Mid-November Already? A Note to Employees. Oh wait, that’s me!
Somehow we blinked and landed in the middle of November. I swear we updated this blog… recently? Maybe? Time has been moving in its own strange retail dimension where every day is a new surprise, a new box, a new “Wait, who moved the backstock for that again?”
Holiday retail, I’m remembering, is a constant rotation of tiny crises - adjusting hours for events, realizing you’re somehow out of the very gift bag size you need, unpacking a mountain of boxes towering behind you like a cardboard skyline, and trying to maintain some semblance of your own actual life in the middle of it. It’s a lot of fun, but it’s also… a lot.
I keep hearing from owners of new boutiques (not the beautiful legacy shops with well-oiled teams, but the small fledgling ones like us) that running it is basically being a one-man band. I’m lucky. I have a second band member. My husband is always there to jump in at the counter after his full-time job if I need him. But everything else? The taxes, the paperwork, the emails, the deadlines, the calendars, the flyers, the giveaways, the ordering, the restocking, the “Oh no, did we renew that?” moments are mine. It’s a lot of hats, and not the fun saying hats on the back wall that everyone love.
We don’t have employees yet. We do want them, eventually. But Jonquies is still in its early-growth, wobbly-fawn-on-ice stage. From the outside, we may look pulled together and polished (well Erik does, but I’m talking about the shop), but behind the scenes, the business itself is still learning to walk. I’ve worked with enough company presidents (and was one myself), in my career who would absolutely scold me for this approach. “If you don’t hire help, you can’t grow.” “If you don’t have the assets, you can’t scale.” “If you don’t go with the bigger budget, you can’t execute.” All good advice in theory.
But I don’t think that’s true at Jonquies.
We’re building this slowly and deliberately. We need time to make it through our very first holiday season. We need time to get to know what people like, what they don’t like, what isn’t working and what is. But you can’t do that if you aren’t working the store, if you aren’t living it even when it is exhausting. Managers let their businesses (and employees) fail because there is a disconnect between the floor and the office. We have five years in this space with the the option for five more. Five years to grow this, learn it, build it, and hopefully grow into the five that follow. To do that, we have to be smart. And sometimes being smart means saying no… no to another discount, or another giveaway, or another flyer, or another advertising magazine, even when we’d love to say yes to everything. (And if you don’t know this about me, I really hate saying no.) Especially during the holidays, when every opportunity is tempting and every moment (and the budget) is already full.
Jonquies will get there, and we are finding the time to enjoy the phase we’re in. One day we’ll have a team. And a break room (or at least a microwave). And someone else who knows which drawer is hiding the backstock of everyone’s favorite hair chalk. But for now, it’s just us… one-and-a-half band members and a whole lot of cardboard. And honestly? It’s okay.
Here’s to the chaos, the growing pains, and these first five years.
— The Jonquies Team