Chapter 6: My Life In Business – Big Changes Coming (2008)

My life as Co-Founder of Thirty-One

20 chapters from my 20 years

Including never before shared stories

Year six in business was a time of big decisions that would impact Thirty-One for the long term. I believe it's important for any entrepreneur to understand that while it is important to plan and strategize, there will always be times when you feel things come out of left field that you never saw coming. This is when your ability to pivot and be flexible comes into business ownership. In late February, four of us at the helm of the company went away for a weekend planning retreat. This was the first and only of its kind. Our retreat getaway was in the beautiful town of Townsend, TN, which is nestled at the entrance to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

One of the funniest things to happen as we arrived to the cabin we would be staying at was when a strange vehicle followed us through the gate and the four of us (all women) freaked out to say the least. It was dark when we arrived and we debated as to which of us was going to approach the stranger who had followed us. Turns out the truck was there for some sort of service that the cabin owner had arranged but had not informed us. That sure provided for a good laugh.

While we were still on edge we realized we had to make our way into the cabin by going through the underground cellar. Not your typical VRBO experience of today, that’s for sure. We made our way through the spooky cellar and up the stairs into the cabin to find an adorably quaint place. What a relief. We planned to stay in and cook our meals and meet about the business for those couple of days.

Our planning session was mainly focused on the operations side of the business to ensure we could go back to our employees with an action plan for speeding up our order fulfillment process. We really had no idea how much change was really coming our way, though. Our process planning was only going to get us so far. Looking back we were oblivious to the growth potential of Thirty-One. Ignorance was bliss at this point. There’s more shared about this unique planning retreat in the book “More Than A Bag”, which is available on Amazon.

We soon found that we’d need a lot more than a four day weekend away to solve some our challenges regarding the growth of the business and the strategies going forward. After a couple of days of business strategy sessions the four of us had some fun planned as our families joined us for a couple of days.

We played card games while we were in the cabin and share lots of laughs. The husbands cooked breakfast for us when they were there. We drove over to Pigeon Forge and rode go karts as a large group. The air was so chilly that night that any moisture on our faces froze as we gleefully rode the go karts around the track. Our kids loved that the cabin was on a creek and even though it was February they found their way into the water “accidentally”. Watching them play around the creek and skip rocks was a joy.

February of 2008 was also the first time we would have experienced business owners come in no as employees, but as industry experts and guide us through some key areas of the business. In this case the expertise was specifically related to our product inventory strategy. Efficiency guidance and product costing input was much needed. We had only recently been able to source exclusive products and were still learning about all that entailed.

Trips to Columbus, OH to review products and plan for the catalog line were becoming more frequent. It was a 7-8 hour drive each time we had to go up there. But always valuable trip for us. We were continuing to build out a team so we could take our hands off some of the details of the business and focus on other things. We hired someone to manage inventory and person to lead our operations.

Things were crazy busy during spring and summer. I didn’t even journal much during this time because things we were so hectic. Personally, my focus was on my family as we navigated through an extraordinarily difficult time. My kids were five and two at this time and we had lost my beloved father-in-law in April of 2008. His name was Danny Sutton and he was only 59 years old. He was the one that the entire family looked up to. The oldest sibling to my husbands aunts and uncle. The dependable father and spouse who was gone too soon. It would be along time before things would feel the least bit normal again.

In mid-August a few of us went on a road trip to visit the fulfillment center where Disney’s online shopping orders were fulfilled. They were using an embroidery system that we were considering and it would help us to see it in action. While the facility was way bigger than ours and they had conveyor belts that moved orders around the huge warehouse, the funny thing was that we would some day be in a facility as nice or even better than that. But we had no idea at the time where things were headed. I remember first arriving to visit the warehouse as guests and them looking at us in our sandals and saying they had a closed toe shoe policy and we couldn’t wear what we had on. Then someone opened up a cabinet full of shoes that we have no idea where they came from and we began trying them on for size. We laughed as checked out each others tennis shoe selection that did not go with our outfits in the least.

For several months the idea had been floating around that we were likely going to be able to grow and strengthen the business if we moved from Chattanooga, TN to Columbus, OH. We were already sourcing our products there and visiting several times a year. Columbus was and still is a big of retail businesses and the potential for employees that were qualified and experienced was so much different than what we had experienced so far.

In September the decision was made to set up operations in Ohio and still keep our Tennessee operations going. We actually still had two locations in Chattanooga and we leased a place in Johnstown, Ohio, just outside of Columbus to establish ourselves there. In my heart I didn’t want to accept that we would eventually close our Chattanooga operations but I held tight to the fact that I would not move my family unless I absolutely felt it was the right thing for us.

The rest of the year was a whirlwind and I didn’t journal about the business even once during the next three months. I clearly remember juggling two operation facilities through the holiday season with more orders that we’d ever seen. We were still in the infancy stage compared to where we would end up several years later but it was a challenge we were up to tackling, no matter how much work it would take.