Our Start Began Like Most Businesses, In Our Home. We Had To Do Some Small Modifications But We Were Fortunate To Have Had A Separate Entrance From Our Regular House Entry. Looking Back At These Photos, I Now Realize How Bad It Looked On The Outside. I Didn’t See It Then Because I Definitely Had Stars In My Eyes, And Like Anyone In Love, I Just Saw The Promise Of Making It And The Hope Of One Day Having An Actual Store. The Only Thing I Focused On Was I Knew I Just Had To Start. We Were At This Location From 10-1-2016 Until 6-1-2017
So On August 24, 2016, I Spent $200.00 (which at the time was a HUGE amount for me) And Purchased My First Product, A Fifty Count Box Of 10-Piece Makeup Brush Sets. When Those Brush Sets Arrived, I Thought I Had Arrived, Move Over Jeff Bezos, Dawn Babcock Is Here. And I’m Happy To Say I’ve Had Several Moments Like This In The Years Since I’ve First Opened.
Our Very First Item
Our First “Store” Was Incredible Small. I Had One Room That Was 12’ x 9’, Or 108 sq. ft. And As Crazy As It Sounds, It Was So Overwhelming In The Beginning At The Thought Of Trying To Fill The Space With Products. The Problem Was, I Didn’t Have A Lot Of Money To Work With, So I Wasn’t Able To Just Go Out A Buy Everything I Wanted At One Time To Fill It (times were definitely lean back then). But I Was Fun Looking And Seeing What Was Available And Saving For It. So To Fill The Space I Offered Non- Makeup Items For Sale. Clothes, Bows, Shoes, Lingerie etc.
And Of Course I Expanded And Added More And More Makeup Products. At This Location We Added 20 Piece makeup Brush Sets, Toothbrush Style Makeup Brush Sets, Unicorn Brush Sets, Mermaid Brush Sets, Sponges, Sponge Accessories, BB Brushes, Curved Sculpting Brushes, Brush Cleaning Accessories & Eyelash Curlers.
Our Checkout Counter And Cash Register (not very high tech)
We Did Some Small Modifications To Make It More Convenient For Customers. First We Added A Screen Door, Then We Added The House Number (the door faced the backyard)
And As Afraid As I Was I Would Never Be Able To Fill The Space, We Did, And Then Some. And So We Started The Process Of Packing Up For Our Next Adventure. As You Can See In These Photos, We Eventually Had Pegboard On All The Walls, Going Around The Entire Room, And They Were Packed With Products. Our Ending Product Count Was Roughly Around 300 Different Products.
As We Prepared For The Move To 709, I Was Fortunate To Be Able To Purchase New Things. I Bought Single Makeup Brushes, A New Cash Register And Computer, A New Counter, New Shelving, More Products Like Makeup Bags, Custom Mixing Items, And Skincare Supplies. It Was Such An Incredible Time And I Definitely Was In My Element. I Even Made A Mockup Of The Store (to scale of course) In My Excitement!!
