They Say It's Your Birthday

Today is the 28th birthday of Joie de Vivre, and it happens to be cosmically aligned with the day we opened - the 28th falls on the same day of the week, Thursday, which happens only 4 times every 28 years. We've decided to celebrate by having a little 5 to 8 champagne - seeing as we opened that first day at exactly 5 pm.  Funny to think back: we had no computer, no fax machine, the word "blog" was unknown,  and no one ever looked down at a small glowing screen while they were in the store.  Joie de Vivre looked kind of like an art gallery, an item here, an item there,  it was quite spare.  Life has changed a lot.  But, many things do remain the same - and we've been selling some of the same items for the whole 28 years - Pustefix bubbles, kaleidoscopes, the dancing magnetic ballerina.  And we're still sitting behind the same desk, happy to talk to you, help you choose a present, gift wrap it and send you on your way. These days some of our customers come to us via the internet and we ship all over the world.  But we still like doing business the old fashioned way right here in Cambridge.  Thanks to our customers wherever they are, whether they remember the opening day itself, or whether they came in for the first time last week!  Cheers!

Trend Alert !

A young woman was in the other day, browsing our card racks.  After laughing what I believe is called "immoderately" at one of them she came up to the desk, smart phone in hand.  "Is it okay if I take a picture of a card?" she asked. Surprised, I said okay.  "I want to send it to my sister," she added, "it's really perfect for her."
Part of me thought - how sweet - she knows her sister will like this card,  and my next thought was - ten years ago she would have bought the card.  Of course losing a sale for 2.95 is not that big of a deal, but somehow I felt it was a harbinger of the future.  Taking pictures of cards and emailing them is the new buying and sending them?
I fear this is not a trend that bodes well for the greeting card industry!

Happy Father's Day and Small Apology

Joie de Blog has always had a horror of not blogging.  One of our pet peeves is going to a website of any sort, clicking on the "read our blog!" button, and finding that the most recent entry dates back a couple of years.  We try to post at least twice a week.  But sometimes life intervenes, in the form of spectacular weather, a chance to go to Vermont, and the blog is temporarily forgotten.  And we feel bad about that.  However,  we are deciding that blogging once a week is the new blogging twice a week - at least some of the time.  So, apologies, and here we are again, on Father's Day 2012.  It always strikes us how different Father's Day is from Mother's Day.  The week before Mother's Day is much busier, and this is universally true - florists tell me that Mother's Day is bigger than their second most important day of the year, Valentine's Day, and Father's Day provides a tiny bump at best.  The one thing they have in common that we enjoy here at Joie de Vivre, is the young child shopping with the other parent, and trying to pick out a gift for their mom or dad.  It's really cute to see kids trying to convince one parent that what the other parent would really really like is - a small toy truck or car - or glowing fairy.  Eventually they get the hang of it of course, and it's also fun to see kids thoughtfully choosing a gift for their mom or dad.  We're about to open and ready to help - choose - wrap - whatever.  Happy Father's Day to all our customer dads !

Jane Jacobs vs Marc Jacobs

In an interesting article on Mom and Pop shops in New York's Greenwich Village published in the NYTimes magazine today, I learned what kind of business Joie de Vivre is.  It's a "lifestyle" business.   One merchant interviewed after thirty years in business said, "we're not richer or poorer.  we're about the same."  Writer's comment - "and this didn't bother him." I understand that way of thinking.  Don't want to get bigger, bigger, bigger.  But that's not all the article talks about - it's worth a read - interesting piece that resonated with me - (with a crazy long link - there's probably a better way to do this!  Anyway,  here it is:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/10/magazine/can-mom-and-pop-shops-survive-extreme-gentrification.html?ref=itstheeconomy

Fun with Displays

What can I say . . . .  sometimes I just get an idea that makes me smile . . ..  (not that the notebook on its own didn't do that!)

The Agony and the Ecstacy

No, this is not a book review, though I did read and love the Irving Stone biography of Michelangelo when I was in junior high school. This post is about - lava lights, those compellingly blobby liquid lamps that had their heyday back in the 1960s.   We have been selling them for years and though they've become a bit more streamlined in appearance - sleeker now with a simple modern silver base, their main attraction is still those slowly moving blobs of wax, bulging and morphing their way through the lava liquid. (whatever that is).  Anyway, the last few years we've been having a lot of problems with them.  We keep a couple on display at the store and started to notice that they seemed - kind of inferior.  This led us to start testing them when they came in - and we found a very high percentage of substandard lava lights.  The company and their distributors are always very good about taking back the ones with problems . . . but it takes us a lot of time to test each light, and when 75% aren't working .. . . .  you start to wonder if its worth it.  So, the post title references our situation.  A good working lava lamp is a thing of beauty and something we would always want to sell here - ecstasy.  But a bad one, a fuzzy murky one, one that refuses to blob - agony.  We'll keep trying for awhile longer, but there may come a day when we have to stop selling these beloved but currently frustrating items.  : (

Hey - my thoughts exactly!

It's Memorial Day and we are not open.  So I have a little extra time at home to browse through the pile of books on my table and generally muse on things.  I was looking through a new book written by a designer/businessman I have always greatly admired (even if I have occasionally been brought to despair by the high prices of his beautiful clothing).  His name is Paul Smith and the book is Paul Smith A to Z.  Musings on everything from Abbey Road and Architecture to the White Stripes and Zebras, lavishly illustrated with photos and drawings.  He has a small shop on 5th Avenue in New York that I've often gone into, occasionally to buy, often to admire.  An interesting mix of clothing and small items from toothbrushes to handmade toys to watches and plates.  In one of the book entries he writes about his shops saying "the premise is always the same.  When you come into a Paul Smith  shop, even if you don't buy anything, it should be a pleasant experience."  This is exactly how I feel about Joie de Vivre.  We never want anyone to feel that they must buy something to be welcome.  Some days you're just browsing.  Or you can't afford the $250 shirt - or in our case, kaleidoscope, that you fall in love with. It doesn't mean you shouldn't enjoy looking at it.  And you may come back another day, to buy the orange striped toothbrush - or in our case a postcard or a wind up toy.  Anyway, it made me very happy to realize that my retail philosophy is shared by Paul Smith !  And though he is a business man, he is also an artist and writes eloquently of his love of everything from music to friends and family to the Queen (he's a Brit) to porcelain rabbits.  I think he would approve of us closing for Memorial Day.  Life beyond business and all . . . .

It's a . . . Small World . . . ?

Actually the world seems kind of impossibly large when you find out that three packages originating from a company in London, and shipped to us were sent to  . . . Afghanistan !   Through the miracle of modern technology I was able to see the shipping label and they had everything about our address correct - except instead of USA, it was Cambridge, 02140 AF -  and since to UPS, AF is Afghanistan - that's where they sent the boxes.  Especially odd as we've been ordering from the company in London for at least five years, and they've always gotten our address right before.  It made for a few funny emails anyway - and possibly some confused people in "AF" !

Never Say Never (continued)

I'm starting to think I should have numbered and tagged these "never say never" posts.  We sold an item years ago - probably over 15 years ago - that we are still asked for today - it was a little plastic car crumb sweeper - good for sweeping up toast crumbs, or eraser dust and the like.  It was made in Japan, sold really well, and all of a sudden we couldn't get them anymore.  There was a Taiwanese knock-off briefly available but it wasn't as good, and even that disappeared - as knock-offs usually do.  I had a request card from a customer who desperately wanted one - but I think I threw her card out a year ago - we'd been holding onto it for - ten years?  and it seemed silly to keep it.  Until today.  At the Stationary Show, where, walking the aisles, I stopped at a Japanese booth - and there they were.  The same little cars, original version.   Just another reminder that I should never - never - say "never."  You just "never" know what's going to come back  . .

Collector's Item Alert !

Years ago we bought music boxes imported from Japan from a company called TMC Designs. They are no longer being produced or we'd have them still as they were beautiful — sophisticated (i.e. non-cheesy) images of clowns and fairies and animals.  Sometimes the tune choices were — to put it kindly — a little odd.  When we asked about this the distributors explained that the Japanese makers didn't really relate to the song selection so were somewhat arbitrary about what went in what.  If the song was too odd they would be given a more appropriate song to replace it with.  For example — there was a box featuring a cute little grey rabbit that played "Hey Jude" — and evidently was a sought after item in San Francisco until the tune was changed to something more along the lines of "Here comes Peter Cottontail."  Anyway, we recently found a new music box company — a German company producing in China, and we got our first order today.  A set of ducks in a pond that played "Waltzing Matilda."  A circus monkey "The Entertainer."  Two little fish "It's a Small World."  All reasonable.  But wait — what's the music on the box with the two elephants?  Collector's alert!  It plays "Old MacDonald had a Farm" as the elephants madly spin around.  Pretty funny . . .

Mother and Daughter

It was Mother's Day today.  And it was an absolutely beautiful day.  We were not very busy - I'm sure people were out walking or at the Lilac Festival or who knows - I know you would have had to drag me inside on a day like today.  Of the few who did venture into Joie, many were mother daughter combinations.  The one that stuck out for me was a mother and daughter who came in, the daughter maybe 20 or so, and excited about bringing her mother to the store.  The mother seemed a bit unenthusiastic at first, but she began to have a good time and was enjoying looking around.  The odd thing was, the more the Mom was enjoying herself, the less the daughter seemed to.  And she tried to talk her mother out of anything she was interested in buying.  It was all little things, gifts she wanted to buy for other people.  The daughter would say, "but you shouldn't buy something for someone else today, you should let me buy you something!"  If the mother said so and so would like this book/ray guy/squeeze cow/whatever - the daughter would say no they wouldn't.  Then, when the mom picked something up and said she liked it, would like it for herself - never anything expensive - the daughter just ignored her.  I was tempted to intervene, but instead I bit my tongue.  Eventually the daughter started urging her mother  - who still seemed to be enjoying just looking around - to leave.  I hope the rest of their afternoon went a bit better !  

15 Minutes of Fame?

A small part of a documentary film was shot today inside Joie de Vivre.  It's about a palindromist who lives in our neighborhood -see previous blog for a sample of his work.  It was quite official, we had to sign both a location and a personal release form - as well as turn off our music system to avoid legal problems for the filmmaker.  The action?  Man walks into Joie de Vivre, hangs around and chats a bit - asks the Magic 8 Ball a couple of questions, buys a mother's day card - and leaves.  Two of the three of us who were here fled to the back room for the duration of this, leaving me to be the one who just might possibly look awful on camera someday.  I have seen myself on camera before - and can only say - results vary.  Wildly.  But, hopefully Joie itself will look good, and the filmmaker did spend some time filming various of our objects - from our tiny automata to balloon mobiles and sound machines.  It will be interesting to see it someday - and we will be sure to let you know when that day arrives.