Looking Like a Store

It has been a busy week of fixture installation and product placement. The fixture install crew led by Bill and Nathan started on Monday and by Friday we had a real store ready for product. While the fixture installation was in progress, the electrical crew finished up with power for the cashier counters, paint counter and service desk. The burglar alarm was installed and the telephone and computer cabling was finished. Friday was the final walk-thru with our general contractor and we received our final inspection approvals from both the electrical inspector and the structural inspector. We are now good to go with the city.

Friday night we turned on the outside sign. It's all very real now. On Saturday, while Pam and I did another round of 35 interviews, a truck arrived from the Ace warehouse with a full load of product to be placed. Our crew of five visual merchandisers starting placing product on Saturday morning and by Sunday afternoon various departments were beginning to take shape. While we were at the store on Saturday, lots of people stopped by to "cheer us on". It's been fun hearing how excited people are to have Ace opening downtown. One guy drove by honking his horn and yelling out the window "Ace is The Place!"

On Sunday Pam and I built the Patio Living area fixtures while Bill our fixture expert started to install decor - including end cap signs and aisle signs. We also received delivery of a bunch of specialty displays that we bought at Circuit City's liquidation sale. Thanks Sunny for getting us the super deal.

Fixture Progress

Tuesday was Day 2 of the fixture installation. All of the freestanding floor fixtures were set-up and the perimeter fixtures were attached to the wall.

Tuesday's drama had to do with anchoring the fixtures. No one could decide what the depth of the fastener should be. The fixture company recommends a 3 1/2" fastener, but due to electrical conduit buried in the concrete floor the fastener cannot be that long.

At first we thought we might just check the as-built drawings or x-ray the floor so that we would be able to miss the utility chase that contains the conduit. Then we received these photos from the building contractor showing the spaghetti bowl of conduit and no utility chase. And they call themselves professionals?

Architect, structural engineer, general contractor, fixture company, fixture installer - all were asked what should be done and no one would make a recommendation that they would be held too. They all had an opinion, but no one was willing to commit that the inspector would accept it.

Wednesday morning Pam and I listened to all the opinions again, plus got a seismic engineer's opinion. Ultimately, we chose to go with the fastener that the fixture installer recommended. He's supposed to be the professional, right?

Our first Ace truck arrived today. There was no room in the store for the product because of all the fixture installation going on - so the pallets sat outside. As Pam told them when they unloaded the truck, "welcome to our life." This is pretty much how it will be for us every week when the Ace truck arrives to replenish the store.

The first visual merchandiser arrived on Tuesday. The visual merchandisers will put the product on the shelves once the fixture installation is complete. Today he helped with the fixture install and also started putting up peg hooks. The rest of the VMs arrive on Thursday.

There are bound to be a few surprises at each step, right? Well, one of the fixture surprises is the "cherry" (it's brown) laminate that was sent for one section of fixtures. Neither Pam or I remembered ordering it, but apparently we did so we let them install it. Now that it is installed, I think it looks bad, sort of like a 1960's den, so on Thursday we'll have it changed to solid white.

Recruiting and Fixtures Arrive

Saturday was our first day of interviews. From over 300 applications, we invited 42 people to come in for an interview at the store. 38 of them showed up (more than we expected) and it was an interesting day. Pam did all the hard work, interviewing each person - all I did was greet them, give them a test and some paperwork to read over and then stare at them and make notes like: "funny hair", "old with eye twitch", "wears all black - is that mascara?".

From the 38 we have 14 that will be invited back for a second interview next Saturday. We will also bring in 20 more potential candidates for a first look. Hopefully by the end of next weekend, we will have 15 good employees on the team.

Today was the big day for moving to the next phase. When Pam arrived at the store before 7am, there were two semi-trailers full of fixtures waiting for us. Of course, the labor didn't show up until 8am (and clearly from the picture below you can see that they don't really want to work), so Pam had to jockey the pallet jack for awhile. Should of gotten a picture of that!

By end of the day the perimeter fixtures were all in place. Still a day's work to level, anchor and finish before they start on the floor fixtures. All of the counters should be in place by the end of the day Tuesday.

Bulbs!

Sylvania light bulbs arrived today! And, of course that is not the end of the story. We ordered 146 bulbs. They shipped us 90. And the Cooper Lighting God said, "Let there be half light."

The general contractor did their final cleaning today. Except for a few odd items left on the punch list, they are basically finished with the tenant improvements. Today they installed the corrugated shroud around the parking garage vent that is in our patio living area. The electrical contractor has powered up all the lights and some even have bulbs. Our sound system was installed yesterday.

And product keeps showing up. The first of six semi-trailers of merchandise from the Ace warehouse will come next Friday.

We have received over 300 responses to our job postings on Craig's List, Jobing.com and Monster.com. Tomorrow we will have an InterviewFest - 42 scheduled interviews in 6 hours - non-stop. I feel sorry for anyone after the 30th interview - they have no chance of getting a job with us.

Store fixtures arrive on Monday - the beginning of the next phase! I can barely remember when we were trying to make the fixture decision...

Three Days Left

There were lots of workers scurrying around on Tuesday. The electrical contractor doubled the size of their crew and got all of the low ceiling lights hung. Now they just have to power them up. Of course, we don't have bulbs for them yet. What a fiasco the lights have been.



Our new "inspector approved" ramp railing was installed - that cost us an unexpected $2000.



JaeJay and his helper finished up the cabling for the security camera system. They will mount the cameras and test the system after our store fixtures are installed.

The general contractor is working on our pre-walk through punch list. Tomorrow (Thursday) is the official walk-through. AT&T came and installed our phone lines. DSL should follow in a week.

More product is arriving - what part of ship after February 20 didn't they understand?

And the worst task yet - we've received 150+ resumes from unemployable people. So far, my favorites are the guy who went to Clown College and was a clown for Ringling Brothers, the guy whose resume has a picture of him holding a giant squid, and the person whose last name is Soulbefree. Oh, and of course the woman who wrote at the end of her resume: "i just want that you now that maybe im young, but i really wanna a work, im a positive person, i just want a oppurtunite to work please"

Final Week of Construction

This is the final week of construction - everything will be finished by Friday...hopefully. The electrical contractor has finished wiring the high ceiling lights and has also installed lights in the office, break room and restrooms. Real light!! They need to start hustling on the low ceiling lights now.

AT&T comes on Tuesday to install our phone lines. Pam spent the weekend setting up the our new Talkswitch phone system. She says it is hard to believe how much it can do considering how little we paid for it.

The wall graphics have been installed - here are a couple of pictures.

Our first product shipment arrived today (two weeks early) from Amerock which is a line of cabinet knobs, pulls and hinges. Fortunately our pallet jack was delivered this morning so that we were able to unload the freight. Of course the first product received had to be damaged in shipping. The box was broken and product was spilling out so we had to do a complete check-in to be sure that everything was there. Also the free display that comes with the product was damaged beyond saving, so they'll have to send a new one. Doesn't seem like a good omen.

My friend JaeJay is working away on the security camera system. Today he brought me Korean Ginseng and Ginseng Tea. He says Korean Ginseng is the best. At least, I think that is what he said.

Race visited the store again over the weekend while we did our construction pre-punch list walk-thru. He collected a box full of treasures (snipped wire, j-box slugs, screws, washers, chain, a plastic cockroach, etc). He also got up on the lift to see what it was like.

Our big project for this week is to begin the employee recruiting and hiring process. We've been putting off this dreadful task, but couldn't wait any longer since our first work day will be March 9. We put an ad on Craig's List and within seconds had 20 responses. By the end of the day we had over 50 responses. There are a lot of unemployable people out there!

My Friend JayJae

What have I gotten myself into? Somehow I ended up with responsibility for the closed circuit television security system. So, I started by working with Ace's corporate Loss Prevention Dept to design the camera layout for our store. Once that was finished, they submitted it to the two Ace preferred vendors for a quote. Well, both quotes came in at $16,000 which is way over budget. We have $15,000 budgeted which has to cover both the CCTV and the burglar alarm system. So, I got a recommendation from Mel Black, the manager of Crown Ace Hardware in Pt Loma to use the contractor that installed their system. His name is JayJae Park. He calls me Mr. Harry.

Mel told me that he does great work, but that sometimes communicating can be a challenge. He wasn't kidding. See, Jay is Asian and has a very heavy accent. I told Mel that after the first two conversations with Jay I thought I might have understood about 15% of what he said. Mel said not to worry, that Jay would understand me just fine. OK...maybe.

So, today was Jay's first day of work. He and his buddy started running cable for the 21 camera locations. See below. It's going to be an interesting week.



The electrical contractor is busy installing light fixtures. About 2/3 of the lights for the high ceiling are in, but not powered yet. The trucking company called today to tell us that the rest of the light fixtures will be delivered tomorrow (Friday). We've got one week left to get all the lights installed and powered. It will be close. Also today the electricians installed the magic Blue Box. It really IS called the Blue Box. This is the automated lighting control system and will control all the lights, signs, etc in our store. No worrying about when to turn them on or when to turn them off - the Blue Box will take care of it.



We're starting to get down to the finer points - vinyl cove has been installed at the base of some of the walls; the patio pavers are completed, and today they started to install the wall graphics. We are having four large graphics installed. First they are putting up corrugated metal which will look like a frame around the graphics. We sort of stole this idea from the Rancho Benardo store. Should be cool when finished. We passed our final plumbing inspection today too. Only electrical and structural inspections left to go.