From the moment we started contemplating this move to Savannah, we prayed that the Lord would guide our steps, and if things started falling into place we would go. If you would have told me how perfectly the Lord would lay out the next 2 months, I wouldn't have believed you. We quickly started seeking business advice from our attorney, accountant and business mentor, all to realize they were all saying the same thing....You NEED to do this. From this point on we knew the Lord was starting to pave our path in the right direction.
The first day we came to Savannah back in June to search for a property, we knew we needed to get creative. I had picked a few different places off Realtor.com and thought, what the heck let's go look at all of them. As soon as we stepped into 541 East Liberty we saw the potential, but knew we had our work cut out for us. As the day went on, we looked at multiple properties and knew that none of them had the historic Savannah charm that we were looking for except 541.
After returning back to Valdosta we started the leasing paperwork process with our realtor. By the end of June we had secured our business location, but quickly found that we could not get in to 541 until July 28th. No worries, panic mode had not set in just yet! (HA!) The immediate retail therapy kicked in; we needed mirrors, furniture, cabinetry etc. to make this store look great! I will never forget the games of tetris we played trying to fit every possible thing we bought into our SUVs! Fast forward to July, and we both made our big move to Savannah to start settling in before store renovations would start. Remember how I said panic hadn't set in just yet? Scratch that, we were now feeling the pressure of "Oh Lord we don't get in this building until July 28th and we open for business on August 12!"
FIFTEEN DAYS to pull this off. FIFTEEN Y'ALL. In those 15 days, we had so many friends and family members support us and help us get things done. From painting the walls, Jessica's dad building all our shelving and installing it, floors (dear God the floors...), and my parents packing down the Uhaul of furniture for the store. There are not enough words to express our thankfulness to every person who has helped in this endeavor. Countless trips were made to Lowes, Home Depot, and Home Goods. Things didn't work, pieces didn't fit, and many times we didn't have enough of one thing but had too much of another. We left the store one day during the renovation process and noticed a sign on a barbecue shack a few blocks down from our store. It reads "Even though you're fed up, you gotta keep your head up" -Tupac. Who would've thought we would get our inspiration from Tupac?? That quickly became our motto and the 15 days passed before we could blink. So here we are, celebrating our first weekend open and our first customers. We are humbled. We are thankful. We are blessed. It is our prayer that we are now able to bless others.
Before and after pictures will be posted soon.
Emily & Jessica