WORKING NIGHT AND DAY

Steve Haziran 08, 2022

My sister and I had a very specific business plan for our home staging business. We were not going to invest in a lot of inventory, pay for storage and hauling of furniture - no. By specializing in owner occupied homes we would keep our overhead low and have a niche business. Well, that lasted for 5 jobs. On the sixth job, when asked to stage an empty house - we said yes.

We are not sure why we said yes; does anyone in business manage to stick with their business plan? We decided to go for it and see what we could do with a mix of our current inventory and a few pieces which made sense to purchase and keep.

For two weeks I have been scouring Craigslist, making calls and sending e-mails in search of some specific items we needed - like a prop TV set. I have been through furniture warehouses and every Ross, Home Goods, Marshall's, Target, and TJ Maxx in a 30 mile radius. We have purchased and returned and re-shopped as we altered our plan and adjusted our budget. We had a signed contract on April 11 and had to have the house furnished and ready for market in 10 days.

Then we lugged and hauled furniture, rugs, beds, mirrors, towels, pillows, lamps, art and bedding into the little house and set it up. It looks pretty great if we do say so ourselves...we hope it sells quickly so we get the stuff back into our hands to use again. We are still adding up the receipts to see if we made any money...but it has been quite an adventure to furnish a house in 10 days on a budget of about $1800.00!