Yesterday Lara and I had an EXTREMELY productive day! The boys spent the day with their grandmothers, and we took advantage of that free time to start checking things off our to do list.
We started with a meeting at Scotiabank to set up a business account. This took over an hour and a half because the guy we were working with was a bit slow, but very helpful and friendly. Apparently he has an assistant to help him with the inputing but she was on vacation. We got out of the bank at 11:30 and headed to Wendy's for some lunch.
Then we went over to Lara's and went through all our suppliers and started paying them! Eek! It starts to feel real when money is involved! I have to say that all the suppliers we are dealing with are so supportive of our business and ready to help in anyway they can. We should start receiving some inventory next week so look for pictures soon!
After that Lara and I headed to a packaging store which was recommended by Karen at
Sugar Daddy Shop. They had a very extensive selection of shopping bags, tissue, ribbon and packaging. We picked out a really cool brown bag, and some green and orange tissue. However this was one of the WORST customer service experiences I have EVER had in my life! When we arrived, there was a reception area with a man working at the front desk. We asked where the retail store was and he pointed behind us. Lara and I started looking around and when we had some questions, I turned to another guy sitting at a desk who didn't look up once when we were there, and never asked us if we needed help. So I said to him "Can I interrupt you?" His response was simple "The guy in the front." That's it. Obviously I was disturbing him by simply even being in his shop! So Lara and I asked the guy in the front, and he came back to help us. We started going through some tissue paper colours, trying to pick out the right green and orange, and seriously there were maybe 2 orange colours, and 5 greens to choose from. The samples were hung on a rack, and what happens when you stack tissue paper? It looks darker! So we asked if we could pull out a couple of pieces to see how it would look in our bag. And you know what the guy at the desk said to us "You could be doing that all day! Why don't you just hold the bag up to it." Geez. It's not like we are actually going to be spending money in your store is it???? At one point I made a comment like "You are obviously very busy and we are taking up your time so we'll try to hurry", and then Lara gave me a bit of a 'tsk Vicky!' ;)
So we decided on the tissue and on the bags and went to the front desk to pay. Did I mention that the guy at the front desk had yet to even say 2 words to us? As he was ringing up our order, Lara asked if they had a price list for bubble envelopes (they had about 10 different sizes) and shipping boxes, and she received a blunt "No." Ok- do you NOT want to make another sale? Are you NOT interested in a potential future customer? I couldn't believe what a chip on his shoulder this guy had! Lara and I both left there thinking "Is there another company in this city that we can use???" I would seriously avoid going back there if I could.
And, if I didn't think we would need to purchase more supplies from them in the future, I would give them a piece of me! Which reminds me, the guy at the back desk had a note pad on his desk that was about the size of a gum wrapper with a note about it that said "Please print your complaints in triplicate." I guess he must get a lot of complaints!
Anyways, after that not so friendly exchange, we headed off to IKEA to look at some storage boxes, and picked up some orange and green napkins for our launch party, as well as a clothes rack.
We got a lot done and our getting closer and closer by the day to launching our new store! Stay tuned!
