Ah, the fun of being adults...

So, I just saw a story about a knock-down, drag-out fight inthe Ukrainian Parliament and I was thinking about how my mind is feeling kind of like those guys.

Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t gone completely Looney… yet.  I’ve just been battling with myself over the idea of combining Lucia Carrill and viadellaRosa into one store.  There are a lot of pros to the idea – and a lot of cons

I miss Chowder.

Yay No. 1:  It’s a great revenue saver.  I was pricing out the marketing collateral (business cards, inserts, etc.) and my eyes started to bleed.  Not a cost I want to shell out for double sided business cards, two sets of thank you notes, tags, inserts, etc.  Right now, I’m printing as I need them, and that works for one or two sales a week, but that is NOT where I want to be by December.

Yay No. 2: I can save hours on online promotion.  I spend literally a couple of hours a week working on automating tweets for TWO stores, Pinning pieces from two stores, and maintaining TWO Facebook pages.  Woof.  I’m a part of two sampler boxes for the rest of the year and I have to come up with two different types of samples for TWO different stores.  Double-woof.

Yay No. 3: And one that catches my eye more than anything right now?  I have over 70 sales over at one shop and only 3 at the other.  My reputation at the 70-sales shop is stellar and it seems to be drawing more people, despite the fact that is a seriously niche shop.  The one that has more variety and decidedly more items has done bupkiss.  Blah.

I miss Boo, too.

Now for the cons of combining the shops.

Boo No. 1: Each store has a different “personality”.  That’s where the whole battling legislature comes in.  I’ve got two different stores battling for their virtual lives in my mind.  Mental chairs are thrown, mental fists are thrown, and mental ideas aretossed out on their mental behind

Boo No. 2: I’ve spent about half a year developing one of these shops into a beautiful place to shop.  I’ve created a breathtaking logo, designed a cute, fun mascot, and other things to put the name out there.  Now I’m thinking of wiping that name from the internets (as much as I can).

Boo No. 3:  I don’t want to confuse the clientele in my original store.  As I said one of them is a serious niche store, specializing in a specific theme of goods.  I would have to re-tool the marketing to include and inject the other shop’s personality and still maintain the underlying theme.

So the point?  I’m giving myself (and you, my loyal customers) until July before I finalize my decision.  I’ll continue to post pretty pictures of my goods, and will continue to keep Lucia and via separate until July 1.  Then?  We shall see.

Gosh, I love these fights. I should be ashamed.

PS:  Of course I don't own anything having to do with Chowder or Boo.  If I did, I probably wouldn't have this conflict eh?