Two Gals and a Shop

Where in the Wide World of Retail Have the Gals Gone??

4th quarter is upon us and it's in full swing! Despite Jenny's wishes, I fondly keep reminding her of this, as pictured above.

This year, The Gals thought it would be a scathingly brilliant idea to create a "look book" of what we will be offering our customers this holiday season. We attended a focus group at the January Market where many smaller boutiques had done something similar and had increased their foot traffic in their stores from anywhere between 34-64%.

That's a huge increase. Massive. Extraordinary. Astronomical.

We want that increase and decided to take on the task! Bring it!!

We broke down our merchandise into categories to be showcased, chose a neutral background, Jenny just happens to own an amazing camera that would photograph our product beautifully, and gathered the merchandise. But wait--where would we stage such a photo shoot? Oh why, at Margaret's house of course. Cause there is nothing Margaret loves more than clutter...scattered all throughout her house...

We were organized, as you will see from the pictures--everything was labeled with post its (in which some of the merchandise was accidentally photographed with said post its on them because we were so used to looking at them--whoops!), had a concrete game plan, and even staged my dining room as if Martha Stewart was coming for Christmas dinner. Did I mention there was a Christmas tree as well?

We were certain it would take us 2 days to finish, tops.

WRONG, WRONG, WRONG! Try 5, 8 to 10 hour days!!

Lessons learned: We now have a new found respect for professional photographers--you use muscles you didn't know existed just to get the perfect shot. Staging merchandise to be photographed is much easier than it looks. No matter how much coffee you may consume, you will be exhausted. And lastly, you may be so incredibly pumped up on creative juices, but you will hit a wall at some point where you just need to either take a power nap or crash onto the floor...

Two Gals Proudly Presents...How to Create a Look Book...

So excuse our bit of absence from the blogging world. The look book has been edited, is complete, looks flippin' fantastic, and has been sent off to the printers to be mailed and distributed to all our customers.

Although it was an incredibly colossal task--that in all honesty, at one point I thought to myself, "What the heck did we get ourselves into?" It was a great learning experience and could not have been more proud that we were able to produce the confection that a medium sized styling team would!

Please enjoy some other photographs that didn't make it into the video...