The Tiny Department Store - a progress report

Moving from dreaming to doing and reflecting on what success looks like for me

Hello, and welcome to the home of The Tiny Department Store. Here you will find my weekly newsletter where I share the behind the scenes of setting up a small business and working towards making my dream of opening a concept store a reality. Without premises or a large budget I plan to create the world’s tiniest department store, measuring just the dimensions of the wooden box on the front of my shiny blue bicycle. The Tiny Department Store will pop up once a month with a new theme and a limited edition range of products that constantly evolve. I will also give you a peek inside my world, sharing snippets of my daily life, travels and inspirations. I would love you to join me on this journey x

In last week’s newsletter I promised you an update on my progress with The Tiny Department Store. My practical progress is easier to quantify, but I also wanted to take a moment to reflect on the progress I am making with my mindset as this can definitely be the more challenging obstacle. I have had to come to terms with two truths in the last couple of months. One is that progress can be slow and sometimes difficult to see. On days when I feel like little progress is being made, I need to take a step back to see how far I have come. I must say that Substack has really helped me with this. Seeing my home page populated with tiny happy squares, each a weekly newsletter brings me a special kind of joy. Also, whoever came up with the idea of sending an email to congratulate writers for consistent posting, should be given a shiny gold star. Receiving a little pat on the back was just what I needed. Thank you Substack!

Thank you Substack - I appreciate you noticing

I also need to remind myself that not everybody in my life will understand and appreciate my dreams and ideas and that is ok. It is important to build an internal wall around my dream to protect it against negativity and to arm myself with the tools to stay strong in my own belief on the days when it feels particularly hard. I have my plan for launch and goals for the next twelve months and the right mindset is imperative to achieving them.

Last week I read The Success Myth by Emma Gannon, and it was the perfect tonic as to be honest I had been struggling. It helped me to re-evaluate what success looks like for me and it has given me a much greater understanding that success can look wildly different for each of us. Success for me right now is to keep working consistently and taking daily actions to take the concept of The Tiny Department Store from a notebook full of dreams into something tangible. Success is preparing to launch my first pop up. Success will be sustaining the belief in my idea and offerings, even if it isn’t a wild ‘success’ in the traditional sense. It will be keeping the promise that I have made to myself to stick with it, hosting a pop up every month for a year and only then making a decision on how best to move forward.

It was important to take some time to work through these mindset issues and whilst it will always be a work in progress, I feel like I am gradually building up my toolkit to help me through challenging times. Now to move on to the more tangible practical progress which is infinitely easier to measure.

The Tiny Department Store will always have four departments, however the departments will change from month to month. For the first pop-up the departments will be Accessories, Little Ones, Homeware and Stationery. For the Accessories Department I have made a collection of tiny beaded bracelets. I think I have thirty and they are complete. After doing some research with my friends I may make an additional ten in a slightly larger size to ensure they cater for all wrist sizes. I also need to source some tiny cellophane bags to package them.

Work in progress

For the Little Ones Department I have made forty handmade hair ties using my collection of Liberty fabrics. I have been collecting Liberty fabric for more than twenty years and loved combining prints and colours to make these tiny scrunchies, complete with a hand stitched flower. Each is completely unique and I love them. They are in the Little Ones Department but I am sure that they will appeal to grown ups too. I still need to work out the packaging for the hair ties.

For the Homewares Department I have made a collection of seven crochet wreaths. They combine pom poms with tiny paper flowers and are such a labour of love I doubt I will ever re-make, pricing them is going to be quite a challenge! I have designed the packaging, but would also like to write a little poem or story about each wreath to add to the experience and communicate the concept behind each individual piece.

The final department is Stationery and I will be making small packs of floral cards. There will be six cards in each pack and I plan to make ten packs. I am still undecided on whether to hand print the cards or use paper collage and I am starting work on them today. I will begin with sketches, before experimenting with hand making stamps to print or using collage techniques. As the children are now on school holidays, I am hoping that if I set up the kitchen table with a lovely selection of art materials I can entice them to join me and create some paper florals.

All of the products in the first collection are inspired by a spring walk which I documented with words, photographs and colour swatches. Ideally the pop up would be happening in spring but the first couple of collections will be a little out of sync as I am working on building the business as a whole. As the project progresses, the products I make in a month will then be sold at the beginning of the next month, which is more akin to how I envisaged the concept.

My notebook filled with dreams and plans

In terms of logistics, I have planned how to display the products in the wooden box on the front of my bike but need to work out how I will wrap them. I may need to have a tiny folding table that can go on the back of my bike, as it is really important that I can wrap and pack each order. I also want to make or buy a small A-frame with my logo on to display alongside my shiny blue bicycle. I will definitely need to do a trial run prior to the first pop-up to iron out all of the technicalities.

Ideally, something like this branded with The Tiny Department Store logo

I am also working on the menus/look books that will communicate the concept of each collection. I would like them to work in two ways, one to promote and advertise the pop-ups and secondly to accompany each product that is sold.

They will tell the story of the collection, as well as giving details of each product. I would like them to be small works of art in their own right with hand drawn illustrations, and hand written notes. My hope is that people will collect them and keep them alongside their purchases. As well as documenting the process of launching The Tiny Department Store here on my substack, my big lofty dream is that one day the journey could be shared in an actual book, cloth bound and printed on deliciously crisp white paper. The book would document the process from dreaming to doing and would follow each of my pop ups. It would include all of the paper menus with beautiful photography. I would also love for it to include some step-by-step creative projects. My very own Year of Knots! If there are any publishers out there who can help me bring this dream to life, please get in touch!

If you read last week’s newsletter, you will know that I am writing this in the fringe hours before the littles wake, so I will say goodbye for now. I have more to write about menus and look books, exploring the best and most beautiful way to tell my story. I will return to this in a future post. Please leave me a heart or a comment if you are enjoying my writing, it really does mean the world to have you here.

Until next week Kate x