Opening our store
Our journey.
Heidi and Gretchen open an online store.
By Gretchen Chauncey Apr 28, 2025
Vermont Crisp Apples. Photo credit: Janet Lee Chauncey
The beginning.
My sister Heidi and I cared for our mother in her lovely home in Vermont during the last months of her life. We were so fortunate to have been able to do that. We had good days and not so good days. Laughter and tears. Through it all we had each other and the comfort of being surrounded by all of the beautiful artwork that our mother created.
Not long after our mother had passed away, I mentioned to Heidi that it would be wonderful to get her artwork out into the world for all to enjoy. I said I wanted to start a company and when Heidi said she wanted to do it too, I was overjoyed. It was an opportunity to turn our grief of the loss of our amazing mother, Janet Lee Chauncey, into something positive.
It took some time for us to get to the place where we were ready to begin. We were raised to believe that we could achieve anything we wanted to if we tried. We can still hear our mother’s words of encouragement: “you can do this!”; “just give it a go!”; “I love it!”
We thought It shouldn’t be too hard. It will be fun!
Getting started
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Working it out |
Sorting it out |
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When you live in different states, video conferencing is an essential every day, all day thing. However, sharing a screen with someone who can plainly see you have no idea what you are doing can be liberating, motivating and sometimes just embarrassing! |
Uploading, digitizing and selecting the images we wanted to use for our store opening took weeks and quickly overwhelmed our cloud sharing storage. Coordinating where certain images were to be found, (even on our own computers) was and remains one of our biggest challenges. |
Our Grandmother, Jeanette, was very good at memorizing toasts and quotes and liked to use them often. We are certain she’d be telling us, with that familiar twinkle in her eye, one of her favorites: “nothing worthwhile is ever easy”.
-Indira Gandhi
Cat with Bird, Acrylic painting on canvas rug-Janet Lee Chauncey
The learning curve.
Chauncey Art Collective, LLC became official in late December 2024. Heidi and I thought it might take us a month or so to get everything ready for our store. Well, it took us about a month to choose the website template that we liked and the vendors that we wanted to work with (after much trial and error). In that time period, one of our computers needed to be replaced and the new one had a learning curve of its own. We also endured a lot of "your internet is unstable" which we found annoying yet wildly entertaining at times, depending on how we froze on each other's screens.
So now we just had a website to build and products to design. Since we didn’t know how to do any of that, it took longer than expected.
The best thing about doing things that are outside of your comfort zone, like building a website, is to do them with someone who is inside that zone. When one of you is discouraged, the other is there to rally. When you can’t figure out how to save, escape or resize your screen, your sister is there to say, “it’s on the left, Gretchie”. And at the end of a long day say, “see you in the morning!”
We filled our days with creating products and ordering samples. We got a little overzealous in our product brainstorming sessions, dreaming up all sorts of things! But, we decided that our energy is best directed, for now, with a portfolio of products we know best.
In late January, being overly confident, I thought we just might be able to open our store by Valentine’s Day. By Valentine’s Day, I was sure about an Easter opening…..
Lovey Dovey Cupcake, Acrylic on Paper: Janet Lee Chauncey
Almost there…
At long last, our store was ready. I said, “let’s pick a day to open the store.” We looked at our calendars and decided on April 28th. Yay!! On April 27th we were doing our final walk through of our store and noticed unforeseen technical challenges on our partner's end.
We hoped that the problem would be resolved the morning of the 28th and we would be able to open our store, but it was not to be. As we had no control over the remedy to this "glitch", we made the difficult decision to postpone our store opening until everything was perfect. We were disappointed, but it would have been all the more disheartening without my sister by my side. I know I am lucky. To have my sister here remotely - whether by video conference, phone call, or text - is comforting, reassuring, and fabulous.
Hopefully you are reading this blog at a date not too distant from April 28, 2025, and that our store is finally open. After all, our objective of opening a store was to share the joy and happiness we always found in looking at our mother’s artwork. Now we have new fond memories attached to these artworks and a new perspective on the saying, "nothing worthwhile is ever easy".