When you have a barn fire, you lose more than just the motivation. You lose pets and years of hard work. We are beginning a new chapter in our book and moving from Rescue into Retail. It was truly a hard decision but with how our situation unfolded, it was the best decision for us and our animals.
Moving into retail is a different world. Being a chicken, goose, duck, and quail lover, I was looking for items for my kitchen, my traumatized birds, and myself and going through eight different websites was time consuming and really just a hassle. One website for medications, one website for specialty items, and another for kitchen decor. I stopped browsing and went to bed. The next morning, my husband asked if I had had any luck. An idea struck. What about a shop that has everything poultry related all under one roof? No more hopping from website to website to find what I, and probably other enthusiasts, were looking for.
Since I know nothing about retail, I asked a few close friends how it works. For the past two months, I have researched and started putting together items that I liked. Then, I asked my poultry friends what they would like and it kept growing and growing. The pet chicken world needed somewhere and the homesteading community needed somewhere besides browsing multiple websites online. So my husband and I went back to work. We converted a large shed to hold two separate coops and a brooder. The middle that was left will be the brick and mortar store that we plan to open this upcoming March. There are some amazing websites and brands for both the pet chicken and the working chicken and we are incorporating both into our store.
I have met some truly amazing people throughout this whole venture who love poultry just as much as I do and I get to work side by side with them! The fire took a loway from us but it has given us many blessings that we would not have had if it had not have happened. So after we figured out that we were going to roll with this crazy idea, work started. Like mentioned above, we bought a large shed. The very first thing we put in the shed was a brooder.
After the brooder was in, we worked on the coops. One went on either side. We then started adding displays and shelving. Not long after this, product started coming in! We were well on our way to opening but still had a lot of work to conquer to make this crazy idea a reality. Part 2 will get into the nitty-gritty of retail.
Marissa Buchanan is the owner of Buchanan’s Barnyard, a mini-pig rescue and poultry conservation farm. Connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, and
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