- Brass Tacks
How we came to be
So we get asked pretty frequently how we got started. It was kind of on a whim to be quite honest.
In July of 2014, I moved into a new home and some of my wall art and decor wasn't going to fit. And lets be honest, new house means it's time for new style and some things just don't work when you're working with different wall space.
I was looking at my bare walls thinking what am I going to put up there and what am I going to do with these large pictures that I bought less than a year ago. I searched forever to find those pictures to fit my previous space so I wasn't going to just drop them off at Goodwill but what good were they going to do stored in my basement. I talked to my husband and said there really needs to be a place that buys and sells home decor like Plato's Closet does with clothing.
Some how I convinced my husband that this had to be a problem that a lot of people had. From there I started doing some research on furniture and home decor stores. I found there were "consignment" stores that weren't just for clothing. Frankly, I wasn't really sure what consignment really meant or how it worked so I started to research it.
Our family always jokes about the "million dollar idea," you know that big idea that's going to win you Shark Tank and you're set for life. We'll I pitched my "million dollar idea" to Kendall and by my surprise she thought it was a good idea.
From there we planned some road trips to go visit area furniture and home decor consignment stores. We talked to as many owners and employees as we could to pick their brains about the concept. We then began to build our business plan. Kendall and I both went to UW-Milwaukee for Marketing so we felt like we were back in our college days getting our SWAT analysis set up. We knew we were going to need a small business loan to help with some of the start up costs so we ended up creating a 9 page business plan set up along with supporting documents. Maybe a little excessive but we thought the more thorough we could be the better.
From there on it was a whirlwind of telling our family, applying for a loan, finding a location, setting up insurance, and so on.
One of the quotes that we found and loved is by Erin Hanson. It has motivated us from day one to keep flying. We are definitely still evolving and constantly adding new things to our business all the time. That's our little story about how we began.