Our first year in business was quite a doozy. 4 months into business I had to close and pivot to e-commerce. A few months later when I was finally able to reopen, Renton started what would be a 2 year long construction project that left us without sidewalks or access to our business. I remember thinking “If I can survive this year, I can survive anything.” Being the first year, it also had all the firsts! Our first quilting class, the first shop sample, and our first (of many) shop shuffle! The thing that sticks out most to me about that year is how alone I was for most of it. I didn’t have a single employee, no business owner friends to talk shop with, no familiar faces walking in to brighten my day. Honestly it was rough and I had many days where I questioned if I had made the right choice.
Our first day open was October 26th 2019. However, our big grand opening weekend was a couple weeks later in November. I was a member of the chamber at that time and they did a big ribbon cutting ceremony for me. It was cool, but also weird. The community showed up but it was people I didn’t know. In the photo of me cutting the ribbon there isn’t anyone from my inner circle. My husband wasn’t able to get the day off, and the few friends I had popped by later, or weren’t able to make it. I remember that day feeling not quite like the celebration I had hoped it would be. My cousin Megan did make the drive up from Portland to surprise me! She gifted me the prayer plant that now lives on the desk in the shop. It’s been propagated and gifted many many times since.
Once we were open my big focus was on getting our classes going. I was teaching everything sewing at that point. I was working 6 days a week and teaching in the evenings or sometimes juggling teaching and running the shop at the same time. I had a lot of guest artists and it was really fulfilling to connect with the local maker community and share our space with them. The space was set up to maximize student space. I had our two big tables in the center and the retail spread around the edges. It was the first of many store layouts, and probably our least functional.
Something else I was really focused on was supporting other local female makers. I had visions of a creative 3rd space where artists could teach and gather. Our front corner was once our “Featured Female Maker” space. We would feature a different featured female maker each month and let them take over the corner. I met a lot of great local artists this way and still carry some of them in the shop! The program was one of those things that was a great idea in theory but in practice ended up being a lot of work for little reward. We later moved away from that feature. As I look back I realize how much my priorities and values of the business have shifted. I was naive in the beginning, which I don’t think is a bad thing. That naivety allowed me to be delusional enough to open a business!
That winter I hosted the first “Last Minute Market” , a little holiday pop up the last weekend before christmas. I had 7 local makers come set up for our little market. Kind of wild to think that we had the space to do that! We could never now. It’s fun seeing that photo and seeing how much we’ve all grown since then. The maker community in greater Seattle is full of truly wonderful people.
I wish I could sit here and tell you that the first year was magical and I just sat back and watched my plans fall into place. The truth is it was incredibly hard and lonely. I have a lot of memories of being in the shop alone all day. There were a lot of days where literally no one walked in the door. After coming from jobs where I was talking to people all day long this was a huge adjustment. To fill the void I talked into my phone, did live unboxings, and I would actually sew at work. I’m chuckling to myself typing that now. To think there was a time when we were so slow that I could sew at work! Ha! I started teaching myself how to sew clothes and made my first garment in the store!
We started off strong during the holiday season but definitely felt the January slow down. I was hustling to book birthday parties and more events to keep things going. We used to do a “Pizza and Puzzles” night. This one cost me more money in pizza than we made but it was fun! We also held our first sew in. It’s kinda funny thinking about these events now. I really just wanted people to come into the shop and hang out with me lol.
During this time, I was also patiently waiting for fabric to show up. Quilting cotton has a 6 month lead time and I had placed orders in August so things didn’t start arriving until January. Our first Ruby Star Collections started arriving and the shelves eventually started filling. I slowly got the inventory to a level where it didn’t look like we were going out of business.
Our first sewing class we offered was “Sewing 101.” Our project was a 1 hour basket where I would pre-cut all the fabric and interfacing beforehand. After too many classes of forgetting and scrambling at the last minute to get things cut I came up with our tote kits! The first handout for this class had actual photos that I took with my phone. I’m pretty sure it was just word doc with images that I proudly printed out for students. That sample is still in the shop today as an example tote kit! It’s kinda wild to think about how we went from offering 2-3 sewing classes to now having a catalog of over 30.
I truly effed up our first full quilting course. I had two students for my first quilting class. One of them was my friend Amelia! We (attempted) to make the Cross Lake quilt by the Blanket Statement but I made a fatal error of having them turn all of their HSTs into 8-at-a-time HSTs. Luckily both students were very understanding and happy to make a little mini quilt instead of the baby quilts we had planned. I did offer the class at 50% off but I still felt like such an idiot. Especially because I had made that pattern at least 5 times before.
In March I went to palm springs to celebrate my 30th birthday. I remember a text convo before our trip about “should be going?!” to which we decided “it’s fine! Just wash your hands!” little did I know when I returned I’d be closing my shop for several months.
Sometime at the end of March, I posted that we would be closing for two weeks to help do our part to “slow the spread.” We quickly learned that it was going to be a lot longer than 2 weeks and I started to hustle to get all of our products online and become an e-commerce business. My initial plan was to get our courses and in store dialed in and then focus on e-commerce down the road. Well that all got turned upside down and all of the sudden online sales became my only income stream.
I took photos with my phone on a brown desk (yikes!) I wrote product descriptions and bought a scale. I blabbed on stories everyday and eventually started getting some orders. I even offered local delivery for a time. Anything to make some money!
My husband ended up being out of work for 9 months. He would come down to the shop and pack orders with me and make post office runs. I honestly had a lot of fun on those days. We were incredibly fortunate during that time. We didn’t have any high risk family at home, the unemployment and our savings was enough to live off of, and we had a house big enough to spend time separately. I played a lot of Animal Crossing and we would go for hour+ walks every day. Cocktails at noon were definitely a thing some days. It was weird. I did my best to maintain a work schedule and routine. I would go down pack orders, run them to the post office, then go make my deliveries. Sometime in June we reopened by appointment and then in late September we were able to reopen for regular hours. I still wasn’t able to hold in person classes.
It was during this time that I started what is now our Maker Crew. It started on Patreon. I had quite a few people reach out who wanted to support the shop but didn’t need any more fabric. It became a fun way for them to support me. I would do a monthly virtual class and eventually started our discord channel! If you were around back in those days you probably remember the chaotic zoom calls. I’m pretty sure we tried to do french braiding for one of our monthly classes and I realized that is something that I cannot teach.
Sometime in August Renton started a massive construction project. They were replacing all of the underground sewer and electricity in downtown. This would become a much bigger issue for me in year 2 but I remember feeling like just as we were getting back on our feet, we got kicked down again.
October rolled around and I celebrated 1 year in business! I don’t remember a lot about the day of our 1 year anniversary (looks like we did a whopping 10% off lol) but I do remember coming home to celebrate with my husband and having a full breakdown. Running this business has been incredibly rewarding but by far the most challenging thing I’ve ever done. One of the big challenges for me is that I can’t share it with my mom. Everytime this milestone comes around it comes packaged with a fair amount of grief that she doesn’t get to see what I built. People always tell me “she would be so proud of you!” Which I know is said from a place of love, but honestly it feels like a turn of knife sometimes. I’m sure she would have but I don’t get to hear her say that and I never will. Joy and grief often come as a packaged deal. That’s been a hard reality for me to face in the big life moments.
I get a lot of comments saying “this is my dream job, I would love to play with fabric all day.” Some days it is a dream, a lot of days it is soul crushing and heartbreaking. It’s so much more than a job, it feels like I created this living breathing entity that is an extension of myself. It is inextricably tied to me, the business is me, I am the business. I’ve gotten a lot better at the balance and the separation in the last couple of years, but it’s still a work in progress. Looking back at the early days I’m mostly reminded of how hard it was, it didn’t really feel like a dream yet. It felt scary and hard and lonely.
I didn’t mean to end year one on such a depressing note, but my intent of these posts was to give a real honest look at what it was like opening this business. I think with social media we often just see the best parts and forget that there were a whole lot of other things happening behind the images of smiles and sunshine.
