we had three customers come into the shop. Actually, customer is a misnomer because none actually spent any money. We have been skunked all week, and counting last week, that makes five full days without anyone buying anything. We either grotesquely over-estimated the market for our product, are offering the wrong thing at the wrong place, or more likely some combination of the two. We need to make on average $75 a day to meet basic expenses like rent and to replace the inventory sold to meet the expenses. So far, this month, we're about $55 a day below that mark. Unless something strange and miraculous happens, we can't continue and I've spent most of the week grieving for the death of our still born little store.
At any rate, four people came into the store. The first was a local. He pulled up in front in a battered pickup, and he had two equally battered fishing rods and a bait canister in the back. He is one of the essential elements of the junk recycling business around Mountain Home, a self professed "picker." He had picked the rods up at a yard sale. He called them vintage, but there was nothing really "vintage" about them, unless age alone makes for "vintage." The rods were not in horrible shape -- the ferrules were still intact which is a plus -- but the rods were probably $20 rods new, before they had lived their useful life in the back of someone's pickup, and he wanted $5 for the both of them. I bought them, on the promise that he had other cool stuff more related to actual fly fishing, but then again, I doubt that I'll see him again and honestly don't care if I do.
The second too was a local, and another self-professed picker. He too pulled up in a slightly less battered pickup, and he too had something he wanted to sell me. This time, though, he had something of actual interest, if not value. It was an "electrical fly tying vise" manufactured by a company in Boise, that lasted, from what I can gather, about 10 years from about 1990 to 2000. It basically is a fly tying vise that spins under electrical power. I can't actually imagine using such a device. A rotary vise is a useful tool in fly tying, but the effort it takes to wrap the yarn around a hook is minimal. It doesn't really save labor and I can't see how the electrical power would improve precision, so I'm not really surprised that it was in pristine condition. Nevertheless, there it was, an "electrical fly tying vise," manufactured in Boise. He paid less than $20 for it, but wanted $50. I told him I could try to sell it for him on consignment at that price, but that I couldn't buy it. It might go for that price as a curiosity to a collector, but that's about it. I'll post it on eBay and see what happens.
The third too was a local, though not a picker, just an elderly man who, as he put, "came in to check up on me," as though he had some proprietary interest in me and the store. There are three or four old men who stop in when their wives or daughters are next door at Sherri's store or across the street at the Thrift store. He rambled on about this and that, and told me about the flies he had bought at Walmart last week and how he had used them on the South Fork of the Boise River. I'm not sure he actually bought flies at Walmart or that he had been to the South Fork anytime in the near past -- in fact, I'm pretty sure he hadn't -- but he was elderly, and just happy to have someone's ear for a moment, so I do my best to be patient and listen.
The fourth was a military guy, and he promised to be back tomorrow. He may, or may not, be back, but he was the only one all week who had any potential of being an actual customer, so the ratio is holding at about two to one -- for every potential customer, there are at least two who have no intent of spending any money in the store, but want money from me. That's not counting the robo calls I get, like clockwork, from people wanting to save me money on just about everything, but nothing that I need or want. I like the one where a slightly arrogant man with an Indian accent asks to speak to the manager in a demanding voice, and when I reveal that I am the manager, he's put off script, and when I tell him "you call every day, at the same time, and every day I tell you no," he's put further off script and just hangs up. The next day, same thing.
At any rate, four people came into the store and four left without a purchase, so another day skunked, and I'm working on an entire week. In the meantime, Lora got a job as a home health and hospice provider. I do so admire and love that woman. Her interview was yesterday, in Boise, and she thought she'd blown it out of nervousness, but he's articulate, intelligent, and caring. That surely came through, and they called back the same day.
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