About Us
This site was conceived by a San Diego married couple of independant retailers, or “Indie Retailers.” Our names are John & Jennifer and we considered ourselves too young and more modern thinkers than to have taken on the label of “Mom & Pop Shop.” Although fitting the traditional description of small independant business owners striving to establish a legacy for our children, after some time we realized that traditional “Mom & Pops” were generally left to tend their business and had few worries of “big box” competitors/predators. As such, there wasn’t much need for ingenuity, imagination, and/or business diversity…Before we get too far ahead, let’s start from the beginning of our (ad)ventures and get you caught up.
Our little story starts in 1998 in a series of “accidental whims.” In April of that year, we visited a little shop in our neighborhood owned and operated by a French woman who sold French artist’s paintings and furniture. She told us she is having a sale because she is going out of business. We took advantage of her demise, made our purchase, and went home. Jenny and I had some light-hearted discussion on what it would be like to open our own little neighborhood business. The following day, we returned to the office of the owner of that retail space and signed the lease, returned home not really sure if we really just did that and said, “Now what?”. Neither of us had any idea what we were going to do with the space and neither of us really had any business experience other than working for someone else. We just knew that the location was one of the best spaces in our neighborhood. There’s a great restaurant next door that’s been there well over 20 years and draws a good weekend crowd. There’s almost always a wait outside for a table, and we would be right within browsing distance. To give you an idea of “our little neighborhood”, we are just about 4 miles outside of downtown San Diego in a community generally known as South Park. We’re about 3 miles east of the world famous San Diego Zoo and Balboa Park. Although we’re surrounded by beautiful and fantastic tourist traps… er… I mean attractions, our neighborhood is not on the way to or from any of them. The only way you would typically be found here is if you live here or were lost. Well, except to intentionally go out of your way to shop in our quaint and wonderful little shop of goods that you simply can’t do without! O.k., so back to our story. “Well, now what?” Jenny and I had thought perhaps we’d run a stained glass shop seeing as how it was a hobby of ours at the time. With more thought, we realized how time consuming and tedious the work was and we’d probably never be able to keep up with the demand of our highly artistic quality work. Of course, already having a good 6 months experience with production, how could we expect anything else. Hmmm, o.k., maybe not. How about a candle shop?!? Yeah…there isn’t anywhere to buy candles for several miles without going to a mall, fighting traffic, or scrambling for parking in downtown San Diego. O.k., fantastic, but we can’t just have candles, what else?Jenny and I had recalled a vacation to Bali a couple of years previous and remembered what beautiful crafts and art they produced there. I thought perhaps I’d go and pick up a few gift and decor items to add to our little venture. About 2-3 cubic meters worth ought to give us a good start. As Ignorance on Fire*, I flew to Bali in May of 1998 not having the first clue that riots, political and economical turmoil were about to erupt. I visited as many carvers and craftsmen as I could in the relatively short time I would be there. By the end of the trip, I had purchased enough products to fill an entire sea freight container (you know, those big garage looking things you see traveling down the highway?).
After the U.S. Embassy had called for all American nationals to leave the country in a hurry, I returned home and told Jenny that I had purchased a little bit more than the 2-3 cubic meters we had intended. And again, we were faced with a “Now what?”. We had no room to speak of for storage in all 400 square feet of the shop and we had a full container enroute.
We opened “Triptych Gifts & Home Decor” in July of ‘98. Jenny had thought of the name Triptych (trip-tik). It’s typically a three panelled art piece. Usually the center is larger than the outside pieces and sometimes they can be hinged together and folded for easy transport or display. You may have seen mirrors done this way also. Anyway, there were going to be three of us starting this business; Jenny, myself, and a family friend. However, the family friend had to drop out for personal reasons before we opened the doors. We decided to keep the Triptych name because we didn’t think anyone would take Diptych (a real word) too seriously!
Upon arrival of the container, we started unloading into our garage, an office off the garage, our attic, living room, etc.. We had to find a storage unit or warehouse! As luck would have it, we met a young lady welder who had more room than she needed at a small warehouse. We subleased a space from her and relieved our garage, living room, etc. of product. It didn’t take long before we thought, with so much stuff, we should start wholesaling! So we did and started showing at tradeshows. Thus, the beginning of our wholesale business.
O.k., so at this point, our shop now had a few lines of candles and some beautifully crafted handicraft, sculpture, and art. But it needed more. In the past, Jenny had worked for a local Laurel Burch shop and realized that there is a niche market to be filled. So we added a few Laurel Burch products to the shop.We realized that retail sales on the internet has been getting bigger and bigger and thought we should give it a try. I built a small web site and featured the Laurel Burch products. Initially, we had only about two dozen different products. We received email and phone calls more and more frequently asking for more or if we had Laurel Burch this or that. Being the accomodating folks that we are, we filled those requests and grew our inventory. We quickly outgrew the small site we had, and built a new one that was to include most of what we had to offer including the candles, handicraft and art, and Laurel Burch products.The Laurel Burch products just took off. We provided the best service we could, and sent most orders either same day or next day. Just for kicks, we tried to see how fast we could fill an Internet order and our fastest time, to date, is 17 minutes from receiving the customer order in our queue, to pulling product, packing, and dropped at the Post Office. We filled more requests for products we didn’t ordinarily carry and our inventory and grew to the more than 600 Laurel Burch products we carry today.
We soon also outgrew the small subleased warehouse space and were moving more stuff back into our garage, living room, attic, etc. Again, “NOW WHAT?” Fortunately, the young welder would be moving out soon and I had made pretty good friends of the building owner by then. The owner offered us the entire warehouse for a song! We decided to pay him money instead of a song and once again relieved our living room, garage, etc..
In July of 2000, we were blessed with the birth of our first born heir to our empire, Carlo Antonio. He introduced himself on July 24th at 9 pounds and 14 ounces and made us official “mom & pop” business owners.
Over time, we started generating traffic to our site for a candle line that we carried in our shop from day one. We were curious how people were finding us and how they knew about these candles. After all, we hadn’t even marketed that part of our site yet. It was there, but we were so busy with the Laurel Burch stuff, we hardly had much time to dedicate to our other goods.
We had no idea that this candle company, that’s almost in our back yard in El Cajon (ka-hone), was a rapidly up and coming producer of aromatherapy candles, bath and body products, soaps, and incense. We got together with Shadow & Light Inc. and discussed our web site. The owner was enthusiastic and we discussed enhancing that part of our site to be more accomodating and include most everything they had to offer. We entered negotiations to purchase the domain www.AromatherapyCandle.com (it was previously registered). We concluded successfully and now have dedicated an entire site specifically to Shadow and Light Aromatherapy Products.
Fast forward to October 2003. Marco & Dominic enter our lives as new born twins. Wow, what a barrel of fun! But, also wow, what a busy, busy life. Let’s see if we can break it down for you in a nutshell to this point; Jennifer runs her parent’s board & care facilty (and has for many years having grown up in the same house), I have worked for a major law enforcement agency in San Diego for the last 15 years (as of this writing), most recently in a specialized unit as an I.T. Coordinator. Together, Jenny and I opened our little neighborhood gift shop back in ‘98, both kept our full time positions, and began raising a family. Meanwhile, the Internet is making leaps and bounds in growth and potential and we have to try and keep up. We’ve developed several sites and niche markets at www.FantasticFelines.com for Laurel Burch products, www.AromatherapyCandle.com for Shadow and Light aromatherapy products, www.OlavieProducts.com for Olavie LeVin Chardonnay wine therapy spa treatment products, www.CaliforniaEbooks.com which publishes unique 3Dimensional virtual ebooks for business brochures and publications, www.Ebooks4Tots.com using that same technology to produce interactive children’s books, www.CreativeOutsourceGroup.com migrating that ebook technology from CaliforniaEbooks and including virtual tours for businesses for a more comprehensive web enhancement tools for ebusiness. And now…. for the latest and greatest…
Enter the latest link in business evolution; Indie Retailer. IndieRetailer.com started simply as a blog; a means of documenting who we are and what we do, the frustrations we’ve experienced and the successes we’ve enjoyed. As time went by, we joined several online forums to share and glean ideas in search of some direction for our latest venture. It wasn’t long before it occurred to us that there are not a great deal of resources for the small indpendently owned/operated small business. Throughout the past several years in our own shop, I can’t count the times that a customer has expressed their desire (and insistence) to seek out and patronize independent retailers whenever possible. The mere idea of shopping at a big box retailer sent shivers down many a spine. It didn’t take long for the light to go on; build an online resource for independent retailers and those that support them.
A search engine is born! IndieRetailer is now such a place. A place for independent retailers to gather, share ideas, list their business in the Internet’s only custom designed search engine for independent retailers and the people that support them from consumers to vendors. It is a place for consumers to come and find independent retailers to do business with, without having to fight traffic and struggle with parking lot wars at the big box retailers.
Of course, we’ll still keep our blog. It will serve as the other half of IndieRetailer, the back room if you will. The place where people gather and converse and share their ideas, frustrations, and successes.
So welcome to IndieRetailer.com, where “We Think Outside the Big Box!”