Kind of a blue weekend

It's been a long day. I had to come to work early this morning and set up for this movie sale we were holding today. I busted my butt last night to get everything priced and ready and this morning hubby, the three kids and I were up, breakfasted, showered, dressed and out of the house by 8:30 a.m. No small feat with small children.

We set up our wares outside (we were holding the sale in the courtyard) and carefully placed the signs that I had so industriously created the night before. I did a fine job, if I do say so myself, on the signs.

Sounds good right? Right. Only it took 2 hours for my first customer to show up. They turned out to be the most profitable sales of the day. The other big buyers were my in-laws. Go figure. She wanted to buy some cheap movies for when the grandkids are over. Good idea and best of all, she doesn't expect them for free.

CAUSE WE NEED THE MONEY!!!!

A lot of extra time and effort for a very small return.

Because my store is dying. There. It's out there in black and white. This store that I have put a lot of sweat, stress, time, effort and planning into is probably and I do mean in all likelihood going to bite the big one. You know things are bad when my business partner, who also happens to be one of my SILs, actually said it's time to set a deadline. If things don't pick up by June 15th, we're going to try to sell it as a business to someone or do a closing out of business sale.

Phew.

My parent in laws and even my own mother have been pushing my SIL and I to make some sort of decision regarding the store for a while now. If we're not making very much money, why are we doing it? That's a very good question.

The simple answer is: we keep hoping that things will get better. We have improved not only the function of our store but also increased our sales since we purchased it 5 years ago. Problem is, it's just not a big enough money maker. We had some initial issues with over purchasing etc because we were just learning the business and subsequently we've fallen into some debt. We were doing much better last summer but when this whole recession thing hit well... it may have taken some time for the effects to be noticeable but it's finally here. Sales have definitely been down the last few months.

The more complex answer is how do we put out to pasture something that we've worked hard on for the past five years. My pride is going to suffer big time by the end of the summer, especially if we have to simply do a close out sale. I am not looking forward to having to explain to our more loyal customers. It's pretty hard to admit to yourself that you have failed never mind to our entire family and friends. Oh yeah.

I can go round and round and round trying to figure out what went wrong and I can't really say it's any one thing.