It only took 40 years to get here.

I can, of course, tell how well we're doing by looking at our sales totals. I can see it everyday in the steady stream of people coming in. But what really nails it is the boxes I have to deal with. Stacks of boxes come in every few days, the contents of which have to be accounted for and then stocked.

It's been a huge surprise how big of deal this has become. I have to deal with a huge amount of packing material--popping the plastic bubbles, neatly folding the crumbled paper rolls. Doesn't sound like a big deal, but it takes time. It fills the bins. Sometimes they overflow. Then I have to break apart the boxes and find a place to put them. Finally, I have to haul them to the alley a block away and hope there is room in the bins. 

When you get 20 large boxes every few days, it really comes home how much material we're selling. Each of those boxes represent material we've already sold. I say already because the store doesn't have room to display anything new unless something already in stock has sold. 

Obviously, I'm not complaining. I'm rather wowed by it. I have seen downtown go from being so slow and empty that you could shoot a cannon down the street and not hit anyone to the swarms of people that fill the sidewalks on an average day. Over the years downtown has had its ups and downs, but it has been a pretty steady trend upward. It was noticeable to me enough for me to agree the rent increases as they came along. 

The special events--which again seem to be accelerating--are unnecessary now, but unfortunately unavoidable. I just have to grin and bear it. Street closures don't kill us like they used to because I've succeeded in mainstreaming the store to the point where the average person can find something they're interested in. 

This week we had a missing box. It took the full week to finally track it down and deliver it to the store. I could tell that it stressed Sabrina a bit. Which brought home the bad old days when such occurrences were common. Back then, if we missed a shipment it really hurt. We depended on timely sales, and we didn't have a lot of margin for error. 

Again, I've tried to diversify and mainstream the store so that we aren't so dependent on any one particular product to keep us going. 

It's nice. It only took 40 years to get here.