Okay, so help me think this through. The whole point of the little Sprout booth was to try out a store concept, see if it works. I’m almost a year in (anniversary party in October! details soon!), and so far, I’ve made rent every month but one (January was very slow, but December more than made up for that), and I’m planning to keep the booth going another year there.
I need to be doing a lot more in sales before I can justify trying to open my own store. My plan would be to have it be a collaboration with a few different handmade artisans, and Kev and I have run the numbers, and we’re estimating that with, say, 4 of us, we’d each need to do $1000 / month in sales for it to be reasonably profitable. My sales at Sprout are growing, as word gets out, so I think that’s probably feasible at some point down the road.
Here’s the thing. I could apply for a second business at Sprout. It’d need to be different from Serendib House. I was thinking I might want to do something like ‘Serendib House Presents,’ (with a better name) — basically a store where I curate hand-crafted items I love from local artisans.
I’d love to carry some of Margaret Leininger’s textiles, for example, and Alix Mikesell’s jewelry, and Chrissy Cho’s celadon vases, and if Laurette Stefani Anderson didn’t already have a booth at Berwyn Sprout for Dive Bar Soaps, I’d definitely want to carry her work. I might also have a section of curated books by local authors, like Alec Nevala-Lee. This would be potentially money-making right now, but more importantly, would let me try out the larger store concept.
So, if I did this (and if Sprout approved it), there are a few things to figure out:
1) SALES
a) one option is to buy the work directly from the artisans (at a typical store discount, which I think is usually 30-40%), and then resell it. That’s the simplest, but would require me to put in a significant initial cash outlay, and possibly add more in months where sales are slow. (Rent for the booth is $200 / month.)
b) the other option is consignment, like an art gallery — I showcase and promote the work, Sprout takes its 5%, and I take a percentage — not sure what’s reasonable, maybe 10%? The advantage to the artisans is they’d make more / piece, but the disadvantages are that they wouldn’t get money up front, and there’s also the chance of theft, which I wouldn’t have insurance for in this space, so I think I’d have to ask them to carry that risk. (Sprout has pretty good measures in place for avoiding that, especially for larger pieces, but jewelry might be an issue.)
2) STAFFING:
For Sprout, I need to do two 5-hr shifts / month for my booth. This isn’t that onerous, especially since I can spend a fair bit of the time working on my computer, updating stock in the store, rearranging things, etc. I could just add two more shifts for myself, but that is a cost — it’s time I’m not spending with the family, puttering in the garden, etc.
Sprout allows you to have one other ‘sub’ for your shifts — they don’t want different random people coming in all the time. So far, I’ve just used that once, paying Eliana to cover when I was in CA (had messed up my schedule). That’s expensive, though, so I’d want to avoid that if I can. I can have Kavi cover instead, and pay her less (probably $20 / hr), but she may only be in town for one more year. Or I can have one of the artisans take shifts in exchange for a lower percentage on their sales, maybe?
Okay, that’s how far I’ve gotten in my thoughts. I welcome further thoughts!
