This Is It...FINALLY

Hear Ye, Here Ye, The Black Cat Enterprises-Grandma's Attic blog is officially ready for business...

I am finally getting down to writing this entry. Actually, I had already wrote this several days ago, but my computer just "convieniently" decided to lock up just as I was posting my hard efforts. I guess I will go and systematically save as a draft until I am ready to post. This post is mainly about the inception, developing and continuation of my web site, Grandma's Attic, located at www.BuyGrandmasAttic.com.

So here goes...

On Thursday, August 18th, 2005 I had an idea; an epiphany if you will. The idea was to create a site where I could market items that I had for sale; as well as for my family and friends. I came up the the concept of Grandma's Attic: partially to honor my grandmothers, as well as my mother (a grandmother 17, soon to be 18), and my wife, a grandmother of 3. I thought that besides my own items that I wanted to get rid of, I could also seek out product that I could sell for other vendors, and have them "dropped shipped" to my "customers". Lastly, I thought I could seek out unique items that I would obtain at really low price, and to resell at a modest profit.

From that grew my determination in developing Grandma's Attic into not only a place for my family, friends and myself to sell our wares; but to become a community of like minded individuals who wish to Browse, Buy, and Sell items at Bargain prices. I had now started down the road to becoming a new web marketers. I did however, have another motivation. I had been suffering a debilitating condition that made it very difficult for me to work in a "traditional" work environment. I had just lost another position because of this condition, and so I decided to make the very most of this. I know, that with the grace of God above, this will become a success. My other motivator was and continues to be my wife, Barb. She is a professional truck driver for Waste Management, Inc. near our home. However, Barb's health is worstening and I want to not only do my part for our family, but to give Barb options for her future (she wants to go back to school, for instance).

So I did my due diligence (and continue in doing so), and started to develop the site. I already had a business PayPal & Ebay accounts, which I had set up a year prior: but I wanted more options for Grandma's Attic customers. So we now have a merchant account, and accept Visa, MasterCard, Discover & American Express, as well as checks and money orders for offline orders. I am still having some problems with the intragration with my shopping cart, but I will continue to work on that. People can still place orders with their cards: it is just that the information has to be manually transmitted through the system at this time.

I had recently added a way for people to contact me via the Yahoo! Instant Messenger (YIM) which is available on select pages of the site. On 10/10/05, I added this new feature as an added benefit for our visitors: THIS BLOG. Here is where I will post the most relevant changes to my site, as well as allowing our community to read, reply and post items as well. I will be looking at getting a more sophisticated system for visitors to contact us in an online support format: but that will need to wait until we can afford it and there is a need/demand for it. Until then, we have multiple avenues for visitors to contact us.

As I have been writing this blog for a couple of hours (while trying to babysat my sister's kids), I will not go into our plans for this site at this time. Also, I have been averaging 2.5 hours of sleep recently; so as soon as my brother-in-law gets here, I will be taking a short nap, before I start with my afternoon activities.

I hope and pray that you enjoy our site, this blog, and the community that I am so diligently trying to establish. May God's grace be with your every step. Please check back here often, as who knows what you will find here.

-John