The First Lot of Stock Arrives - But 250 Miles Away

This week's post is about my first lot of stock arriving - very exciting!!


The lauching of Rachel's Toy Shop began is January really - I went to the London Toy Fair with my accountant (aka Mum) on a very snowy day, and I met some of my future suppliers.

I was really lucky that the first supplier I talked to when I got there was Nicole from Melissa & Doug.  She was so friendly (mum whimpered when I turned down chocolate muffins) and with a little help from mum ("would that be on a proforma basis?" "what is your return policy") I stumbled through my first retailer/supplier interaction.  As I say, thank god Nicole was so nice, because some of my subsequent interactions weren't quite so smooth.  Lego were a closed stand ("Your name's not down, you aren't coming in") and a couple of the suppliers were down right snooty.  You know who you are.  I really don't understand why they think this is a good idea - one day I'll be able to do a Pretty Woman-style flounce I'm hoping.  "When I started you wouldn't talk to me.  Big mistake!  Huge!  Massive!"

Anyway, there were lots of lovely people there apart from Nicole - Fiesta were very pleasant, Cuckoo, Clementoni and Cloud B were absolutely charming.  So I had 2 enormous bags of catalogues to lug back to Wigan on the train, and I was super excited.

So I started to select my stock, got in touch with the people I met at the fair, and I was away.  But one small problem - delivery.  I was at work all day, so mum offered to have the boxes delivered to her office, which is my registered address, so all systems were go.

One by one the deliveries arrived.  Poor mum had to carry them up the stairs.  She started to get a bit miffed

Then 24 bears went missing on their way from Ireland.  It turned out that the courier couldn't find the building, and just sent them back.  The supplier was great though and sent me some more.

Now just one little problem left - all my stock was 250 miles away.  Which leads nicely to next week...




Next week:  Royal Mail and my profit margin disappearing down the toilet

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