The walls were wet with paint, the cabinet doors were held up by velcro, and the team hadn’t slept in 48 hours but we did it. We opened the doors to a new space and threw a party for 200 of our closest friends.
Have you ever thought about what you can accomplish in 30 days before? I hadn’t given much thought to this until quite recently when we discovered that this was our timeline for the new store. I’m a realistic person and there are a few things I think I could successfully tackle in a month. I could binge watch all 10 seasons of Friends on Netflix, try every flavour of ruffles potato chips, and if I was feeling ambitious maybe I could learn to sew, or knit, actually no, that is already sounding like too much work. So you can understand the concern around opening a store in 30 days, alas we took on the challenge and here is where our journey begins.
Actually, our journey begins in Honey Harbour, where The Hive elves worked feverishly to pack up and load our cars with everything making the journey with us. Life got a little interesting here as the carpenters took hold of The Hive Collingwood creating enough dust to cover downtown twice over. So where does one put an entire stores worth of inventory? In your living room of course. So, The Hive Honey Harbour moved to The Girl’s house.
The final 24 hours leading up to the opening was like watching sleep deprived and over sugared toddlers running around with blindfolds on. More people in Carhartt than the Hive will ever see took over the space to bang out the final details. An all nighter and one missing Uhaul key later we were ready to open.
There are moments in life where you wish you could press pause, take a look around, and sit in the moment. Opening night was one of those surreal moments. The most genuine thank you goes to all those who came out, reached out, and made their love felt from all over the country. As we delve into this new journey we can’t help but feel like we really are meant to be where we are right now.
We’d like to thank our sponsors: chardonnay, carbohydrates, and caffeine for seeing us through this project. Without your support, we truly wouldn’t be here standing.