It's really not as much fun as you might think.

We spent the last three days at the lingerie show. Now every time I tell a dude about that they are all "Hey take me with you. You are a lucky son of a bitch." I have to tell them it is not as much fun as you think.

Now there are four types of people who are at these shows. Young girls that are the models and salespeople. Older woman who own stores. Old straight guys who are either the money guys for the lines being shown or the husbands of the women ordering. And gay guys. Nasty gay dudes at that.

As a straight guy there is not much to do. I mean you are not staring at the models who are very thin anyway. Most of them will never make any money at a strip club. I mean fashion is obsessed with thinness and it is even reflected in the bras that they feature. Which is stupid because the woman buying the bras don't look like the models. What looks good on a size 2 with a bra size of 34B will not look good on a woman who is a size 20 with 46E breasts. So you have to do a bunch of calculating to decide what to buy. You have to decide how many pieces, what colors, what styles, how low or high to go in sizing. So it is a lot of mental gymnastics. So you are studying the price sheet and not some skinny twat's ass.

Then you have the people you have to avoid. You bought their shit and it sucked and you don't want to buy it again. But they are all nice and welcoming and ply you with gifts and what not. You have to run away and not deal with them. I try to keep Lisa from even seeing them by walking down a different aisle. But they still catch up with you.

But you do have the lines you buy from all the time and it is good to see all of their stuff in one place and be able to place your orders for the next season. It does take a load off of your mind.

It is just exhausting.

Hey where has Jim and Lisa been the past couple of days?

Why at the Curve Lingiere show at the Jacob Javits center.

Lisa and our cousin who was with us decided to have some fun.

What we need is......steam heat.....hisssssssss

One of the minor catastrophes that are going on relates to the heat in the back store. It seems when Omar and his team of crackerjack douche nozzles were doing the renovation they did not attach the new radiator correctly. The pipe from the cellar was from the year one and the radiator was brand new so the coupling was not correct or something. Plus they forgot to put teflon or whatever to seal it.

So on Halloween the heat came up for the first time and billowing clouds of steam filled the store. It was like a steam bath. If we had closed like we normally did no Halloween we would have been out of business. I had to run downstairs to shut off the boiler to the building and call my landlord to fix it. Which still hasn't happened. We shut off the radiator all together but that can't continue. We need to fix the coupling and that might be a big job.  In the interim I bought a space heater and will wait it out until after the opening.

Just another problem of a shopkeeper.

Hey I have been out of touch....because of the Grand Opening

Sorry but I have been out of touch but we have been feverishly working on the Grand Opening of the lingerie boutique.

"Le Piege de boobies" is officially opening this Saturday November 8th and we are having a champagne and cookies reception all day long. Stacy will be showing up and we have cookies and cupcakes from a winner of the Cupcake wars show who lives down the street.

It is a big undertaking to launch a new joint. You have to stock the inventory of course and that costs a bundle. Then you have to figure out how to have people try on bra's and how the dressing rooms are going to work. You have to make stickers and bags for sales. Set up a new point of sales inventory system. Send out an email. It just never ends.

We had to reconfigure the front store to make it easy to walk to the back.

It is all systems go. Cross your fingers.

I am being consumed

By the time it takes to run two stores. I just haven't had the time to do much posting because I am in the front store running things while Lisa was in the back running the lingerie store. Formerly I was able to hang back in my office and I had time to blog here and there. But now I am busy from the beginning of the day until the end and we get home I am too beat to be very creative.

For example today we were interviewing models for our big photo shoot on Monday. Lisa had these girls trying on various outfits and we had to decide who we wanted to hire to be on our website and in other advertising that we are working on. Plus I had a bunch of on-line orders because we had a sale.

I miss when I had the time to post all day. But then I would waste a bunch of that time fighting with Lawnboy and Inga.

I leave that to other people these days. Enjoy.

Chained to a desk is no way to live.....

This is the view from the desk in the new store. I am not chained there. I am chained to the desk in the front where I have to deal with everything as it comes in through the door. I am used to being more of a free agent able to wander and fix stuff. It can be tough.

I spent all day yesterday counting and labeling panties.

Somehow I never thought that was how my life was going to end up.

I am just really, really busy

Having two stores is taking up a lot more of my time than I thought it would. What is happening is that Lisa is in the back store dealing with the new lingerie customers and I am sitting behind the counter dealing with our regular customers. So I don't have any time to blog during the day and I am too exhausted to do it at night.

What is really distressing me is that I have to put my writing project on hold as I haven't had time to work on it for more than a month. That really sucks.

It is still soft....the opening that is

We finally put the finishing touches on the new store last night. The gay guy who make our curtains finally showed up and we were able to put them on the dressing room pole. Lisa merchandised the store to make it attractive and to make it easier to get at the product without searching all through both stores as we have been doing for the past couple of months. It was a lot of work. In and amongst a lot of other work we have been doing. But it is shaping up nicely.

We have already had a pretty good response. Yesterday we sold a French bra that went for $170. It is by a famous French company and a French broad bought it. She is going to spread the word to all the other frogs in the neighborhood so it looks like we might have a busy weekend God willing.

Now that is not our typical price point. We have a bunch of sets at around sixty dollars which is about as low as you can go without sell Kmart or Wallmart type stuff. Plus plenty of Spanx and stockings and hose and bra extenders and who knows what else to make a buck.

I am leaving the lights in the window on overnight to get people to peek inside. It is with low wattage LED blubs so it shouldn't cost me all that much and might be a good ploy.

Let's hope it works!

Hey it is soft......a soft opening

Well we had the soft opening of the back store today. We did some pretty good sales. No promotion. No announcement. Just people walking by.

It takes a couple of months to get the kinks out of a new store. You have to figure out where everything goes. How to display stuff. Where to put the back stock. In fact everything has changed since we took these photo's earlier in the day. It is an ongoing project.

For example we switched the bras and the night gowns in this photo. The bras are now in the foreground when you first walk in the door. The underwear on the nearest table had been sitting in the front store for weeks with no one buying them. We sold six pairs today. It is all about the display.

A bunch of stuff has to still be done. I am going to hang chains from the ceiling for display. I have to cover up the fridge. I also have to sort out the shelving and how I will utilize it.

But we are opened. Finally.

The Back Store Story Continues................

Did you ever go to a restaurant and the first time it was good and then the next time you went it really sucked. Well that happened to me with the iron work for the back store.

I had a local iron work guy install the curtain rods for the dressing room and the front door and the banister so I would have a uniform look. Then Lisa got the idea that she wanted a nine foot pole installed on the wall to hang a sample of the bras we have on hand.

So of course the guy comes and he fucks it up royally. He butchered the ceiling as you can see. He made an enormous hole slapped some spackle on it. Then he used an unpainted chain and spray painted it while it was hanging. He put a cardboard around it but he got some on the ceiling. So I had to have it redone and painted over.

Another expense and delay.

This really sucks.

The Job Continues

So this back store is breaking my balls. The knuckleheads I have doing the job keep fucking up. Omar is supposedly running the job but he has this little shit of a partner that got to be a problem.

You see all of these dudes from Bangladesh are Muslims. Some more than others. Omar is fully assimilated. He doesn't give a shit. He went for pizza with me during Ramadan. But the guy he partnered up with who does the electricity is a serious towel head. He would take prayer breaks and fasted most of the month he was working on the store. He was the dick that gave me the very low estimate. He is a sloppy fuck but worst of all he had no respect for woman. So when Lisa told him something he would not reply. He would talk to me or Omar but not directly to her. That shit doesn't fly.

They made several fuck ups along the way. So I took parts of the job away from them so I wouldn't feel bad about not paying them more. I have someone else doing the dressing room and the Bannister for the stairs. He didn't do the light in the passage way. The only thing he did was complain and ask for more money. Fat chance asshole.

So they come to finish off some stuff Sunday. They had to repaint some stuff that was fucked up by the camera installer. But what this little prick did was just grab a can of paint. Flat paint that was for the ceiling. He put it all over the semi gloss on the woodwork and the eggshell on the walls. So it was basically two different colors and two different paint in a patchwork that looked like shit. When I saw what he did and after he started acting like a dick I told him to pack up his shit and hit the road. On the way out he decided to clean off his brushes on the side of the building as you see in the picture. We didn't notice it until the next day. Now Omar has to repaint all of that for free. He is pissed. As am I.

Muslims are just fucking problems anyway you shake it. If they don't want to assimilate and treat women like human beings we need to deport them or just drone their asses like the Jews do. Enough of this bullshit.

The job continues

We are running into problem after problem with the back store. Omar and his merry band of taxi drivers are not exactly the best contractors. Now I knew this from the get go and I knew I would have to get someone to fix some of the more egregious mistakes. So that is just one set of problems. His partner is complaining because he totally underbid the job. So sorry douche bag. I told Omar to make him sweat a little but I would pay him a little more for the extras we put in. It is only fair. But they have no idea how to bid a freakin job.

I guess building a hut in Bengla Desh is not as complicated as an upscale lingerie store.

The real problem is with the cameras.

I got ADT to install the cameras. This was after the installer solicited my business to do it on the side. He wanted to charge me about $100 less than the company so why would I go with him when I don't get a warranty. But they were totally fucked up.

Then sent the Crack Emcee over to install the cameras with his helper trainee Luther Vandross. The surly installer spent most of his time going back and forth to his truck while he let the trainee do most of the work. I was short hander so I was in the front of the store so I couldn't be there to stand over them. At 3pm the guy comes over to me and goes "We are finished. Three of the cameras don't work. Sign here and give me a check." I go "What do you mean they don't work? You were supposed to make them work. That is why you guys came here."

He didn't have an answer. Needless to say I didn't sign anything or pay anything. I called the salesman to ream him out and had him come look at the job. I asked him why did my wall look like fuckin' Frankenstein's neck?

I mean why did he do that when he could have just went under the overhang. You know why? Because he didn't give a shit.

I was grousing about this in Marco Polo and Marco told me to call his guy. He is coming to redo the job on Monday. I am going to call ADT and tell them to stick their cameras up their ass. I might even cancel the alarm system if I can get out of the contract.

It has been an all around bitch to deal with them.

The work continues apace

A slow fucking pace.

Now we had two Mexicans working for us earlier in the week doing the rough painting. Putting on the primer and various scut work. Omar told me he had extra special Mexicans to do the wallpaper.  I asked them what made them so special. Did they sneak into the country in the trunk of a Cadillac instead of a Chevy? No. They were supposed to be expert wallpaper dudes.

Imagine my surprise when he showed up Saturday morning with a couple of brothers from Bed Stuy. Fair enough. I talked with them and they seemed to know their stuff. So they went to work.

They did the side wall and of course we had a problem. They were supposed to have enough to do the back wall but there was not enough. The dude did a great job matching up the repeat but we ended up with just one roll left. Not enough to do the back wall. So we decided to do the front portion which has a lot less wall space.

So he had to match the repeat on a lot of hard to reach places. They had to come back on Sunday and the one dude worked until ten at night. They got overtime which I was glad to pay but I let Omar handle it. I was going to give him another tip but Omar said no way. It is pretty funny how he doesn't like to tip.

His partner is already freaking out since they seriously underbid the job. I am not going to screw them and I will make it right so they make a reasonable wage. Still half of what it would have cost me with the other guy so it is a bargin. But it lets me teach him how to run a business. He kept forgeting stuff we talked about because he didn't write anything down. I told him he had to write out the whole job and then do the estimate. Then when I put on extra's he would have to adjust the price. He has no idea how to run a business. This is his maiden voyage as a contractor.

When you are a virgin you are going to get fucked. Just sayn'

Working round the clock

We have been super busy this work. Packing up the Japan order for delivery on Monday. Finishing the back store. Lots of complications and problems.

After dealing with back store all day we started packing the Japan order. I had to call for food to eat in and we decided to get Greek. All appetizers. Dips and fries and spinach pies.

Eat and back to work.