Two things you need as a retailer

by Cinda Baxter on June 29, 2010

in Business, Retail

This morning, during a phone interview with a midwest newspaper, I was asked a question no one’s posed for a while: What are the most important things a retailer needs to become a success?

As odd as it may sound, it’s not a good accountant or a fabulous POS system (although those things rank extremely high on the list). In my mind, the two most important things are more basic.

Faith and humor. And they don’t apply solely to retailers.

Faith, because being an entrepreneur means you’ve just chosen one heck of a risky profession. You have to trust that if God parked you on this razor-thin career precipice, He did it for a reason. (Of course, to the rest of the word, you look like a crazy person crawling out on that cliff to begin with, but that’s why they work for someone else and you work for yourself.)

As for humor, well…. In the first three hours of business the day I opened Details Ink in 1994, I was met head on with multiple you’ve got to be kidding challenges, starting 30 seconds after unlocking the door:

1. Our first customer pointed out a massive typo on our freshly installed store signage, thanks to an engineer who thought he knew more about how to spell the word “stationery” than the woman who owned a stationery store. (Oddly enough, the same exact thing occurred seven years later, when a completely different signage company changed the spelling I’d provided on construction drawings. Go figure.)

2. Thirty minutes after I concluded my rather pointed phone conversation with said signage company, we had our first shoplifter, who managed to run such an embarrassingly simple scam on my newly minted employees that we had our first employee meeting right then and there. Watching her race off the lot in a sparkling new BMW, laden with an armload of unpaid inventory, was humbling to say the least.

3. This circus act was accompanied by a new cash register that refused to open without a service call from the vendor…who was an hour and a half away. To my horror, once he finally got there and managed to jimmy the drawer loose, he found it overflowing with Heineken bottle caps from the private launch party I’d hosted a couple of nights earlier (thanks to my brother, boyfriend, and contractor—the three clowns I busted for playing cash register with my very real, very expensive piece of equipment).

By noon, I had a choice. Pray, then laugh, or throw in the towel and sob. Like every successful small business owner who made it to their third anniversary, I went with option A, not allowing myself the luxury of recognizing option B even existed.

Glad I did. The next fourteen years were worth every moment.

It’s that kind of pioneering spirit, determination, and grit that courses through the veins of small business owners every day. Next time you happen to be in conversation with one, tell them thanks for everything they do. Unless you’ve lived behind the counter yourself, you really can’t imagine just how tough that job is.

And how tough they are to endure it. With a smile, no less.

Real Card Studio June 29, 2010 at 11:03 am

And what great stories you have now, right? I can relate to the “stationery/stationary” one. When we were launching a new website I had to correct that every single time it appeared as our web coder kept “helping” us too. I’m still not sure they think it’s correct. Great post, Cinda!

Editor’s note: The “All Timer,” in my opinion, was an NSS vendor who misspelled it on a booth banner. A room filled with people who proofread for a living, and they missed that one…? (Thanks to Joya for showing me the pic she took of it.)

Shana June 29, 2010 at 11:21 am

i really appreciate this story! thanks for sharing and not giving up at the toughest moments!

Holly Doyle June 29, 2010 at 6:21 pm

Wow – I have faith and humor! Your article reminded me that I need to follow both of these daily. My retail store is just 6 months old. Thanks!!!

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