It Just Shouldn’t Be This Hard
It shouldn't be this hard to find a few items to dress up your house. We're frequent watchers of the ever popular HGTV, and we know we have to paint, accessorize, clean, declutter, hide the kitty litter… etc. And we're up to the task. It's fun, a bit, until you end up going from store to store to store trying to find simple items that, back in the day, were easily purchased within 10 miles of one's home.
This particular job isn't an online shopping kind of task because we need the items now, today. We need to stage our rooms and make sure the household items we're buying suit the space. If they don't, we want to be able to exchange them without having to do the return mail thing.
One place where we've found more than a dozen great items is the Craft Antique Co-op in Greece, NY. My sister introduced me to this warehouse years ago and I'd forgotten it until this move came up. A visit there with Tom introduced us to the many, many wonderful items people in and around Rochester have refinished, recrafted, or created, for sale. I could spend all day in there – sighing sigh after sigh, because there is so much I would like to buy, but I can't.
Just yesterday we decided to go out shopping for a tray. A round, serving tray. Something to place on a large, ceramic planter we are arranging with two outdoor chairs, on our front deck. Shouldn't it be easy to find a round tray…a serving tray…a party tray? I thought so. But we went to Walmart (ugh! you know I hate Walmart, and it gave us no joy, so…once again, I remain steadfast in my assertion that Walmart is the last place on earth anyone should shop). We then went to KMart – same problem. No joy.
We went to the Dollar Store – thinking maybe one of the plastic or lucite platters would suit, but they
We went to Office Max (for ink, not a platter) but checked their snack aisle…just in case. No joy.
And then we went to Pier One and we were warmly rewarded! Yay! Interestingly, the tray we found at Pier One is showing at Overstock for almost twice the cost. I'm surprised by that. Overstock is supposed to be lower in cost than other stores.
While at Pier One, we found a beautiful wicker table…and we chose to buy that instead of the tray (but I'm hungering for the tray – may go back for it later; along with a beautiful wicker elephant, as I collect elephants).
And the lesson here is: 1) It shouldn't be this hard to find simple, household items in your local community. 2) We could have saved ourselves a lot of time by shopping at all of the stores mentioned here – online. 3) As someone who shops online a great deal, it embarrasses me to admit that I did not do my research online first.
Offline shopping isn't going away anytime soon. But, when you're in a pinch, like we were, it pays to give the store's website a quick look – to find out if the items you want are available there. I will say that one reason I did not shop online first is because so many stores have such bad websites. Especially the big, national chains. It's click here, click there, follow links, and end up in some mysterious place that has little or nothing to do with your original purpose for being there.
If you're selling both online and offline, and you keep an inventory of your products on your website, encourage your customers to shop online first – by sending them relevant literature in the mail or by emailing them this week's special, while reminding them of all the other great items you sell. Overstock does this regularly, and I appreciate it. Funny, I never considered them for this purchase, but now that I have checked them out, I know that I should go to Pier One, first. Sorry, Overstock.
On a good day, I like walking through stores and touching the products. I like taking my time, musing on my purchase, comparing one color to another. But, good days come few and far between in this fast-paced world we live in. For the most part, women want to find items online and buy offline, if your store is within driving distance. Make it easy for us. Simple navigation, excellent photographs (with sizes showing – some of the platters I found online did not tell me how big or small they were and I knew what size I needed), and pages that load quickly.
It should be that easy. Make it so.
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