Spring Rituals

I’m not sure if it should be considered a ritual, tradition or task but this past week I met with two of my retail clothing providers to place orders for the upcoming season. It shouldn’t be too big of a job for a store our size but it’s something that just takes time.

In the beginning years of owning Voyageur Canoe Outfitters it took me forever to decide on what to order. I would agonize over the color of the garment, the feel of the garment and I would have to try on every garment to determine how the sizes ran.  Then I would try to guess what sizes would sell the best during the season. Would people be wearing things big and baggy or small and tight fitting? Would women like this design or just men? Would a man wear this or is it too feminine?

These days I worry more about a good color selection, design choices and having a good variety of garments.  A bunch of t-shirts, a handful of sweatshirts and a couple of specialty garments pretty much rounds out my ordering.  I tend to let the clothing rep fill in the size selection and tell me what the best selling colors are.

I tend not to second guess every decision I make and I think what has sped up the process the most is Mike no longer accompanies me. That seems to make the process much easier because Mike and I would rarely like the same thing and when I wanted an opinion he wouldn’t give me one and when I didn’t want one he would have one for me.

Whatever I call it, ritual, tradition or task, I’m glad it’s done for another season.