Darley Street: Season Two, Episode 10 - Hello, Are You Open? Continued

Previous Episodes
by Steve Gray

Hello, Are You Open? Continued

Bijay and Leonard went to the crepe shop, got some coffees and sat and chatted while waiting for the shelves to be delivered.

Bijay asked what Leonard knew about business, and offered a suggestion, ‘There’s a book I found rather useful, it’s called ‘Simple Business.’ written by an Australian guy, very handy tips and hints, I highly recommend it. Leonard noted the details down on his phone.

The delivery guys were on time, a bunch of four young guys soon had the items positioned where Leonard wanted then unwrapped, the front counter took some manoeuvring to get in through the front door, but it happened.

Leonard was most impressed with the progress he made today, well he did have the help of a resourceful Nepalese, Mr Madal.

Leonard's wife Jo turned up to see the progress and was most impressed as well. ‘At last we can start to move some of that stock out of the garage at home!’

Leonard introduced Bijay to Jo, and told her how he was most helpful. Bijay graciously shook Jo’s hand, ‘Nice to meet you Jo…’  He went on to say, ‘If you need a hand putting things on the shelves I have access to a bunch of willing workers from my Nealpese community, they would love to help out.’ The pair swapped phone numbers and Bijay was off with a wave.

Leonard and Jo spent the next day and a bit bringing items from home. Jo was pleased to see the shop was getting some traction, Bijay was pleased to help out.

Leonard soon realised that Bijay was right, putting items on the shelves was tedious. He and Jo took time to plan out where things should go and got on with the task, It took ages but they put in long evenings getting things in order.

One evening Leonard learnt a valuable lesson, he walked out, turning off the lights but got distracted as he closed the door… He didn’t lock it, no one would know unless they were to try the door and see if it was unlocked.

He headed home, it was about eleven pm, on the way his brain asked him a big question, ‘Hey Leon… Did you lock the door to the shop?’ He smartly did a u turn and soon figured out he hadn’t locked the door. He went a lighter shade of pale and nearly collapsed. He locked the door and double checked it, and then headed home.

Leonard didn’t sleep well that night, figuring that if someone had wandered by and walked in they could have cleared out a lot of stock, messed things up or a mix of both. He was lucky, but he needed a way to make sure the shop was locked at the end of the day.

Leonard's aim was to take long service leave from his job, run the business for a while and see that it was all worthwhile. Hopefully it will be. He needed to figure out how long to the opening date and how well he could convince HR that they should say yes to the possibly short time frame.

Someone at work he trusted said it should be easy, he had heard that they were looking to offload some of the holidays that people had accumulated.

Application made after some juggling of dates, workloads and so forth. It only took two hours for HR to say yes, Leonard was all at once feeling excited and rather nervous, his dream for the business was now either going to come true or ‘crash and burn’.

The date set, the signage was the next thing to be organised, but Leonard didn’t want that to go in too early, so he picked a date and went from there. It wasn’t long before he took leave. He also had to organise the eftpos machine with his bank and they wanted to know that it would be in a secure spot and a few other details.

Two days before taking leave Leonard came down with a cold, that threw things, thankfully it was one of those short lived colds, but he wasn’t happy having a runny nose and headaches for seven days. HR informed him that sick leave would push his leave start date out and when he was well again it would start. He was happy about that.

Jo joined him as the signwriter finished off the signage, then he was on the local Facebook Page to let people know about the start date and the sorts of things they had on offer. The start up was lacklustre, the first Saturday went okay, but thankfully he was recording how many people came in on what days and was able to create a chart of busy and quiet days.

By the time his long service leave ran out, he quit his job, there were just enough sales to make it possible. He didn’t take into account Jo helping out on Saturday’s but a few months later that was sorted as people got to know about Darley Street Discounts.

Bijay Mandal was one of the first people through the door on the opening day, with a cheery smile and a warm handshake.

No two days were the same in Darley Street; people come, and people go. Today was the start of a discount store and the hopes and fears of the owner.