Just hit 10 years at my shop on Gratiot and it hit me different

I was going through my old invoices last night, and I realized I've been running my little hardware store for a full decade. When I first opened, I remember thinking if I could just make rent for 6 months I'd be happy. But last week I hit 500 repeat customers in my system, which sounds crazy to me because I started with zero. Has anyone else had a milestone sneak up on them like that where you stop and realize you actually built something?

3 comments

3 Comments

brookerobinson24d ago

Congrats on surviving a decade of people walking in asking for the weirdest screw size you've never heard of. Did you at least celebrate with a celebratory tube of caulk?

miam1124d ago

Mia Murphy (@miam11): One thing nobody's brought up is how that 500 customer mark means you've probably got at least a few families where you've watched their kids grow up over the counter. Ten years is long enough to see high schoolers come in for their first tool kit and then come back as adults buying supplies for their own first house. Those are the relationships that make a business real, not just the numbers on a screen.

terry_bailey3524d ago

Man honestly that's the part that gets me. I'm not a shop owner like you but I'm a contractor and I've seen @brookerobinson's point about the caulk celebration. But the real thing is when you realize you're not just selling screws anymore you're part of people's stories. I had this one guy come in for a simple pipe wrench and turns out he was fixing his grandma's sink because she couldn't afford a plumber. That's the stuff that makes a decade feel like a lifetime of little moments you didn't even notice stacking up.