Diary of a shop owner (Anthony Dobbs)

I am just another local Wexford shop owner with the same bills and complaints as everyone else, rent’s too high, rates are pointless, insurance is too high, the list could go on but that is not what my story is about. It’s about watching a dream come through, seeing a multitude of nightmares unfold and finding my forever person.

October 2014  I stepped away from the comfort of a full time job, well with a little redundancy push anyway.  I walked up and down the town looking for a small shop and I found one I liked, it was small and pokey and I went to speak to the estate agent about it, by the time I got there it was gone.  I was disappointed and at that time I was being offered the chance to apply for other positions within my current employment.  I did apply for a role and got passed over. When I asked why, I was given no answer.  So at that stage I was facing a mortgage without an income.

October 15th 2014  By complete accident I happened across my shop!  I had walked past it many times oblivious to the fact it was even there and funnily enough in the five odd years I have been here some people still ask me am I only newly open.  The shop was pink and I mean really pink, pink door, pink walls and pink glitter splattered all over the mirrors in the shop.  I hated it straight away but it was vacant and the rent was good so I thought it was no harm to go and look at it properly.  My wife would tell you that I have no vision, I see what is in front of me and that is about it.  Opening the door for the first time I was hit with a smell.  It wasn’t pleasant but I went in anyway.

It took all of five minutes to walk around the shop, I took a few photos and continued to be blinded by the pink.  Right at the window there was what I would describe as a wooden seating area (I have never checked inside of it, we think that is where all the electrics are but it really could be anything) so I sat down and just stared into space.  My mind wandered for a bit as I tried to form a picture in my head of how I could do this and, funnily enough, even though I have no vision I do have a really good imagination and I imagined myself here and I saw myself being happy here.

I was still employed and I had done all of this on my lunch hour so I ran down to the estate agents and confirmed I wanted it.  They made it such a simple process as did the landlord.  I had to pay a deposit down and they allowed me a three month contract to start from October 2014 – December 2014 with a guaranteed twelve month contract if I was happy here.  Within two days of sitting in that shop for the first time I had the keys and the contract was signed.  I was set at least for the next three months anyway.  My biggest issue now was how I turn this horrible mess into my dream.  Luckily, I knew someone who did shop fittings and he was happy to help.

I had my suppliers sorted quickly.  They were London based so I travelled over to meet them and spent a fortune.  I hand-selected every single item and paid for the shipment back to my parent’s house as at least there would be someone there all day.  I ordered my till and my price gun and other various bits I would need just to get me open.  I finished up in work on October 31st which was a Friday and I would be open on Monday 3rd November which didn’t give me much time off but I needed an income.  On the day I finished work I got an email saying my pricing gun was on back order.  I had over 3,000 individual items to price the day after my leaving do from work.  I sat in a freezing cold shop the worse for wear for over nine hours hand-pricing every item as the evening before I opened I held a shop warming for family and close friends and I wanted everything ready.  I scraped by and we had an enjoyable evening.  I woke very early on the Monday with a knot in my stomach but there was also a buzz, something I had not had in a long time when I thought about going to work.  I was ready to be a business owner.

Monday 3rd November 2014 10am   With a few balloons tied to my shop door and window I opened the door for the very first time.  I stood at my shop door and looked up and down the street realising I am now a shop owner and my childhood dreams had come true.  As I looked up and down, I noticed that there was absolutely nobody around.  I mean not a soul, and it was so quiet.  I sat at my shop counter for over an hour looking out the window and the first person who came into the shop was the delivery driver with my pricing gun!!  Finally, at lunch time people started to fill the town and I had my first ever sale.  I still remember it, an iPhone 4 pink gel case for €4!  I was on the way.

The first week was a blur.  I had a great time meeting so many new people and people that I would become friends with, people who have stayed loyal to my shop even though in the five years I have been open five more phone accessory shops have opened (I was the first).  That was the high, that first week, the buzz of being my own boss, nobody telling me what to do or what to say.  I realised very quickly that I could get used to this.

The high of the first week didn’t last long.  Week two arrived and with it a week of torrential rain.  There were days I didn’t entertain a single person and by the end of that week, a week when I didn’t get a wage, I knew that this was going to be a hard slog.  I am not a person who quits.  I refocused myself and thought, what can I do to make my store stand out, what would make me different.  My prices always made me stand out and still do.  We offer the same products but without fancy boxes or packaging for more than half the price of other places and we offer a service with a smile.  That was still not enough.  I needed a gimmick.

‘The man facing Heaton’s that does the tablet cases’, is what a lot of people know me as, and that was no accident.  I built that reputation by a hell of a lot of hard work and research.  I spent two months researching a piece of equipment and trying to find a company I was comfortable dealing with before pulling the trigger and spending a small fortune on a printer that would change my life in more ways than one but for now I still had to get through my first Christmas.

In the last week in November just to cap a miserable month I got a phone call just after midnight on a Friday.  ‘Someone just smashed the shop window,’ the voice said on the other end of the phone.  I dressed and drove down not sure what to expect.  Were we robbed?  Was anything left? How much damage had been done?

All of those thoughts ran through my head as I drove.  When I got down to the shop you couldn’t even get close to the window.  There was so much glass, an entire pane of glass (we only have two pane’s) was spread all over the road even as far as Heaton’s shop.  We spent two hours cleaning up the glass and then trying to board up the window.  The only good thing to occur from that incident was the fact we realised our front shop shutter actually worked and I have used it ever since that night.

I was absolutely nowhere near prepared or ready for December.  I had not had a storming start to life in the shop and I was hesitant in spending more of my own money on stock especially a large volume.  I knew Christmas would be busy, just not as busy as it became and I was on my own in the shop every day, bar Thursdays when my cousin covered me as he also worked his own business out of the back of the shop.  The shop went from having 8/10 customers a day to 8/10 customers at a given time all through December.  I didn’t panic even when things went wrong. 

At the beginning of Christmas week I had to issue a refund to a customer early in the day as they had purchased something that wasn’t suitable for their needs.  I didn’t know at the time that I had left the till switched to refund mode from that time till after 2pm (I normally ran a running total report early in the afternoon to make sure everything tied back) I knew straightaway something was wrong, the till report advised me that I was on -300+ and I had to close the shop to do a till cash count and try to rectify the mistakes I had made which took almost half an hour and that was in between people banging on the shop door trying to get in which made me have to recount everything every time I got distracted.

The day before Christmas Eve I ran out stock.  I had empty shelves everywhere and with my only supplier at the time based in the UK getting new stock was impossible.  I sat at my counter turning people away but because I had nothing else to do, I designed a flyer to give to everyone who came in that would transform the business.  I touched on it a little earlier regarding a printer but it was no ordinary printer.  It was a phone/tablet case printer capable of producing personalised cases of any kind with any design a customer could think up.  I handed them out to everyone and I advertised it ferociously online.

On Christmas Eve I got robbed for the first time.  Well the first time I am certain of anyway.  I was in the shop toilet washing my hands and I heard the door open and then voices.  I saw two kids no more than twelve helping themselves to the last of my earphones which I had up on a shelf.  I ran after them but they were quick.  That was the last of my stock gone.  I was told that the week after Christmas was very busy but I had no stock or energy left and I closed on Christmas eve at 5pm and, having just signed the lease extension two days previous, I would reopen on Jan 2nd 2015 for my first full year and what a year it would turn out to be in so many ways.