A friend of mine who owns a fantastic store in Silver Lake just emailed to let me know he is closing his shop of 10 years. I asked if he wanted to try to ramp up online, it's kept us going and streamlined our overhead at the same time.
No, he's contacted a good auction house to liquidate his stock. He and his partner are leaving for Europe with an eye towards moving 'somewhere over there'. Unique idea.
I have thought about something similar but only to start over with all new merch. It's easier to move in another direction when you've freed yourself from excess responsibilities. If we had the option of an auction house in the state of Texas, I might seriously consider bouncing some stock out that way.
Unfortunately most Texas houses I can think of specialize more in Euro-Indo-Antiques and repro Decor auctions. And I'd rather use someone like LAMA, Wright or Rago. There's always a rental truck and the Brimfield show with the intent of returning empty come heck or high water.
Moving online really has been the best option for us, we have had an online presence for almost a decade so we've been well established. We were really fortunate to receive wonderful business advice early on when the economy was just beginning to show signs of distress. We feel lucky.
This past week we drove down to San Antonio to check out a potential dog at the Animal Defense League. What a gorgeous animal shelter! A huge contrast to TLAC which is a puppy death camp in comparison. Hate to say it, since both our kids came from TLAC, but the ADL in San Antonio kicks TLACs butt. Massive greens areas for playing and interacting, the pens are very large and clean and the dogs can see each other (in house socialization), the entire set up has dogs grouped according to size in different pens and sections of the property. There's grass everywhere not dirt pits. Best part was, every single person we spoke to was genuinely interested in answering out questions, knew a little something about each dog, and really seemed to WANT to be there.
I'm not really interested in the TLAC debate, but visiting ADL in San An made it glaringly obvious that there is something very wrong with our shelter.
Sadly the dog we went to see was not the dog for us, and it looks like we're going to give up the rescue route and are speaking with a breeder. Not the most popular choice, but it is what it is.
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