Cinderella and retail
To continue the Cinderella analogy, we all want to find our Prince Charming, and put on the beautiful glass slipper and live the fairy tale. We all want the love story !
But idealised love and real love are not the same thing, just as the idea of having a shop and the reality of having a shop are not the same thing.
Falling in love is easy, putting on the glass slipper is easy, but being in love is harder and making it work day after day, year after year is much harder. Sustaining the dream is the difficult part.
Getting the keys to your first shop is usually surprisingly easy, fitting it out and choosing the products is exciting, but it’s just the beginning, not the end.
Getting a shop is the easy part, like putting on the glass slipper. The rest takes hard work – hard work to sustain the enthusiasm, motivate the staff, check on the competition, find new and exciting products, keep up to date on new trends and market your business.
Just like the Cinderella story, someone missed out on telling us that life can be unfair, big local businesses can close, town centres can evolve, and not in a good way, competition can open up next door, and economies don’t always work in your favour.
So, what are we to do ? The only option is to choose it the way it is…. After all it isn’t any different to how it is. Then go to work on making it the way we’d like it to be and that’s a serious business decision.
True love is not a temporary thing, it comes with time, it’s not a Cinderella story. It’s a story of commitment, and doing the little things well, with a light heart, not because you have to do them, because you want to do them.
Naturally it’s the same for owning a shop and running a shop. Most of the hard work is behind the scenes, but its vital, and its vital that you maintain your passion for your business, because when the passion starts to fade it’s obvious to everyone……
