I just finished taking photos of 6 new products and I am about to launch them on the site. But I wanted to pause and get something out of my brain. I don't know if it is a good idea to open a physical shop in Elk Grove right now. I've had a lot of (verbal) support, but very few sales these last few months. It weighs on me when I am at the Thursday market, someone stops to browse, we get to talking and I mention how I want to open a physical space. They tell me "That would be great, I'll come shop with you all the time!" then walk away from my full stocked booth that has the same items a physical shop would have. I am very nervous at the prospect of taking out a loan, putting myself in tens of thousands of dollars in debt, and then having no one show up to the shop. 

If you say you support small businesses, buy from me. If you want to be more sustainable, buy from me. If you enjoy the products I carry, tell your friends. If you want to see more shops like mine and have places to hang out, buy from me now so I know that I can invest in a place that will flourish and not be struggling everyday. I used examples of other small businesses that weren't completely different from what I want to create, that have closed in Elk Grove in the last 2 or so years. They couldn't compete with Amazon and Walmart anymore. They couldn't handle rising overhead costs and they just weren't seeing enough people coming in the door. Marketing is expensive and time consuming. Regulations and permitting and insurance is confusing, time sucking and expensive too. I tell myself that Elk Grove is not a good place for small businesses to thrive. 

But I really can't help but dream. I know of other shop owners who said they weren't really getting much traction until they opened their shop, then they were very busy and are already looking into opening second locations. I found a terrific shopping center that would be so perfect. The landlords seem genuinely great, and have been very generous with their terms. It's a good size and the first even remotely affordable thing I've found.

I can't leap. I am frozen. I am terrified. I'm afraid I'm going to miss a terrific opportunity, but I am even more terrified I'm going to go out on a limb and have the tree struck by lightening. 

I have other ways I can support the industry. I love working with all the other Zero Waste/Refill shops out there and I have a dream of developing a distribution network that alleviates some of the current retailer headaches. I think I can actually do more with that idea to have a bigger impact on the global plastic pollution problem. But I want to have a local shop for my community. I have toyed with the idea of bringing on a partner, someone I can split the local presence with. I just don't know how to find that person. 

Anyway, I need to get back to work, allowing myself to be pulled 20 different directions at once is a part of my bigger issue right now. I just wanted to type and get these thoughts out. Comment or message me a on social media if you ever feel this horrible edge-of-a-precipice-should-I-jump feeling. 

Here are my (probably overly) ambitious plans for tomorrow and beyond. 

This week I am organizing myself to be able to hopefully sign a lease on a physical retail space (fingers and toes crossed). The official opening will be in April. I need to do so much organizing of numbers and financials, not my strong suit. I also went down to Phoenix to purchase the left over inventory from a shop that was closing a couple weeks ago. I spent all of my cash-on-hand on it, so now I don't have the money I was originally planning to use toward the deposit and first month for the retail space. So now I am trying to see if I can make some decent sales this week so I don't have to dip into my family's savings (more than I already have). I'm extremely excited to take possession of the space, I'll probably spend every waking moment that I can there.

Some of the other projects I am working on concurrently are: 
- I want to put together a weekly round up email for the Facebook group I run, Zero Waste, Zero Judgement. 
- I want to do a big Trade Show style event that helps introduce the dozens of retailers I have met to the hundreds of vendors and manufacturers. I think it would be a mind-blowing networking tool for hundreds of small business owners. It will also be a TON of work and I need to have some cash on hand to hire help. 
- I plan to put together a detailed and interactive directory and map of Refill Shops and other resources to help people reduce waste and live more sustainably. 
- I want to open a facility where I can clean and sanitize containers. I have hundreds of glass bottles and jars already and I know of a number of vendors right now that ship their products in aluminum bottles that they take back to clean, but the logistics and emissions of sending the bottles halfway across the country feel wasteful and costly. I would love to create a refill distribution center that could bring in the large drums of product from further away and then refill bottles or mid size containers to go out to local customers or stores. This facility would also be a hub for systems like GoBox which supplies restaurants with reusable take out containers. Customers subscribe to GoBox and then can "check out" the containers when they buy food from the participating restaurants. They can then return them to one of dozens of drop-off locations for them to be collected, cleaned and redistributed back tot he restaurants. 
- I want to create more content! I've been shying away from being on camera and I am not good about regularly sitting down to write. I will be changing this, and will put more content out so that I can share my project, connect with others and hopefully inspire some people to start their own sustainability focused journey. 

​I need to get the car loaded up for tonight's market. I will write more soon, I promise.