Readers Abandoning the Black Dog Blog

I'm sorry that so many feel this way, but we've been so amazingly busy keeping everything afloat with the retail location that time just hasn't allowed for us to blog at all. At ALL. (if you're here often, this is terribly obvious, but it has to be said).

It's not that we've FORGOTTEN our folks at a distance nor are we purposefully IGNORING those who supported us. We've not been able to do mail order any justice (especially as business escalated as the holidays approached). People do still call (and in some cases, e-mail) and we send stuff out--nearly every single day. But I feel bad if I were to resume blogging (even once or twice a week, which seems possible now with good staff on hand) and not able to mail things out as quickly as we had been able to when we weren't as busy with in-person sales or with building our new business (going from 1,400 sq ft to 6,500 is quite challenging!).

It pains me to know that our mail order side has foundered so much, and Matt and I have actually talked at length in the past two weeks about how to get things "right" again and become the two-headed monster we were in the past (mail order AND in-person sales). Suffice to say, however, that we are exponentially more busy in person than we ever were in Indiana, and much busier than even we expected to be here in Michigan (it's a good problem to have, but hard to manage....).

We have hired staff to start January 1 with mail order. We have an offer out to someone to come on board as a full-time staff accountant (to relieve most of those duties from me, as I've been trying to manage the bill-paying side of the business while Matt works on the HR and merchandising side). That alone will free up a good bit of my time, with an eye towards more creative stuff that will energize both the shop and ME as an individual. We have dedicated space in a recently-cleaned and emptied storage room in back for shipping (even planned a computer purchase last week for said purpose). Everything seems to be in place to fire up in a few weeks (three folks have been hired to ship and field questions).

We've still not got the entire retail space set up (belive it or not--we're still building shelving for new and old merchandise alike and tagging merchandise/patterns that we moved here, back in July!!). But it's nearly full and we expect to be able to do big things on several fronts starting after the big holiday rush.

Folks who have been in the shop may be able to attest to the sheer magnitude of what we've taken on. Given that, I would hope that everyone would understand, but I don't expect that to be the case. Disappointment is a BIG issue of mine (I hate disappointing anyone, and I know we do it often.........directly and indirectly). I know many are disappointed, and I wish that wasn't the case.