Welcome to March.
So, the first rule of blogging is to update your blog. The second rule, coincidentally, is also to update your page. In that vein, I've been remiss in my duties. For that I blame:
• YoYo Joe's. We just (officially) opened today. As such, we've been turning in our customary 18 hour days getting the store in ship-shape and ready to go. Getting home at 2 am isn't conducive to posting to the blog.
• The Phillies. They won the World Series. For the second time. In 125 years. So, it's not exactly been a normal week for people like me - a lifelong Phillies fan.
I honestly had no idea what to expect when pulling up to YoYo Joe's today. I didn't know if there would be a line waiting to get in or whether no one would come in at all. Well, like most things, the truth lie somewhere in the middle. To say we were busy today would be a stretch, but we had some sales, several of which were blog-readers (yay, blog reader people!) I finally realized that perhaps taking down the banner that advertised that we would open on November 1st might be a good idea, since several customers mentioned thinking we weren't open yet due to the date on the banners our front.
Carol was in today for the first time - Carol worked with me at Mitchell's for the past 20 years or so. She originally worked in Mitchell's in Ogletown (what now is ground zero for the MBNA/Bank of America complex) with her husband, Roger, who managed that store and the location where it moved in Community Plaza before moving up to our Fairfax store for the past dozen years or so. We're thrilled to have Carol with us at YoYo Joe's.
More pictures from the party to be posted soon!
Here's a shot of James - my future brother-in-law - at the wheel on the pirate ship. The ship's wheel is one of the details that Nate brought down this past week. He mounted it on the forward mast - it really turns!
Last night, we hosted our launch party at YoYo Joe's. It was our first official event. The whole point of the party was to introduce ourselves to Delaware - we invited a bunch of friends and family members and were thrilled with the turnout.
Let me backtrack a bit. We finished the pirate ship on Friday - it looks incredible. Nate and Kris (my brother-in-law - the shipbuilder and my sister) came down on Wednesday to finish the ship and also help us with other last minute details. My entire family was around - brother Tom, sister-in-law Elise - their son Graham, sister Wendy and brother-in-law Ric, my dad as well as Emily and Ethan, of course. Also joining us to help us finish off the details were Emily's sister Sara, her fiance James, my nephews Sam and Will and niece Katie all came into town on Friday. Sara and James put together Kettler tricycles and the Kettler rack. Sam & Will helped put together Plasmacars and other assorted stuff. Katie was a trooper and plugged stuff into the point-of-sale system. There were so many people at the store on Friday, I found myself coordinating tasks instead of actually doing anything. Our great friend Ann Lake not only brought us dinner from the Orient in Pennsville on Thursday, she hung around until the wee hours of the morning on Friday making sure everything was ready. And, the store looked fantastic.
Fast forward to Saturday - only a few details needed to be finished. Replace a couple dozen spotlights in the track lighting, hang fabric from the back of our wall near our palm tree grove and a couple other things. My brother Tom picked up the beer and wine for our party. One of our focus' at YoYo Joe's will be to buy local, so we got Twin Lakes Beer (despite their unwillingness to even call us back!) and Chadd's Ford Wine (again, despite their apparent lack of interest in calling us back). Luckily, the good folks at Kreston Wine & Spirits were happy to help us with our local selections. The caterers showed up at 3 or so (Toscana), and the guests started showing up 4:30 or so.
People kept arriving, and at our announced starting time of 5 pm, we had a nice crowd already. Guests raved at the store - maybe it was just them being polite, but I don't think so. People kept showing up. We invited all the employees from Mitchell's and many of them showed up. At the peak of the party, the store was packed and it was nuts. The unexpected hit of the party were the Plasmacars - we had one car out for kids to try, but soon found all of them were off the rack and kids were all over the store in them. I have to say, I have seen Plasmacars for years, but only when I actually got in one to try it did I realize how cool they really are (they can take riders up to 220 lbs!). We even sold a couple of them!
I thought it was funny when talking to one person at the party - I had neglected to mention to her about the pirate ship in the store, so I asked her if she had seen the pirate ship. She said, "pirate ship?," and I just said, "Oh, I guess I forgot to mention our pirate ship" and pointed to it. She was obviously shocked to see such a structure in a toy store.
One other moment that stuck out was when I was talking to my college roommate, Dale and my nephew Kyle came up. I realized that this was the first time all three of us had been together since we all went to an Orioles game in the mid-nineties. It didn't seem like it had been a dozen years since we went to that game.
It was a thrilling night and it went by way too fast. Before the party, I told Emily that I suspected it would be like our wedding reception - that we would hardly be able to talk to many of our guests, and miss some entirely. My suspicions were correct, I was sad that many of our guests I hardly had time to talk to anyone.
I was very thankful that Wendy decided that she would be the official party photographer and she shot lots of pictures. I will post some of them in subsequent posts...
What a night!
Here's another little video tour I shot earlier tonight. Check it against the last video to see how far we've come!
It's 4 am, and Emily and I are both at YoYo Joe's. Emily's stocking shelves, and I'm adding stuff to the infernal POS system. Things are moving fast now. Kris and Nate arrived yesterday morning at 11 and worked on the pirate ship all day, adding details like a handrail up the steps, a yardarm, a sail and more. Also, the palm trees arrived tonight - thanks to Andre Kerr, our artist. They look awesome, and are HUGE. Seriously now, come on, we've put in custom made palm trees, a cannon and a pirate ship. Are we nuts?
Probably.
...and counting to our 'unofficial' opening. Our 'official' opening remains November 1st, but we're doing everything we can to be in final shape by Monday....
Yikes! Looking around the back room, there's stacks of merchandise to get onto the sales floor. There's stacks of merchandise on the sales floor too. Gee, we've got a lot of merchandise, and more keeps arriving each day! Today, I went on a trip to Philly to get more shelving while Emily was at the store. Of course, 80 boxes showed up today between UPS and Fedex...plus, the balance of the metal shelving arrived from the powder coaters...poor Emily!
Have I mentioned that my dad (YoYo Joe Sr) has marked a giant chunk of our merchandise? He's spent hours here marking stuff with official YoYo Joe's price labels. You say, "hmm...didn't you say, Joe, that you're using a Point Of Sale system?." How detail-oriented of you to remember...that's right, we're using a POS, but there's nothing I hate more than shopping somewhere and there's no label on the package and there's no price sticker near the item, so we're marking everything. (OK, there's actually sooo much stuff I hate more than that, but you know what I mean)
Kris and Nate (the shipbuilder) show up tomorrow to fit out the rest of the pirate ship. Yep, rest of the pirate ship. Including a ship's wheel, a yardarm, a sail and more...
Oh, and thanks to my ludicrously late hours here at YoYo Joe's - I missed the entire game four of the National League Championship Series last night. I only missed what many people are calling one of the greatest games in Phillies history. Oh well, thank God for internet video.
Our friend John Lynch stopped by today while his son, Chris, was swimming at the Y - which you can see from the back door of our store. While in the store, he said the pirate ship reminded him of the Shoe Boat in the Concord Mall.
Which is kinda cool, cause that WAS the inspiration for our pirate ship. Does anyone remember the boat that was in The Shoe Boat? I remember my mom taking us up to the Concord Mall to get shoes, and we'd get excited because they had this little tug boat or something in it. It had a slide, and, if my recollections are correct, it was pretty small - only one kid or so at a time could fit on it. Remembering that a bit back was what made me think of putting a pirate ship in Mitchell's. I was thinking on a similar scale - something small - a draw to bring kids in the store. Obviously, it never happened at Mitchell's, but I kept that idea on my mind while we went through the process of getting our own store up and running. We plopped it in the business plan and pitched it to our advisors at the Delaware Small Business Development Center and when we met with the bank. Luckily, the ship stayed in the plan.
Ha...the Shoe Boat. I wonder what happened to it?
House of Pain at 1:11 A.M. is oddly appropriate. Today more more of the same - stocking in the store, adding to the POS. Trying to clean out the back room - bringing it all out on the sales floor. More and more people peek their heads in when we have the doors open to see what's going on. Several families peeked in today with their kids - who seemed hard to convince that we were not open yet. One little girl protested, "but there's people in there!"
Emily spent a lot of time tonight setting up the Arts & Crafts department. This is just one of the two sides of the aisles.
Here is a picture I shot yesterday with my cell phone at the powder coaters. These are the racks as they emerged from the powder coating process. The shelves hang from the racks in as they are being powder coated and when they come out, they're real hot. You could feel the heat emanating from them. We got the T-sections coated in white and the shelves coated in a textured blue. After they cooled, we packed them in our rental truck and headed up to YoYo Joe's, where my dad, Ric, Wendy, Ethan and Emily all helped unload them. It took a while, but we had a good assembly line going.
We immediately set them up, below is a picture that shows the before and after of the shelving. They used to be a generic ivory color. (We used to joke that Mitchell's painted everything 'Mission Ivory'). They look great! We're very excited about them.
Several more people poked their heads in today - we had a visit by a couple children who seemed quite impressed with the pirate ship, plus a bunch of Ric's relatives stopped by. T-minus 8 days!
He's right here. Sitting in front of the computer, entering wicked cool pirate hats into the point-of-sale system. And drinking a beer (Dogfish Head Festina Peche - eh...tastes like a wine cooler). And watching the U of D Sluggish Blue Hens fumble away a game on Game Cast. Less than nine days till the unofficial opening! Yikes! Emily is out on the sales floor merchandising the arts & crafts area. Ethan is sleeping over at his buddies house.
Our sales floor has come a long way, but it's hard to believe that we're just over a week away from opening. We've got so much to do! Here's some good news, YoYo Joe's has yo-yos! We got our shipments from Duncan and YoYoJam - and some really cool stuff is on it's way from YoYo Factory in Arizona.
Merchandise is piled up in the back room - we're slowly easing it onto the sales floor. I picked up the powder coated fixtures yesterday in Middletown, they look awesome! We set them up late last night.
Also, we've had more than one "fan of the blog" stop by and say hi. To say that I was shocked that anyone besides our families was following the blog would be putting it mildly! Our short conversation yesterday with Rand and Louise made our day!
More pics later....must....enter....merchandise....
on a far less depressing note than the last post, here's a peek at a display that Emily set up a couple days ago. It's a three-tiered display that Emily picked out. She merchandised it with a couple of the cool brands that will be new to YoYo Joe's from people who shopped at Mitchell's. It's a French toy company called 'Boikido.' (They're the company that made the ride-on cat I posted about a while back.) It looks great and it will greet you as you enter the store - starting October 20th!
The past couple of days have seen boxes pouring into YoYo Joe's. The past two days alone have seen nearly 150 boxes of product show up at our store. It doesn't seem so long ago that I was posting each company as it arrived. Now, I'm happy if I can sort the boxes into recognizable lumps in a field of cardboard. And the funny thing is, I have no idea...no...idea...if this stock is waaaay too much for our space, way too little, or just right.
Tomorrow should go a long way to helping us determine that, as we rent a truck to go down to pick up the fixtures we dropped off weeks ago to be powder coated. Once we have those, we should be able to much better lay out our store.
Have I mentioned that the pirate ship is flippin' awesome? Yes? Oh....ok...
Well, despite all the hoopla about YoYo Joe's, I still work at my family's store, Mitchell's. And today is, more-or-less, my last day. Mitchell's was originally scheduled to close tomorrow, although I think that the owners are going to extend that a bit to allow for us to sell as much of our remaining stock as possible.
The past several weeks have been a roller coaster ride of emotions for me. I worked at Mitchell's on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. I was at YoYo Joe's Monday, Wednesday, Friday & Sunday (and after the store closed on the other days). It was very hard to go from the shrinking stock at Mitchell's to the burgeoning stock at YoYo Joe's. The sad, depressing atmosphere at Mitchell's to the hopeful and exciting atmosphere at YoYo Joe's. Going from cleaning out my family's 55-year-old business to frantically trying to build up my own has been difficult on many levels. Although I'm very excited about starting my own store, deep in my heart I wish I didn't have to.
No, that's not what it stands for. I know what you're thinking.
It stands for Point of Sale. If you've been shopping at Mitchell's, you'd notice that it's not something we've had there. This won't be the case for YoYo Joe's. We have a Point of Sale system and I spent much of tonight fooling around with it. I mean, it's not like opening day is less than two weeks away, right? No, wait, it is. Yikes!
We now have hundreds of items on our Point of Sale system. Now all I need is to enter the thousands more items to get the system up to date.
So, Emily hung around late last night to merchandise the plush department. (Plush is the toy industry of referring to stuffed animals - I guess guys in suits don't like to talk about 'stuffed animals' when they could be talking about 'plush'.) I thought she did a great job! (And not just because she was merchandising while I was sleeping). Notice the adirondack chairs, they're for hanging around and checking out our books. Pretty snazzy, huh? Much more stuff is on it's way, so stay tuned.
Over the weekend, we marked lots and lots and lots of toys. On Saturday, our good pal Ann Lake from ONLC was at the store for a ludicrous amount of time. She hung around until we packed it in around 1 am. Emily and Ann marked our huge Melissa & Doug order. Today, we got through most of what was left, thanks to Emily's sister Angie, our niece Megan and her friend who stopped by for a couple hours. They made quick work of the portion of Learning Curve order that showed up on Friday.
The painters finished on Friday. Kris and Nate left yesterday morning. Yes, that means the pirate ship is done. Well, almost done. We still have some special elements to add to it. Right now, the ship is being run by Captain Underpants (that's him in the picture), who sits high above the ship with a pirate hat, a sword and an earring.
We've begin setting up some of the fixtures. The Thomas the Tank Engine fixtures are set up now, as are a row of Ikea shelving in the front. Emily, as we speak, is merchandising the plush/book department at the front of the store.
More pix soon!
That's it! No more pirate ship updates. I'm done, I'm outta here (just like Shane Victorino's grand salami last night).
We've decided that, instead of spoiling the surprise and posting lots of pics of the pirate ship ahead of time, we'd make everyone wait until our (shhhhh) unofficial opening day of October 20th. The official-like opening day is November 1st, but that's for the people who don't read the blog. The 'Anti-Blog-Ites.' You know the type...anyhoo, look for more updates on the status of the store, but look at those pictures long and hard, cause until October 20th, that's all you have to work with. And, in my very biased opinion, it's flippin' awesome.
