Closing Time

Today I’m bringing such a bitter-sweet post that the Memphis locals will be familiar with all too well, especially the local Midtown business owners.

September 20^th, 2007 was the day I signed our lease at 888 South Cooper Street in Midtown Memphis to open my first ever Amazing Lace lingerie closet to the public. This historic, cutesy, artsy, lovely part of town captured my heart with neighbors such as Square Foods for my square diet, the magic of The Memphis Drum shop, Tsunami for my anniversaries, LUX for my high end designer couture, Sweet for my morning girl coffee creations, Tear It Up for the punk girls I would never want to piss off and Celtic for my mid afternoon flirt with wine on the – where did the time go patio – and ooh that occasional cigarette, and yes, I got my palm read from the Psychic lady not once but twice and I paid for Cammy’s.

Amazing Lace had already established a world wide presence of branding that pink and black striped awning across the internet since 2005 that we thought it would be fun to open our damask walled, pink crystal chandelier and pink taffeta closet to the public, to give and to share.

We had so much fun dancing to the oldies such as Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend –Marilyn Monroe, The Lady Is a Tramp – Ella Fitzgerald and my favorite Big Spender by Peggy Lee. Often times we were so in the mood to decorate we had to refrain from constantly redressing the mannequins in the window. Everyday was like a big slumber party but it was my job and I loved it. Suddenly, just because I owned a store front now we were getting attention from the media which never happened before. Unfortunately the media doesn’t care how cute you are when all you do is sit behind a computer even if your computer store makes fifty times more money than your brick and mortar store.

“How much fun can a girl have?” you ask. We had it all…at first that is, until we realized that our naïve little worlds were not filled with glitz, glamour and pink feathered boas but soon became filled with fear, broken glass and busted doors and panic buttons and guns and FEAR!

The first incident occurred when we would not give money back for one woman’s used panties and instead offered an exchange which was a nice gesture on our part considering all receipts say ALL SALES FINAL. The woman angrily refused and spat at our window on the way out. Two hours later a beer glass was thrown through our glass; the big 9×5 glass panel that costs over $1,000 to replace! Not to mention, she knocked GiGi, my precious pink afro’d mannequin, over and cracked her poor little skull in half.

The next incident was shortly after when Rhi called me hysterical that she and the other girl were robbed at gunpoint. We had a door bell and had to let all our customers in, this man shopped for 20 minutes asking questions before he got up the nerve to pull out his gun and rob my girls. Scumbag!

At this time you are probably wondering what kind of security we had, well that’s the funniest part about it. You see, security is very, very expensive for small businesses and most can only afford those fake security cameras but not us! I happened to be sleeping with a man who owns a company that provides innovative security solutions to all the big box retail corporations across the country.  So that made me one lucky small business owner!  We got the best of the best all for free and by the way that man I was sleeping with is my husband, I ain’t no hussy!

1,300 square feet with four very visible surveillance cameras, a Brinks security alarm, two panic buttons like the banks have and a doorbell would make one think we were safe… not a chance! Then came all the late night break-ins and burglaries, I was constantly replacing doors and windows, sweeping glass, repainting the side of the building from graffiti and receiving those 4:00am Brinks calls for glass break in zone three, or motion in zone four. The Amazing Lace wallet was not deep enough for the thousands of dollars in damage we accrued monthly. My cutesy pink boutique wasn’t so cute anymore; it was a dangerous pain in the ass!

“Where were the police?” you ask. They were there and often times given still frame pictures of the creeps’ faces and their vehicles. “Did they catch them?’ you ask.  NO!  I understand that we live in one of the highest homicide cities in the country so I don’t suspect a burglary would come before a murder on the City’s morning To-Do list. We heard a lot of frustration from the officers about how the system just lets the criminals back out again and some other comments I probably need to keep off the record.

For richer or poorer, till death do us part, did not apply to me and my pretty pink boutique. I got the hell outta there in a scurry along with a dozen others and I didn’t even shed a tear.

There were so many magical moments that I will cherish forever from 888 South Cooper St. and the learning experience made me a much wiser business woman. We settled down in a quiet office and warehouse building which had comfortably put us back to our roots. We started as an internet company, a bunch of nerdy gals sitting behind computers all day, talking about postal rates, impressions, the blur tool in Adobe, Omniture traffic reports, the mysterious demand of crotch-less panties and JavaScript.

“Will you open Amazing Lace again in a different Memphis location?” you ask. I don’t know… got any ideas?

Chrissy Chandler President/CEO Amazing Lace

 ©Copy Right Amazing Lace 2010

…you know you can’t resist watching the video!