given my August trip to NYC for the family reunion, and our September State Fair time with my BFF Sharon. 

We're looking ahead, finally. We're finally doing 
things that we probably should have done one 
or two decades ago. But ... better now than never. 

In the meanwhile, he's been working hard on our artwork. We have a huge selection of artwork that we need to reconcile with our inventory records. Somewhere in all of that paperwork is reality. My Mall of America Store was primarily art and jewelry with other collectibles. I bought and sold a ton of artwork through that store, but when I closed, I still had a bunch of artwork to bring back to the main store, along with our cases and a bunch of jewelry. Jewelry always sells, but artwork is a harder sell. We're not well set up in our main store to display and sell art. 

My Mall of America store was basically selling fine 
art, crafts and jewelry along with books. We really 
didn't sell our beads there at all - very minimally, at 
best. The main store, however, is primarily a craft 
supply store, so quite different in intent and in 
layout. 

After he has reconciled the inventory, I'll have to continue matting pieces, and I'll need to do preliminary framing on some as well. Then there are the originals ... we have quite a few of those as well, and really don't have a good place to display them. The main problem is that we've had the artwork since I closed the MOA store in 1996, but we've had it minimally displayed until earlier this year. So there are decades where we could have been selling it, that simply were wasted. 

DH has decided that we will hire Travis 
to help us with the store closing and 
getting things moved out. I'm relieved. 
We really need a professional to help 
us in this because we're completely 
clueless. He's NOT cheap, but I think 
he'll do a great job for us. 

But, we keep moving ahead. We're getting a handle on what we own and what we paid for the artwork, and we'll hire Travis to handle our liquidation. That's two huge steps forward. Now to continue cleaning and getting the sales floor arranged and the inventory double-checked. I'm quite sure that we'll have to have an up-to-date inventory valuation when we actually go ahead with the liquidation and closing process. It's a headache, for sure, so I need my time in the swimming pool. That's where I'm heading now. Have an excellent Tuesday and I'll be back tomorrow. Slava Ukraini.