One Year Open
This week marks the one year anniversary of having a walk-in sock shop
…and a brilliant year it’s been too. It was never my plan to open a store, just to have a fun website that I could run from home in my spare time. As the years passed, nearly nine of them already, I needed more and more help as sales grew and grew.
We outgrew our spaces every two years until we got a nice big warehouse in the heart of southeast Portland with a perfect area for a shop in the entry way. It’s a tiny little shop that doesn’t always meet people’s expectations of somewhere called Sock Dreams because it can be maddening to know that “the entire Sock Dreams warehouse is right on the other side of the curtain” as one person described it, yet you are limited to the selection we have chosen for the store area (though we are always willing to find what you seek in our warehouse, we can’t actually let the public roam freely back there any more than Willy Wonka could let folks roam his factory). The very same girls run our shop that help us pull orders out in the warehouse in the morning and I make a point to work with them all so that I am sure they share my vision and love for socks. No doubt we’ll outgrow this space as our little shop has been far more popular than I ever imagined so we’re sort of on the look out for a second space nearby. Somewhere we can have more socks than even our most devoted sock brethren expect us to have, with spaces to try tryable things on, and lots of other fun stuff nearby for those who have traveled long and far to find us to enjoy.
And once again I find myself thanking all of you, near and far, who have helped make this journey such a joy and this dream so vivid. Whether you have only bought one pair of socks, told just one friend, or spread the word to anyone who will listen, my fellow Sock Dreamers and I are forever grateful!
April 3rd, 2009 at 11:38 am
Woohoo! Hurray!!! Great job, everyone! :D
One of these days I’ll make it up there for an actual store visit. :)
April 3rd, 2009 at 11:39 am
Shelleopard! I totally owe you stickers… go ahead and order and note in the sp instructions that you want some, I’ll see to it you get plenty ~=D
April 3rd, 2009 at 11:40 am
~sniff~
How lovely. I’m all farklemt. It has been a great experience to watch the store change and develop over my time here. I’m pretty attached to it, I must admit. We have a great team, great customers, and a great product! I can’t wait to see where the little Sock Dreams shop will be a year from now… :)
April 3rd, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Niqkita, that is not the heart of SE Portland. Everybody knows the heart is Hawthorne. I think you are in, the left eyebrow? Let’s see, if OMSI is the head, and Foster Road is the main artery, and Powel Butte is the knee cap– wait, that makes Laurelhurst the left nipple…
April 3rd, 2009 at 2:45 pm
hee hee… Hawthorne is merely blocks from NE. The Ross island bridge and Powell split the SE vicinity nearly in half leading to the coast in one direction and Mt Hood in the other while 99E which runs right between us and the Willamette, goes through Sellwood at the very south end of Portland all the way to where I5 crosses the Columbia to Vancouver Washington. So say what you will about the vitality of Hawthorne vs the hidden beauty of the Brooklyn neighborhood, I still feel like we’re in the heart, but does that mean Sellwood is the toe?
April 3rd, 2009 at 9:16 pm
wOOt! who knew? here’s to many more years! (and many more socks!)
April 4th, 2009 at 6:09 am
Hard to believe it’s been a year already!
April 4th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
Hard to believe it’s been almost 5 years since the DreaM Stockings line started too! I love working with you and and all your helpers. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful sock shop! Great Job Everyone! Here’s to many, many more years to come! Sorry about all the !!!! I am just so happy for you!!!
April 4th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
wow! that went crazy fast! love to you all! i dream one day i will get to enter those gorgeous doors-.
April 4th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
i just love sockdreams. the bestestest(!) ever.
April 5th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
Ah! Another little peek into the shop! Congratulations, and I join the others in promising that one day I’ll make it to the other side of the country and visit, squealing with joy the whole time!
April 7th, 2009 at 12:41 am
Congrats! I can’t wait to see the shop in person; its a slow crawl toward August….but I’ll make it :-)
April 7th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Congrats! I also can’t wait to someday come…I have seen photos since my sis recently moved there & made me a sock dreams card for xmas!! it was my best present. I really am a total addict, I recently bought a cute jean skirt on the sole basis of how awesome all my knee high socks would look with it! (and they look awesome!)
April 10th, 2009 at 10:57 am
Congratulations! I would love to visit your store, but, I live too far away.
April 12th, 2009 at 11:12 pm
Seattle! Open the new shop in Seattle. I promise I’ll be there every week drooling over all your lovely socks. Actually, maybe it’s good that you’re so far away. If you were here…I’d surely go broke…but I would have the best socks of all the Seattle bums!
April 14th, 2009 at 7:05 am
Someday we would love to have a shop in Seattle! I have been eyeing a spot up there for years and hope that when the time is right it will all fall into place…
May 20th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
Happy Anniversary! And I still haven’t been…… but always in spirit!!! Love you Sis!!!! XOXOXOXO