How and where did you learn the business of retailing?

Thompson Lange, Homescapes Carmel, CA

It's been a trial by fire. I never worked in retail before opening Homescapes, and I never liked to shop. In the beginning, my brother and I were so busy converting an old laundry into a showroom, I didn't have time to worry about what to carry. A friend who owns a clothing store showed me the ropes at the San Francisco Gift Center. She explained minimums, quantities, and how to place orders, and left me to figure out the inventory. I've traveled a lot, so I went "international." My brother studied horticulture, so we added orchids and plants. I kept the inventory flexible and watched customers' reactions. It was important to me that the furniture appealed even to people who didn't plunk down their money, and I found my direction from their feedback.

David Riordan, OOP! Providence, RI

Retail is in my blood; my grandfather ran a grocery. In high school, my first job was at a food market, where I worked through college. I loved the constant interaction with people. I took a number of business courses, but I wouldn't say my education prepared me for this. I was just out of college when my wife and I started OOP! We were open from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., and I'd say, "I could probably put another 50 bucks in the till if I stay till 10:30." That mentality pulled us through the first three years. At our first market we bought everything green marble. Our buying plan has certainly changed. Today it's American crafts mixed with novelty items. Our business has grown over 11 years: It's a lot more interesting, especially since we opened a second store.

Dick Scheller, Tannenbaum Holiday Shop, Sister Bay, WI

We learned by hit-and-miss. It was nothing we learned from working for other people: I was in sales and my wife was a housewife. But she is a good judge of what people like and how to do put a display together. That helped more than anything in the beginning. We were fortunate to start out in the late '70s because there were fewer year-round Christmas shops to compete with. Bookkeeping was simpler. We had a couple of part-timers helping my wife, and I helped on the weekends until I could leave my job and come into the business full time. We were lucky to become associated with companies whose reps looked after us, like Jerry Bushler at Kurt Adler. He could have sold us anything, but he taught us what would sell and what to stay away from.

Lea Semple, Elysian Fields Books & Gifts, Sarasota, FL

My goal was to be an artist. I wasn't looking for another career. But retail was a job I could do, so I worked, off and on, in ten different stores I had a personal interest in, such as gifts, books, music, and art supplies. In between, I did everything from making sheepskin coats to running my own landscaping business. I stopped being just a salesperson quickly because I took on responsibility and learned management, bookkeeping, and buying. Once I did advertising art for a store and they put me into window display. I learned how to do these things by doing them and having a knack for knowing what will sell, and what won't. I never studied, and I never actually thought I would own my own my store. It was a much more spontaneous event.