January 2016 see's Jerry and I and our tiny art business, riding the swells of change the best we can, in our humble little life boat. Who would think that after 20 years of having a directional sign on the corner of Mt. Bliss Road, the M-32 Hwy, and Rogers Road here in East Jordan, Michigan, would be removed with no communication from the land owner. It was a shock to say the least. We went through an emotional series of shock, pain, grief, anger, and final acceptance. It's a long story but to be brief, our sign was requested by a gal who loved the arts and knew us and our efforts. she approached us the first summer we opened. She passed and the land was sold. The new land owner took 3 years of time to accept their disgust of our business and name to finally tear down our sign to relieve their discomfort. It would have been a respectful gesture to us, to let us know they were going to do this, and allow us to remove it. We did design and create the sign. That has all passed now and we move on without that crucial directional sign, but we still have GPS and Google Maps to aid folks trying to find our out-of-the-way shop. We also have Face Book, our web site and our Etsy shop. We hope people will continue to seek us out in this commercial world that is consuming all things unique and small.
Along with that 2015 October incident, our customer traffic has diminished over the year, to bring us to some hard conclusions. Having a shop full of bright, new, glossy inventory is a visual sign of speculative debt. A risk that the shop owner takes, in trust that the purchased inventory will be sold to customers and thus pay the debt accrued. Life is a gamble on so many levels. Dusty merchandise is a sign of low interest, on-line purchasing or low traffic, perhaps all of the above. What this adds up to are the symptoms of a dying business. When the owners have not created any significant changes to their operation, it becomes a puzzle to reasoning the cause.
Such symptoms tell the story that no business owner wishes to come to grips with, especially after 22 years of happy sharing and empowering. It deserves mourning. The anguish of letting go of something, not unlike a well loved child, is worth the tears that well up at the thought. What I mourn is no longer purchasing nifty things from other small American manufacturers. It not only helps their business, but opening a box of ordered items is exciting to me. I love offering new and unique things unlike the ho hum offerings of big box stores.
The symptoms I discussed earlier, are demanding a change, as does the debt of inventory purchases.
Being artists, ideas flow fluently and need to be brought into reality. To stop creating would bring on stagnation, and the beautiful flow dreams and innovation. So.. after much thought and discussion, Jerry and I have concluded that we will continue as we did 40 years ago, before our little shop was even thought of. Sacred Sparks evolved from Jordan Valley Studios. We will not reverse back to the old name, because we have created a strong identity to Sacred Sparks. We will, however embrace our art, and all the things we create from our hands. We still need to pay bills, so we will continue to keep our little handmade shop open to customers who seek the unusual and beautiful.
The commercial inventory that we currently have on our shelves will be randomly placed on sale. We may announce these sales, and we may just put a sign on our door, stating that a sale is happening that day. We hope we can entice folks curiosity to stop and see what cool thing they can find at a reduced price. We will not be replacing any commercial inventory.
We will, from this point forward, offer our art to our visitors. So Sacred Sparks will continue as everyone remembers us, but just not the commercial stuff. When it is finally all sold off, we will fill the empty space with our creations. The calendars, date books, sculptures, doo dads, will slowly disappear as they are sold away, and we will become a bright and shining shop full of awesome Aydlott Art!
Hopefully, if you have been a regular customer that you will continue to visit, and find cool, colorful and sparkly things. If you only purchase the commercial items we offered, then you will need to go to Amazon for those. What we do ever so hope, is that you will continue to visit our cute little shop to see what's new that day. It may be a little drawing, new photo cards, new Goddess Dolls, pendulums, Faery Dust, Elf Powder, Earrings, Pins and notable Intentional Necklaces, and Women's MoonMeets, and who knows what other events we may offer. But Sacred Sparks is far from dead, and this new direction is our resurrection! ...So Be It
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