NEW at The Amy Emporium

Lydra clutches (made of pre-loved leather and textiles)



Bob Window cushions (made of recycled woollen blankets)



It all started because I’d signed a lease on a shop and needed coffee cups – fast. Selling coffee wasn’t part of the original plan, you see. Originally, I was going to open a shop in my home town and I wouldn’t have sold coffee there – I wouldn’t have been able to face the owners of my local café! But when I ended up signing a lease on a shop in a different town, it became a possibility. But because I hadn’t planned on it, I hadn’t been collecting for it. The very next Saturday, however, while I was in Watsonia, I found a box of assorted amber cups and saucers in an op shop for $6. They’ll do, I thought, until I manage to find something else. But then my reconditioned espresso machine was delivered, and it turned out to be maroon. I loved the look of the amber against the maroon, so I decided to stick with the amber coffee cups. And it has since inspired me to start collecting and stocking other pieces of amber glass. After all, I've always wanted to be a collector. Of something.

The Amy Emporium five weeks on...

The Amy Emporium is OPEN

8B Victoria Street, Macedon

SECOND-HAND CLOTHING

SUSTAINABLY-PRODUCED CLOTHING

BOOKS, SUSTAINABLY-PRODUCED GIFTS, COFFEE

TRADING HOURS
Monday: CLOSED
Tuesday: 10.00-2.30
Wednesday: 10.00-2.30
Thursday: 10.00-2.30
Friday: 10.00-2.30
Saturday: 10.00-2.30
Sunday: CLOSED

I'm about to sign a lease on a shop, and while it's what I want, I'm worried I'll make a mess of things and send the whole family to the poorhouse. My boyfriend was away in Canberra when I received word that the owner of the building had accepted my application, so I turned to our daughters. "I got the shop. I'm glad, but I'm scared. What if I screw it up? What if the shop doesn't do well? What advice can you offer me?" My daughters were thoughtful for a moment, then my seven-year-old said, "Sell more interesting stuff," and then "Find out what people want." My eight-year-old, meanwhile, merely said, "Daddy'll still have his job, won't he?" 

I have plans to open a second-hand clothing store in the town I moved to three years ago. But whenever I talk to people about it, I fear I come off sounding twee and naive. Recently, while re-reading Alice Munro's Open Secrets, I came across a passage that captured
 my feelings on the matter. The passage is from a story entitled The Albanian Virgin, and is partly about a woman who escapes to a country town and ends up opening a bookstore there:

"How could I tell what I liked so much? Certainly it was not what a new merchant might be looking for - bustle and energy to raise the hope of commercial success. Not much doing was the message the town got across to me. And when a person who is opening a store doesn't mind hearing the message Not much doing, you could ask, What's going on? People open shops in order to sell things, they hope to become busy so that they will have to enlarge the shop, then to sell more things, and grow rich, and eventually not have to come into the shop at all. Isn't that true? But are there other people who open a shop with the hope of being sheltered there, among such things as they most value - the yarn or the teacups or the books - and with the idea only of making a comfortable assertion? They will become a part of the block, a part of the street, part of everybody's map of the town, and eventually of everybody's memories. They will sit and drink coffee in the middle of the morning, they will get out the familiar bits of tinsel at Christmas, they will wash the windows in spring before spreading out the new stock. Shops, to these people, are what a cabin in the woods might be to somebody else - a refuge and a justification."