Thanks guys, y'all are too kind
The writer wasn't happy with only being given a small space to profile our store, so next week he's writing a longer story in his Gemstone Blog about us. The article has already generated a buzz, my phone has been ringing off the hook this morning, unfortunately its people who want me to buy things from them!
There's a couple of things in the article that aren't 100% accurate. Like there was no real small business loan, its actually owner financed by my keyboardist's grandmother, who I bought the store from.
It says that Mission's Johnson Drive shopping district is starting to decline, in fact it has been declining for a decade and was utterly crushed two years ago. The city had paid to demolish an empty mall three blocks away at an important, high traffic and highly visible intersection. They gave loads of tax breaks to a series of companies to build a gigantic commercial/residential mini-metropolis. But, when the economy crashed, all the investors pulled out and it remains a gigantic hole in the ground next to a gigantic pile of dirt. This bankrupted the small city of Mission ( which is actually a suburb of Kansas City) and all traffic is diverted away from the exit that would take cars down Johnson Drive, thus killing businesses up and down this strip.
And my little store is pretty fugly for a place that sells fine jewelry. It looks totally ghetto on the outside, especially since my awning started to tear this week, and it looks like a garage on the inside. Its narrower than a trailer home, and twice as long, so its funky looking on the inside too, you walk in my register looks like its a block away down a tunnel. You can almost hear an echo. Add to that, our Neighbors, The Plumbers Friend, moved to a less run down neighborhood. So that space is now vacant.
Just take a look at the video below and feast your eyes on the tiny and tattered store front (our most effective marketing campaign footage).
[youtube=425,350]xhoj2WdlL1Y[/youtube]
Despite all this, one year later we're still here. Last week was our first anniversary owning the store. We're walking the tightrope in a windstorm right now. But Christmas is right in front of us. I can ride the storm out until then. And after that is Valentines Day, which we ROCKED last year :headbang1:
