State of the Shop: January, 2017

Well, folks, I got all of my taxes in on the 23rd and have been, when time allows, pondering over how to make things better business-wise in various ways this year. Running a small business can be a challenge, especially for anyone musically-artistically inclined, as many of you readers are and know!

One thing I didn't really realize is that, somewhere along the line, I let go of my "reading day." We used to be open Wed-Sun (vs. Tue-Sat) and I'd spend the short day, Sunday, catching-up on emails, calls, and updating all of the secondary parts of the blog (ephemera, scanning old catalogs, reading old trade journal blurb, updating the museum page, and pontificating). I never replaced it with a different day and, as such, now realize why (1) I've become such a slowpoke on the email front with all of you over the past year or so, (2) why I feel like I haven't been sharing much on the history-side lately and (3) why I never seem to have time for parts-orders.

Anyhow, I've shuffled my work schedule around and that stuff will be Tuesday's domain from now-on. I've finally caught-up with missed calls and emails up to a month old, now, and am feeling a bit more peaceful. Next week I'll try to get the museum updated and a bunch of new resource links put up for usefulness' sake. The internet is also losing older instrument-dating serial number lists to defunct websites, too, and I will perhaps edit and put some of these up as well -- with hopefully a lot of user input to get them more accurate.