I’ve picked some dumps, some buildings that weren’t pretty, either. But this place seemed like it was on the wrong side of town for a retail location. It looked more like a place that you’d turn into a little gas station or a used car lot or something.
Chip didn’t feel good about it, but he did some research anyway and found out the property was owned by a woman named Maebelle, who was probably in her seventies at the time. We reached out to her, and she agreed to meet us at the building. She told us the whole history of the place. Her son had been renovating it for years, but he had gotten very sick and had never been able to finish. She’d received a couple of offers on the property, but she just wasn’t ready to part with it yet—especially since those bidders wanted to turn it into a used car lot or something else she didn’t want to see in the neighborhood. She and her son had been looking to open a tuxedo shop, and she was hoping for something along those lines.
We had a good talk with Maebelle, and she loved the idea that I’d be opening a shop I would run myself, that I had no interest in tearing down that little building her son had worked on for so long. Before we left, we told her we’d like to make an offer too, and she said that when the time came she would rather sell it to us than to the other folks.
So we got all excited. Thinking back, maybe we got excited a little too quickly. Because we’d never thought through exactly how we’d finance the place.
I had a line of credit that worked well for flipping houses. It was a short-term thing. But I didn’t have the credit needed to do a long-term commercial purchase like that. Even though this was gonna be Jo’s business, it made sense to both of us that it should be in both our names.
I had a tiny bit of savings tucked away that I decided I could use for a down payment. I’d never thought I would touch that money, but Chip inspired me to want to do something more with it than just let it sit in the bank earning next to nothing in interest. I also knew that if I filled out a loan application, I’d still be able to show the income I’d been making at my dad’s shop. I might even be able to qualify for some kind of small-business loan available to women. We decided to go for it and were excited to hear about some financing options Chip hadn’t used before.
The bottom line was that I loved Jo, she loved me, and we loved being together. Working together energized us—it just worked out best. And no matter what it took, I was going to make this little shop work for her. When she shared that little yellow notepad of sketches with me, I knew this was like Jo sharing her diary or something. These were her innermost thoughts and dreams. I couldn’t help but push her toward them. And the quicker, I thought, the better. No time to chicken out. Just like our first date.
After doing all the paperwork and scraping together as much as I could, I offered Maebelle $45,000 for her property. And she said, “Oh my. I’ve already had two offers for considerably more than that.” She had thought we would come closer to those other offers, and she’d been sure she’d pick us over them, even if we came in a little under, simply because she liked us. But $45,000 was just too low.
“I am so sorry. I thought you guys were going to be a little closer,” she said.
“I am so sorry if I offended you, Maebelle. That’s just what I have,” I said.
“Well, if you could come up with more, call me,” she replied. “If not, I’m going to have to move on with these other people.”
I knew we couldn’t come up with more. Putting together the financing on that $45,000 was a stretch as it was. That was that.
I was really sad about it, of course. I’d managed to get all excited imagining the possibilities for what I could do in that location. I’d envisioned that shop from top to bottom. I swear I could smell the candles burning inside and see the looks on my customers’ faces when they found that perfectly unique item that would fit in that perfect spot in their home.
I wasn’t ready to give up. I knew we could probably find another location somewhere. But it was very hard to let go of the store I’d envisioned in that quirky old building on Bosque.
So that night and just about every night after that, I prayed: “Lord, that’s the building that spoke to me. And if it’s meant to be, please make it come back around.”
FIVE
OPENING UP
Sometimes the thing we’re dreaming of doesn’t work out. But Chip and I weren’t going to give up on the idea of opening my shop just because the building I fell in love with seemed to slip through our fingers. So we kept on looking for other buildings. We searched and searched, but nothing we found had the character and charm of that little spot on Bosque.
I was starting to lose hope when, a few weeks into our renewed search, my prayers were suddenly answered. Maebelle called me on my cell phone: “Joanna, I’ve been praying about it, and I do not know why, but I feel very strongly that God is saying I need to sell this building to you for $45,000.”
I could hardly believe it. God made it so evident that this was meant to be. I was about to open my very own business!
Some friends and family members tried to talk me out of doing this. They felt it was just too big of a risk to take because I had no experience running a business of my own, no training in retail sales or marketing. I had never owned property before. And I knew next to nothing about home décor or design. Truly, the only home decorating I’d ever done was in the house where we were currently living, and that had just been one big experiment for me.
But Chip did what Chip does and made all those facts, all that logic, seem irrelevant. He really did. He believed I could do it, and he was confident that what I didn’t know, I could learn.
I think part of what originally drew me to TV journalism was that I was a curious observer of other people. I may have been the quiet girl, but I was always the one who watched how things worked and took everything in. I’d told Chip all about how things worked in those shops in New York. Time spent by shoppers in those little boutiques was a sensory experience, and the store owners made sure of it. Women, especially, notice these kinds of details: the sweet smell of a candle burning, the color of a fresh bouquet of flowers next to the register, the music softly playing in the background, the allure of an interesting display—all of those things I’d mentioned earlier. As a shopper and a careful observer, I was able to appreciate the creative process that went into each little table and window installation.
In that sense, I wanted to create a store that was an experience, not just a collection of things for people to buy. I wanted to design it with intention and be sure I set things up to catch the eye of my shoppers. I also wanted to make sure my displays were practical and inspired my visitors to know that they, too, could set up their homes like this. My goal was to make design relatable, to make it attainable.
We took some time renovating that little houselike shop while I finished up our remodeling at home, and in the process I started collecting inventory. I bought inexpensive merchandise at the Dallas Market Center, an incredible wholesale marketplace filled with items sourced from all over the world. I hit garage sales and flea markets, too, and found old mirrors and furniture and knickknacks that I could fix up or distress to make them more appealing while adding some value to them.