Our First Month at the Little Boutique on Fountain

Wow, it’s been almost a month since we first opened the Little Boutique on Fountain with a few other super talented local artists! Time really does fly when you’re having fun. The first month being open has been a truly incredible experience. We’ve met a lot of new people and we’ve grown as a small business as well. We have learned a lot and we’ve grown from the things we’ve experienced.

Opening day went amazingly. We honestly didn’t expect the turnout we had but we are so thankful! We had quite a few friends come in and see our new space and that was amazing. We don’t get to see friends very often so it was great to be able to catch up for a second. My best friend even came and asked me to be one of her bridesmaids! Talk about a perfect surprise. It was so great to see everyone and meet new people! We were definitely nervous as this was the first time we had ever sold our products in a physical location, but we’re always down for new adventures.

One of our favorite parts of opening day was being a vendor in an alleycat race with our friends at Cyclotherapy (40 W. High Street, Springfield, Ohio 45502). During the race, the participants had to stop over at the boutique and purchase something from us with a voucher they received from Cyclotherapy. They were then supposed to take a picture of them gifting what they just bought to a complete stranger as a step of the race. To win, you had to complete all the stops first. A participant came in and purchased one of our “You Are Loved” mugs to gift and it really warmed our hearts. What a perfect gift to give to a stranger. 

There were a couple of minor hiccups with our payment processor, but we got them solved and are working to better prepare ourselves in the future. For example, we finally ordered a new card reader so that makes the checkout process much quicker since we’ll no longer have to manually enter card numbers. The new iPads don’t have headphone jacks so the card reader we had wouldn’t work. Our new one is a touchless card reader and we’re excited about that! It also makes us feel less awkward and intrusive because we no longer have to physically ask for your cards to take payments. Hooray for technology!

We spent so much time preparing, labeling, pricing, organizing, planning, etc., and thankfully it all paid off. When we were in the middle of getting everything ready, we were just kind of silently hoping together that it’d all be worth it because like we said, we weren’t really ready for this huge step. It felt like a breath of fresh air when it was over, though, because it finally meant we were able to take a small break. Emphasis on the small part. We really didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into (but in the best way possible.)

While the first two weeks were great, we decided to take a short break from being open to readjust some things in the shop to make it an even better place to visit. We learned a lot from the soft opening and it truly has been great to come up with ideas to make the shop even more perfect. Since the boutique opened rather quickly, many of us didn’t have too much time to throw a ton of products together so this break has been a great way to catch up. We’ve been able to breathe a bit more and take our time with the new products we’re working on. We’re getting ready to rearrange our shelves in the shop to make it a more seamless shopping process as well as searching through vendors for possible additions to the Little Boutique on Fountain.

We can’t wait to reopen in the coming weeks. More information on reopening will be available as soon as these updates are complete. We’re seriously so excited to bring you an even better shopping experience. Also, we are currently looking for other vendors to share the space with us! If you’re interested, please reach out to info@sipanddipity.com

Thank you all for coming in to visit us at the Little Boutique on Fountain. Because of your support, we’re out here living our dreams. Thank you again, from the bottom of our hearts.

What would you like to see from us next? We’re still working on our clay planters, but they’re proving to be more difficult than we expected. Let us know what you’re looking for and we’ll do our best to make it happen! 

Oh! Also! We have a shop plant that is looking for a name. We thought it would be cool if we allowed you guys to help us choose a name for them! We have a basket of the names you’ve given so far and at the very end of the month, we’ll draw a name out of the basket and that will be their new name. Expect updates on them as well as the other houseplants we have.

Also as a special thank you for reading this blog, take 10% off your next order with promo code: “BLOG10”!