Andréanne's Journal - August 2024

HELLLLOOOO! I’m back! How was your summer? Did you rest? Did you travel? Let me know in the comments! I want to knoooooow.

For my part, I took a short week of vacation. During the first of the two weeks of the construction holiday season, I went with Rofi and Matt (our first family vacation) to the Bas-Saint-Laurent. A quick trip to the Pizzeria des Battures and the Auberge sur Mer, then a quick trip to Matane where, in just 4 hours, Matt and I each caught a salmon. That, gang (if you don’t know anything about salmon fishing) is absolute magic! Usually when I go on vacation, I spend the vast majority of the time on my computer checking and answering my emails. The good news is that during the construction holidays many companies across the province also take a pause, and given that our biggest project was the planning, designing and renovating of our new store in Laval, the number of emails I received dropped dramatically and I could actually really enjoy my time off. Now that I’m back though, I’d be lying to you if I said I wasn’t SO looking forward to seeing it open. OOOOOOF!

In all honesty, the renovation of this new store wasn’t easy at all. The Carrefour Laval criteria are quite strict (there’s a reason that it’s such a beautiful place!) and I tried as much as possible to make sure everything was done correctly. Luckily the staff at Carrefour Laval were so helpful and patient as I asked them dozens of questions every week. At first, we hired a construction contractor to validate a few things, but ultimately we decided to take care of all the subcontracting ourselves since we didn't have any major renovations to do. For example, when we were renovating the Dix30 store we realized we had no fitting rooms so we had to build them, redo a wall and then complete several similar jobs. In the Laval location this wasn’t necessary since the premises had just been redone. This ended up being a great blessing for us since the opening of a new store always involves the calculation of risks and benefits as part of the investment, and we feel so lucky to have been able to enter an established center as prestigious as Carrefour Laval! Since we only have one store apart from the office, we don’t yet have concrete statistics about what kind of turnover we’ll experience at Laval to ensure the store profits and grows. These are leases that can be very demanding, and since the Dix30 store will be only one year old at the end of September we really wanted to minimize the financial risks as much as possible. The Carrefour receives a ton of visitors every day, but that doesn’t guarantee that we’ll be successful. We knew we wanted to completely repaint, add lights, brighten up the sign and update the building façade. It wasn’t easy to do, but we pulled it off!

Opening a store during the month of September also has its own specific obstacle: the two weeks of construction vacation when building work all comes to a halt. Like at the Dix30 location, we signed our lease for Laval towards the end of June (you always hope it will be quick, but it never is.) The lease is a 62-page document involving a lot of review and annotation so we had only two weeks to work at top speed in order to get the stakeholder together and everything finalized before the start of the construction holiday. Taking two weeks off out of a total of ten weeks to prepare makes a major difference in the time crunch! Thankfully we were pretty confidant that the deal would go through so we planned a lot of tasks (like signs, interior design, cabinet making, exterior updates…) ahead of time with our subcontractors. I can’t tell you how many nights I woke up with a start thinking “Shit! Did I tell the electrician that he has to connect the sign to the grid? Did I tell him that it absolutely needs a dimmer?” (because in the Carrefour development document, another 60 pages, that is one of the mandatory requirements.)

Honestly, I often felt like I was running out of breath. If I was just dealing with the store opening it wouldn’t have been so bad, but the management of this project along with everything else (like the website, admin, Sans-Façon, marketing, you name it…) well, sometimes, it was a real pain. And even today, as I write these words, there are lots of tasks that come to mind that I realize I still can’t forget to do. Luckily I have Mylène, our manager at Dix30, who helped me a lot! Among other things, she went over to check on the location several times and related important information to me along the way.

And there, I just gave you an overview. I think I'll have to do a segment soon on Insta about all the problems encountered in opening the store in Laval! I can’t wait for you to see it. We’re opening in two days! It’s small and very much like us. There are no words to express the pride I feel that Womance has now had the chance to open its doors at Carrefour Laval. I’m so proud of our team and the journey we’ve taken to get here. It’s a huge step forward and I can never thank our customers enough for letting us experience such a wonderful adventure. No matter where you are in Quebec, it’s thanks to you. And you know, while I did find the journey difficult, I can’t help but think: where are we going to open next?