Reflections on 20 Years pt 2

With the approach of my 20th Valentine’s Day, I can’t help but feel amazed at how much has changed, yet how much has stayed the same.  My love of crafts has only deepened and I continue to enjoy sharing so many wonderful creations from artisans around the country.  The technology we use, however, is another story altogether.  As you view this email on your computer or smart phone, take a look at what our computer looked like in 1993:

As Nan, JoAnn and I made plans for our new enterprise, inventory control was a hot button topic. I felt strongly that we needed a computerized Point-of-sale system. Since we would have a certain amount of consigned items, we needed a program that could track those sales and generate reports and payments  -- not typical for most retail businesses. Luckily, we found the perfect program in the back of Crafts Report magazine. The Craft Shop System was designed for exactly what we were doing. Bob, the designer of the program, would come to us and spend 2-3 days training everyone. The last was also critical since the our comfort level was "high anxiety".

Our system ran on two computers:  one in the office and one at the counter. Since networking was something only big companies did, information was shared between the computers on floppy discs that had to be manually downloaded. This meant that when we received new inventory in the office and put it out on the floor, we couldn’t sell it until we merged the new information with the front computer. Today it sounds complicated and time consuming, and it was!  The age of DOS meant no pretty screen images.   Also if someone bought more than 7 different items we needed to run separate sales and then using a calculator total them up. Receipts were run on a Dot Matrix printer (have 2 working Okidatas -- want one?) on 2 part NCR 1/2 page sheets. So when you made a purchase you got a RECEIPT!


Orders were handwritten and either faxed, mailed or more often called in -- which was really nice because we got to chat with the artist when we placed our order and often the conversations veered into all kinds of unexpected places. I miss this the most.  Now, I email orders and unless there is a complicated question, any visiting is confined to shows we both attend. Because there is so much to do at these shows, it's not as relaxed or satisfying.

While we had internet access, we didn’t use it very much. In those simpler times we had so much direct contact with vendors, crafts artisans and our customers that each of those relationships created an extremely strong and connected Waygoose Village.


Happy Valentine’s Day and thank you for continuing to be a part of our Waygoose Village,

Deborah & all of us here at Waygoose Redux