Many people have asked why we decided to open a store and how we got here. Our original idea was to start out selling online only, using our products to stage the houses we were flipping while possibly selling those items to the home buyers. Great idea! And it would have worked just fine. But, as I started looking for products, I found myself saying “I wonder what that feels like? what color is that really? is this a good quality product?”.
One sales representative (from the one and only vendor that I had an account with already) reached out to me in December of 2021. We talked for quite awhile and he said a lot of things that I honestly didn’t understand. Retail is a completely different world than construction or teaching, which were the areas of our expertise. While he was talking, I wrote down all the words I didn’t know (there were so many!) so I could look them up later and acted like I knew what he was saying. I asked a lot of questions and wanted his opinion. He suggested just jumping in and going to Market in January. So that’s what we did.
Paul and I registered for Market, booked flights, and a hotel. We had absolutely no idea what we were getting into. There were so many ‘what ifs” going through my mind. But the one speaking the loudest was “what if it works?” I was so excited, nervous, and sick to my stomach that first morning riding the shuttle to World Market Center in Las Vegas. If you’ve never been to a Market, it’s so hard to explain how mentally and physically exhausted you are at the end of each day.
We spent three days, walking 22 miles through three buildings, looking at everything we could trying to decide what we wanted to buy to put in our online store. But in the process of all of this, we kept talking about what it would look like and I realized that if I’d been asking those questions about how the product looks or feels when I was looking at them online, wouldn’t my customers be doing the same?
Planning
We did a lot of planning in those three days. We quickly changed gears and decided to open a storefront. On the plane ride home, we tried to come up with a name. I wanted it to be meaningful, something that I wouldn’t later think “what was I thinking naming my store that?!” I used my kids and grandkids names, trying to make a name out of their initials. That didn’t work. I wrote down all of our names, our parents and grandparents names, pulling parts of each to figure out something. Still wasn’t it.
I gave up and went on with finding a location, confident that the name would come. We spent time learning and figuring out all the other things involved with starting a storefront. Two weeks after getting home from Market, we were getting to the point of really needing a name so we could move forward. My daughter, who works with us, texted me out of the blue one night two words: “Sterling Avenue”. I called her immediately to tell her that was it! Sterling is my grandpa’s name. It was perfect!
Inventory
With inventory ordered and a location found (three days after arriving home from Vegas!), we had to get to work remodeling and designing what we wanted our space to look like. The storefront we found had previously been two other retail spaces, but most recently had been a church. It was pretty much a blank slate which was great but the flooring needed redone and walls and ceiling painted. We added some moveable walls, shelving, lots of other display items, and a beautiful backdrop and metal sign for behind the counter.
As the inventory started arriving, I was noticing that we were still missing pieces to be a full home and decor store. But I also wanted some customer feedback. When I went into this, I was picking out items that I liked, thought were unique, or just something that our area needed and didn’t have access to. Which I felt that I did a good job with. However, I hadn’t thought about the complete home.
Once we opened, I asked customers what they were looking for or needing. I also looked at the items we had and what was needed to complete the look. Such as, we had vases but no flowers. More orders were placed, new vendors found, and the store was taking shape. There is so much that goes into starting a business, some things that I didn’t even know about until we were in it. We jumped some hurdles and pushed through and we opened our doors on June 1, 2022
A Year Later
Now we’ve celebrated our first birthday! It has been amazing, tiring, eye-opening, and so much fun! We have learned so much and still are learning to this day. Trying to grow our business for our customers in every decision we make. Because we wouldn’t be here without them!
And that’s how we got here!
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