Gift Shows Have Booth Bimbos!

Friday we spent the day at the LA Gift Mart looking for vendors for our Housewares and Home Decor / Giftware departments. I think we smelled every possible scent of candle and diffuser oil possible except for maybe rotten fish with hints of roof tar and dog fart. We found some more good sources for fun kitchen and bath stuff as well as a few good manufacturers of picture frames and home decor items. And the highlight of the day was seeing a booth bimbo - imagine that, even Gift Shows have them. I think it is more fun to buy computers, paint equipment and fixtures when you get to spend $40,000 in a snap. With most of the exhibitors at the Mart, we were spending only hundreds of dollars.

Construction progress in our absence: painters finished with all of the walls and the interior doors have been primed; wood supports have been installed on all of the perimeter walls in preparation for the fixture installation; glass has been installed in the patio door; and the concrete floor preparation started.

We ran into a big snag on Friday with the light fixtures that took us for ever to choose. It seems one of the component suppliers for Cooper Lighting is unable to deliver a needed part to manufacture our lights, so they anticipate a delay into mid-March. Well, that doesn't work for us, so now we are back to the drawing board looking for a replacement fixture or some other solution. More on that on Monday.

We're off on a Buying Mission.

Just more of the same to report today. As construction goes...Painting continues - all colored walls are now complete. The picture below shows the blue wall, but is not a great picture so you can't get the real feel for the blue. The electrical contractor has started installing the light fixture junction boxes on the ceiling. It took us so long to decide on light fixtures that the whole project will now be delayed a couple weeks. Go figure. Lights should be delivered the first week of February. The store fixtures and gondolas don't come until February 16, so we should be OK on our overall schedule.

During today's mentor training we learned how to be cashiers. That took 4 1/2 minutes. Then we spent the rest of the time talking about how our employees and customers will try to steal from us and all the systems, procedures and paperwork that has to be put into place to battle that. We also learned how to make window screens today. Of course, we won't be making screens in our store - no space - we'll probably work out a sub deal with the Pt Loma store where they have all the equipment and James to make them.

Tomorrow we head to Los Angeles to spend money. On Thursday we will be at a product fair organized by Benjamin Moore Paint where we intend to spend around $20,000 on automated paint tinters. Then on Friday we go to the LA Gift Mart and Gift Show to shop for fun stuff for our Housewares department.

Painting!

The paint contractor started today - yellow and green walls have appeared. The door and window frame for the patio was also installed. HVAC and electrical contractors -- same old thing, they keep moving along -- more ducts and more conduit.

Race Seeks Treasures

Race did a walk-thru inspection today looking for loose screws, conduit brackets, bits of wire and junction box slugs that he could pocket and add to his treasure box. I made him leave all the sharp pointed drywall screws. He thought it would be fun to be there while work was going on, but of course it was "too loud", just like Daddy's music and racing.

All of the interior doors were installed today as well as the hand railings for the new stairs and ramp. There is dry wall mud dust everywhere from the sanding, so the drywall guys must be getting close to done.

So, here's something we've learned -- Apparently a building is really just a big balloon and when the HVAC system sucks fresh air from outside, runs it thru the chiller and then pumps it into the store, if we don't give the air a way to get out the whole place will pop and shards of concrete, miscellaneous bits of hardware and body parts will be scattered for miles!!! So, they have to cut a big hole in the wall somewhere and install grills for the air to escape. You've got to be kidding me! Here's a picture of our new grill hole next to the old patio door that is now sealed up.

Everything on Schedule

We've been "mentoring" all week so this is our first construction update for the week. Everything is moving along smoothly. Most of the HVAC ducts are now in the ceiling, the electricians have provided power for each HVAC unit, water supply and condensation lines (the pretty copper pipes) are being run and the thermostat cables have been installed. Sometime this week we should have an HVAC inspection from the city.

The electrical contractor is working on conduit runs for the light fixtures. Everyday there are more wires in the main electrical panels. And, we have our first completed receptacle!! (It's the small things that thrill us now that all the big decisions have been made.) Phone and network cables were run this week and Pam is finalizing our TalkSwitch phone system order. She almost bought 4 phones on eBay for something like $10 bucks each, but got outbid by a $1.

Drywall crew continues to tape - hopefully they will be done by the end of the week so that painting can begin next week. The fire sprinkler contractor was there this week to relocate some sprinkler heads. The patio door has been framed in and the stucco crew is now making it look pretty again.

The mentor program has been interesting. We have lots of notes from great meetings with the manager of the new Pt Loma Liberty Station store (part of the 16 store Crown Ace Hardware chain) and the VP Merchandising for Griffin Ace Hardware who have stores in Rancho Bernardo, Del Mar and Santa Ana. They have been very forthcoming with info and offers to help us along during our early days.

Now that Pam is done with the Opening Stock Order, she has had to move on to other ordering responsibilities. This week is our deadline to pre-order merchandise for the Memorial Day Weekend sale, so she had to evaluate the offerings and decide whether we really need to carry the solar lighted military rock assortment or the playful cherubs fountain. (That would be a big NO to both). We are going big for the very cool foldable utility cart - in fact, we've ordered one for each of you.

We continue to aggravate our Project Manager (not intentionally), just seems to be our nature. But, now that the OSO is finished, hopefully he won't have to have so many scotches at the end of the day with our name on them.

Opening Stock Order - Complete!

Finally, the Opening Stock Order is complete. That is until Harry finds something else in his pile that we found at the last Ace Convention that I should have ordered. I know that I made the Ace Project Manager insane with all my involvement, but if I hadn't checked every single one of the 15,000 SKUs we are getting in the opening order we would have had product such as this (which I deleted from our order yesterday):

And this:

Now I realize that some of you may be upset because you were really looking forward to being able to purchase these items at the Downtown Ace Hardware but don't worry, if you really need it "we can order it and have it to you in just a few days".

It was fun but.... I'm glad I don't have to order enough product for an entire store again - that is until we open our 2nd store.

Happy New Year!

For those following Habitrail progress - here are pictures of the big parts coming together and some of it even up in the ceiling. The new stairs in the Service Room and the new ramp to the Patio Living Department are finished. Electrical continues to progress, here's a picture of the boxes for main lighting controls (actually it will all be computerized - this is just for when we want to work late and the computer has shut-off all the lights). We passed screw inspection and the dry wall crew started taping today. They said that it will take 5 days to complete.

On Monday, Pam and I start our Mentor Training program - this is a 12 day program of learning from other store owners. For the next 4 weeks, we will spend Mon, Tue and Wed at Hillcrest, Pt Loma, Rancho Bernardo or Del Mar learning the secrets to success.