"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful individuals with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Perisistence and determination alone are omnipotent".
- Calvin Coolidge
A loyal customer, who is also a friend, wrote and asked me how I was really doing. She noticed that I haven't been doing much of the diary part of our re-invention and I've been thinking about her question all weekend and realizing a few things.
The first thing is the whole nature of blogs, which can be interesting to the person who writes them, but also feel like a bit of a shot in the dark to the writer, a bit of self-indulgence,as in," will anyone really even read this, or want to"? I do appreciate that people have been keeping up with us, and apologize for not providing more information on our progress. The truth is we've been having a really rough time, an important, valuable, growing time, but a hard time. I haven't wanted to burden anyone with our woes, our struggles.
The old cliche of being artists and not business people causes eyes to roll and I don't blame anyone for eye-rolling. Our own eyes are rolling, believe me, but the absolute truth is that if I were an artist with a big money making potential like we had, and I didn't have a business background, or a dad with a business background.....the FIRST money I'd spend, before going another step, would be on hiring a good accountant/book-keeper with a background in retail and/or art, who likes you, is smart, likes your work and is willing to tell you the absolute and sometimes unpopular truth about the money and what you should and should not do with it.
Dot those I's, cross those T's, go forth with all of your little ducks in a row. We really did not know what we were doing with the riches of our success and unfortunately we didn't get the right help until it was too late for our beloved store. Would we have actually accepted the help? Another question entirely.
So how are we? I am still, 18 months after closing, mourning the loss of our store. We closed in November of 2005 after 4 hurricanes struck in 4 months. I'm still reconciling what doesn't seem fair to us, a risk that is part of life, that it was too late to save the store, after we had finally overhauled and streamlined the business making it smaller and more efficient. We had whittled our staff down to a very tiny, handleable crew (2 people besides Markel and I), moved out of a large, expensive studio into a house where we could work for a third of the price of the studio. We were so excited to make it work. The amazing and wonderful thing was that a smaller operation was going to make us more money and be so much less to handle greatly decreasing our work load. Our store was a little cherry and it had been the biggest money maker in our bloated venture.
We had finally found a talented mentor/business manager who was very hands on and had shown us that we could be out of debt within a year if we made radical changes, persevered, worked hard, stayed focused.....but as fate would have it, the 4 hurricanes struck, knocking us down and oooooooout.
It's now May of 2007, 18 months later and 12 months after writing about why we closed our store. It has been an extrememly tough haul. We moved from the Florida Keys last August, back to Ann Arbor, MI to be near our grandchildren (which has been of paramount importance), family and old friends. We are running a smaller business, picking up and starting over. We know we have to move on and I have been trying. I know it does no good to keep on mourning the store and I am working at moving on.....In these 18 months Markel and I have uncovered every stone, examined every mis-step going back to our beginning....(and even before our beginning to our individual beginnings). We have suffered from our loss and our deep financial debts....and here is where I am tempted to erase all of what I've written, but I won't, because this is what is honest.....it hasn't been easy and we've been discouraged, humiliated, grieving, worried, reclusive. We still owe a lot of money to people we love, who believed in us. That has been the largest sorrow, disappointing people who counted on us and trusted us.
We, mostly I, admittedly fell down for awhile, unable to see the way, paralyzed by stress and loss. Our good friends and family have helped us and we are back to struggling the good struggle, doing our artwork, working on our inner selves, the important kind of internal work that is honest and searing, that reveals new growth making positive steps forward possible... We absolutely know that in the scheme of things we are so blessed.
Markel and I are clearer now about our future than ever before, our vision as a team, our direction forward. We are both, as a team thankful for the design line, which sells so well and has been so good to us and has such devoted followers and collectors. Now that we are making it all ourselves we see it improving and continuing to evolve. We are fortunate to have the design line as our "day job', with our original work an arm's length away.
When our operation was so big and unwieldy with the store and art fairs, wholesale, a big studio, 20 employees, everything felt so out of control. Being small and concentrated has brought us back to making work for a very few galleries, looking toward to doing some art fairs, working on our original pieces, maintaining a smaller work life that is easier for us to handle and control. In summary, we're ok, still a little battered, definitely wiser, still not quite over the loss of the store, but knowing that we have to move on for our own good and those who depend on us. We haven't given up, that's the important thing and our strongest intention is to set things right, repay our debts even if it takes the rest of our lives to do it, and do it all better this time.....I'm even allowing myself to dream that another store might be in my future someday....we'll see,
Thank you so much for all of your kind words and for the show of support to everyone who has written to us. Thanks for wanting to know how we are.
"I bend, but I do not break" -Jean de La Fontaine
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