These last two weeks have been the most hectic weeks of my life, also very emotional and draining weeks. As you know we have our little Petit store, that is soon celebrating 3 years since we first opened Petit’s online store. A year back we decided to open a very small physical store in Grimsbaer, a tiny little mall close to where we live, just to see how Petit would work as a “real” store. Our store space in Grimsbaer was only 38sqm, we grew out of it very fast and had to have an extra storage unit in another location to be able to be in that space. We realized very soon that we needed to start a real hunt for the perfect big store. We looked all around Reykjavik and most of the Reykjavik realty firms had my phone number on speed-dial if any space would be available, so we would see it first hand.
We looked everywhere and even in the big shopping malls, but nothing felt perfect, many nice spaces but no space that gave us that extra nice feeling. Then one day I got a phone call that there was a space on Sudurlandsbraut 4, right in the middle of all the food shops. I was very skeptic going there but I went and right away I could see us moving in, it was Perfect! I called Gunnar and just told him to see this, and now we needed to make fast decisions. He came and we got to see the space from the inside, The perfect space, 4meters ceiling height with big windows all the way up and the whole length of the store. The total store is around 120sqm with good storage and a beautiful view.
We only had one week to set up the new space, clear out our old and move all our things in to Sudurlandsbraut before the opening.
This is where I almost lost my mind.
Even though I knew we only had one week to move our store I wanted to have the new space close to finished before all the products came in. We wanted to work with professionals and not many pros agree to one week of crazy work, nor do they have the time to just jump on a new project with two days notice.
Thank god for Rebekka Pétursdóttir, she offered us her free time and that weekend to draw up the new store. Poor Rebekka, I think she´s never worked with such a pushy person and there was no time for “brainstorming” or “lets think about this”, It was just now and here. As the pro she is she made Petit perfect from every angle only in two days! The blueprints were ready monday morning and that afternoon we were off to Husasmidjan to buy all the material.
On the whole back wall of the store we decided to build a giant bookshelf, 4x12meters. For good display of all our products and also to get maximum use of the ceiling height. That bookshelf alone was 54 meters of material.
The bookshelf was like a Tetris puzzle to put up and to make sure all the separate shelfs were strong enough to hold the items that will be placed on them. That bookshelf had me thinking it would never be finished in time, because it took such a long time to finalize.
I lived in the store for most of the week, I only slept very few hours each night and didn’t see my daughter much that week. There were so many things to do, to paint, to build and to plan.
We had to have an electrician come in and move the lights and install new. We needed a carpenter for all the heavy hard work, we needed the windows to be cleaned, we needed the insurance company to look over the space and we also needed to clean and empty our old store. I had the longest to-do list for this one little week.
With a lot of help from Gunnar’s family and our friends we were able to see the light in the tunnel. The cleaning of the space was massive, we swiped the floors 7 times, and it was endless build up of dust in the space. We had 3 people just organizing our storage space in the back and four girls in the front decorating.
I decided we were going to have the grand opening on Friday the 6th Nov from 17:00 – 21:00.
Thursday evening, my friend Greta came and we styled the space all night.
Then Friday morning came and I was half alive. But I knew what was waiting for me that morning at Sudurlandsbraut 4, it was the store of my Daydreams.
We did it! We created one of the most beautiful stores I have ever seen in only one week, that´s crazy and wonderful.
I am so Thankful for everyone that have help us to create the beauty that Petit turned out to be and also to all the customers that came an visited us in our new store.
Love,
L
Skrifa Innlegg