When we moved Supplement Giant in 2011, I'd already spent more than three months telling every customer who came in that we were relocating. We were only going about a mile up the road, but I knew some customers would probably never find us again.
We had opened our first Colorado store at Belmar in Lakewood three years earlier. I was 23 when I signed the lease, and I thought that shopping center would be a great place to build a business.
I was wrong.
Belmar was a nice development, with restaurants, shops, offices, and apartments. Being nice didn't make it a good place for a supplement store.
The rent was expensive, the store was hard to see, and parking was a constant headache. Residents and other tenants regularly took the spaces meant for customers. Customers complained about it all the time. They'd circle looking for a space, park far away, or end up on the fourth level of a parking garage. Events like the Italian festival and the Sunday farmers market made it worse.
The store was there to serve our customers, and I'd picked a spot that made it harder on them than it needed to be.
Within six months we knew we'd probably made a mistake. But the store was growing, and moving meant risking the customers we'd spent all that time building up.
As our three-year lease came to an end, we tried to negotiate better terms with Belmar management. We wanted a break on rent and some fix for the parking. After about a month of back and forth, we couldn't agree.
We found a new spot at Fairfield Commons, about a mile away, and signed a lease within two weeks. That's when it got hard.
Our Belmar lease required management to approve any window signs. When I told them we weren't renewing, they told me specifically that we couldn't put up signs about the move.
We even thought about printing a sign and setting it on an easel by the entrance. It wouldn't have been on the windows or doors, but by then I figured management would find a reason to make an issue of it, so we decided it wasn't worth another fight.
The timing was bad, too. Our last months at Belmar were October through December, which was always my slowest stretch of the year. A lot of customers wouldn't come back until business picked up in January, and by then we'd be gone.
I'd started telling customers before we formally gave notice. For more than three months, I personally told everyone who came in where we were moving and why. I handed out flyers with a 10% off coupon for the new store, which I almost never did back then.
I sent emails too, but our list was pretty small. I knew we weren't reaching everyone.
The move itself was another headache.
We started getting ready to move in the middle of our last month at Belmar. When management noticed, they emailed to remind us that we had to stay open until the last day of the lease or we could face big daily penalties.
After more negotiating, they agreed to let us close for the last three days. That's three days to move an entire supplement store.
We were also told that moving trucks parked outside during business hours would make the shopping center look bad. At that point, I just cared about getting the store moved.
Four of us did most of the work: my dad, my brother, my one employee, and me.
We rented a Budget truck with a liftgate so we could move the refrigerator, along with all the shelving, inventory, and equipment.
I remember working about 16 hours one day, finally going home, and falling asleep. About eight hours later my dad was waking me up and telling me it was time to get back to work. There wasn't much downtime those three days.
On the fourth day, we had enough of the new store put together that I decided to reopen. Two of us kept setting up while the other two were still hauling inventory over from Belmar.
We opened the doors and started helping customers. If someone asked for something we hadn't unpacked yet, I'd dig through boxes until I found it.
It took about two weeks for everything to get back to normal. But the new store at 1st & Wadsworth was open, it was finally in a location that made sense for the business, and customers were coming back.
Over the next few months, several customers told me they'd gone to our old spot at Belmar, found it empty, and searched Google to find us. This was 2011, when only about a third of people had smartphones. Luckily, some of them tracked us down.
I'm sure plenty didn't.
That's what bothered me most. I'd spent three years building relationships with those customers, and even with everything I'd done to tell people about the move, some of them never came back.
The customers who did make the switch loved the new store. Parking was easier, the store was easier to get to, and shopping with us wasn't a hassle anymore. I'm convinced some of our growth came from those customers coming in more often.
January sales were about even with the January before, which felt pretty good after everything we'd just been through. February was up about 15%.
Even with the customers we lost, we still finished that first year up 20%. People had warned me that moving an established retail store could be a disaster. It turned out to be one of the better decisions we ever made.
If you've made it this far, the Lakewood store is still right where we moved it, near 1st & Wadsworth. If you're in the area and need supplements, come see us.
Ryan Ragsdale is the CEO of Supplement Giant, a multi-location supplement retailer with stores across Colorado and Kansas. He grew up in the supplement industry and has spent over 30 years around supplements, including the last 18 running Supplement Giant.