I am so excited to introduce you to our next guest blogger Audrey Woollen of Urbanic and fabulous blog Parcel Post.
And in her own words here is Audrey:
Hi there everyone on the WV Blog. My name is Audrey Woollen, I have a paper boutique in Los Angeles called Urbanic and a blog called Parcel Post. I couldn’t be more excited to be guest posting for Rachelle during this special time in her life. I opened the shop about almost 4 years ago in August of 2006 with a huge love of paper and a small idea of how to run this type of business. I have learned a lot over the last few years and the girls at W.V have been a huge part of the fun of owning my shop. They have literally been with Urbanic from the start!.
Today I am going to show you what a typical day looks like at Urbanic. There are usually 2 or sometimes 3 of us working at a time * things are not always in this particular order often they are happening simultaneously* – but all of it needs to take place every day (along with lunch) to keep things going.
10:00 am open store. Get everything looking pretty, cue up itunes, light our candle of the week and be ready for our customers
{photos by Stephani Williams}
11:00-1:00 sort though emails. (we seriously get over 100 a day!) answer all questions, set bridal appointments, look over product submissions for the shop/ blog, and send all custom order proofs, to clients, as well as all changes back to our designers.
1:00-3:00 shipments + appointments. UPS and FedEx usually delivers in the afternoon. Since our store is full of so many little things, the boxes can be quite large and many. Opening the shipments is definitely the fun part of this process! It’s like Christmas morning every day. Then comes the work… checking it all in, entering it into our point of sale system, and tagging all the merchandise. Simultaneously the afternoon is usually when our custom order appointments come by, so we always need to be ready to work creatively with clients on custom stationery.
3:00-4:00 merchandise. Once the product is checked in, it’s time to showcase it. We are all about reinventing the store every week, with new concepts and fresh displays.
{photos by Bonnie Tsang}
4:00-7:00 creative. Whether it’s a designing a new store window, a custom stationery project, putting together promo materials for an upcoming store event, a gift wrapping job, or prepping blog posts, There is always, always, always something happening around here that’s full of creative thought and process. (this is my favorite part about the environment)
7 :00 end of day. Throughout the day, we keep a store log where we document all that happens so that everyone that works here can be on the same page. This is particularly helpful so we can keep track of customer requests, daily interactions, and basic store functioning. Towards the end of the day the log is finalized, the sales are counted, the orders are faxed in, the drawer is counted and the doors are closed … all in preparation for the next day.
