This is part 3 of our series: 31 DAYS of Setting Up Shop! You can find the entire list of days, in order on our Setting Up Shop Index Page. I'll add each new entry to this list as it is published.
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{location}
When I first had the idea to host my own handmade/vintage marketplace, I knew what I wanted it to be, I how I wanted it to feel, but I had no idea where it would be. My partner in crime, Caroline lives a good 50 miles away from me, with Dallas right in the middle--so in my mind, Dallas was the place.
But would we rent a space? Should we ask local businesses if we could set up in a lobby/coffee shop/foyer type place? What about someone's private home?
The question of location was still very much up in the air, when I heard that some close friends were moving into an apartment above a storefront in a small town nearby. And the storefront was empty. And owned by friends of mine!
Uh, what?
I got on the phone with them, to ask if they had any prospects, or if it would be possible to rent it from them for a short time...very short time...somewhere between 4 days and three months.
What I found out, is that it was recently abandoned by its former owner, was full of junk, had questionable flooring issues, and if I wanted to help clean it out, I could use it.
Uh, what?
At this point, the idea of setting up a shop was still in a very ethereal place. Very much in the idea phase. Honestly, I was still looking for a great big stop sign or red light to tell me it was all a crazy notion, and that I needed to forget it and go make dinner. (Which I really needed to do.) But here we were with a green-light, full-speed-ahead kind of situation.
On a Friday I sent Caroline to see what she thought, and by Monday I was hauling out junk.
So, want to know where it is?
Go ahead and enter this into your google maps app right now:
171 Historic Town Square, Lancaster TX
The address is as adorable as the storefront!
I'm only going to show you the front door right now, because the inside needs a lot of TLC before the big day. There is junk to haul, window paint to scrape, vinyl floors to think about (do we keep them or rip them up??), lots and lots of clorox wipes to use... And none of this has anything to do with actually making stuff to put inside the shop. Ah, but we have a LOCATION!
One more thing checked off the list. But at this stage in Setting Up Shop, every accomplishment seems to have 200 more tasks riding on its coat tails. For example, this location is very close to my house, but pretty far from Caroline's...so what's that going to look like? But we'll get to those issues later. We have a location!
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Tell me about your creative business, and how you chose your location. How do you decide what shows to do, or which online venue to choose? Location is an essential early step in setting up shop, and it feels so good to have that decision out of the way!
