What does it take to build a pop-up in a day?

Hello! The pop-up was opened a couple of weeks ago on Saturday, April 1, and the online store a day later, on Sunday, April 2. Those days were preceded by quite interesting times, when we were preparing for the release of the spring collection. We had prepared as well as we could: the studio was reserved for filming, the frames were ordered to the printing house ahead of time, and the pop-up was planned to be built a week before the opening. However, not everything always goes as planned. Sometimes the printing equipment can break down in the printing house and a repairman has to be ordered from Poland. Sometimes you can't build a store completely by yourself, you have to ask for help. Sometimes you can spend many hours photographing products, but only when you get home you realize that some of the pictures are burnt out. Sometimes (read: usually) two people are not enough, and our pop-up would have been nothing without Anette, friends, relatives and entrepreneurs & employees of cooperative companies, who worked like crazy to get the store and online store open a couple of weeks ago. The last day before the pop-up, Friday, when the whole pop-up was built and the products started to be numbered and counted, seemed to cause the most difficulties. It's no big deal, when there are around 700 t-shirts, sweatshirts and hoodies alone. The day started at 6:30 when I went to take the dog for a run and ended at a quarter to 12 in the evening when I finished sewing. Those 18 hours included about 16 hours of work, a couple of hours were spent eating, jogging with Sepo and moving from one place to another. From those 18 hours, Anette was with us until 10:00 in the evening, Riku's relatives worked as the builders of the pop-up all morning, and we got friends to join us as models. During the whole weekend, we had part of Riku's family as our guests, so that Sepo wouldn't have such long days either. On Saturday, we were supposed to arrive a little before nine with a group of five, and no one got bored before ten! "Sew this, mark the numbers there, hang this, let's move this to that..." orders rained down at a rapid pace. Even that morning would have been nothing without the support team! When making the rental agreement, I had forgotten to find out how to remove the rental company's curtain hanging in front of the Liiketila. We called the security company to see if they had any information on the matter: "Yes, it is the work of Service Company X. But they are only open on weekdays." Well, oh well. Fortunately, SCND's Elisa and Antti had already arrived, especially the latter who deals with such small problems. Antti didn't hesitate for long, but went to buy a wrench and started removing the curtain with Elisa. It didn't take long when the shop was opened in 10.09. Many were already waiting outside to see what would be revealed from behind the curtain. The day went by quickly talking with customers and acquaintances. When the mood calmed down a bit, we started uploading product images to the online store because the previous day's images didn't work as well as we had hoped. During the day, we also built an online store as best we could: every product has prices, balances are correct and the product information is not empty? Do the images also scale on mobile, does the payment interface work for sure? The shopping center closed at 18, which was a relief on the other hand. I had to go home, where I could only shop online. At this point, my head started beating empty: almost 30 hours of dune had fit into the last two days. On Saturday night, we racked our brains and tried to relax for Sunday, because then we had to make the last changes to the online store and open it to the public. On Sunday, we woke up late and came to the pop-up a couple of hours later to take the last product photos and verify balances. It took a couple of hours to refine the online store. At the same time, more products were sewn for sale and Anette was prepared for the coming of the next week. Riku and I had already booked and paid for a trip to Barcelona in the fall, during which Anette would run the store on her own. On the other hand, I was terribly afraid to leave Anette here alone, because I knew there was a LOT to remember. The orientation document alone was four pages long, in addition to which little facts were sprinkled throughout the training. On the other hand, I knew that stressing was pointless, because our intern was very competent and I trusted his professionalism. In retrospect, I should have skipped all the traveling, because the week went very well! But yeah, back to the topic. On Sunday, the online store was opened in the afternoon and more than a dozen orders poured in before we left for home, again in six countries when the shopping center closed. At home, we started packing for the trip and left the same evening in Joutsa to Riku's family, where Seppo-dog was also left for care. Huh. That evening and especially the next day, when we got on the plane, I felt strangely empty. I slept on a plane for the first time ever, almost during the entire four-hour flight, because there was no Wi-Fi connection to follow how things were going in Finland. It was actually a pretty cool feeling when you had worked for dozens of hours and then you could just watch the clouds and sleep! We often talk about what entrepreneurship requires. It requires the right attitude, hard work, passion for one's work and damn belief in oneself. But I would venture to say that in very many cases it also requires a strong support network. I feel that Riku and I have received an incredible amount of help in the last couple of weeks. All I can do is humbly thank everyone involved <3! I said, Eve