“Lynn Steven”: Zeroing In On The Big Day After Gastown Shop Hop

The countdown is on! Although the space doesn’t look like much now we seem to be on track for a soft opening on December 18th (fingers are still crossed, maybe legs and toes as well!). To say my stress levels are high is an understatement. As any retailer knows Christmas is key and at the rate we are going I will be missing a huge portion of the Holiday shopping season.  Not wanting to miss out entirely, as I mentioned in my previous post we created a pop-up shop for the Gastown Shop Hop on December 3rd. Although it was a ridiculous amount of work to set up a store for just for one day it was a great success and it was nice to meet many people that live and work in the area. It was reassuring to hear that people were aware of Lynn Steven already; I even overheard someone mention that they’d been reading about the boutique on Scout.

Before I started the process of building the store, people warned me that with any type of construction I should be prepared to double the cost and double the timeline. Having not received the final bill yet I cannot comment on the budget part of things but it certainly has taken longer than I expected. Permits, approvals from landlords and Stratas, approvals of designs and budgets, scheduling various trades and helping out with construction wherever we can, it has certainly been a juggling act. Andrew and I have done everything we can to make sure we don’t cause any delays on the project, so far so good.

The biggest part of this project was the electrical, but as of last Monday the lights are up and the drywalling has begun. We are getting prepared to prime and paint the space this weekend, so if anyone feels like helping out, let me know!

Things will be in full swing over the next few days and I should have lots of pictures as the space transforms from a construction site to a boutique. Let’s hope my next post is 5 days and counting to opening.

SCOUT GUEST BLOG

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six