Am I Retiring, Transitioning, or Re-Inventing?

We've been in business for 77 years.  I sold my building: Offices, showroom with fitting area, the actual factory.  Not a huge place as manufacturing plants go, but figure a big fish in a little pond.  Since 1936, ain't bad.

The garment industry in the United States is all but dead; the custom garment industry is dead.  I have business, I have customers.  But not enough to earn a living.  Labor today is all off-shore for any kind of tailoring expertise and decent pricing; what our custom shop has always been about. As one of the last shops in our line of manufacturing--if not the last--it was time to bail.

I had to move.  I got rid of the overhead (Thank God), and I got rid of all those things I am responsible for but can't control; eg: The Facility, the Equipment, and the Help.  You don't want to own a factory in this day and age, if you can help it.  I'm telling you.  At least 50% of my professional life has been about apologising for this mistake, or that mal-function.  The only honors I got out of the deal were the joys of saying, "I'm sorry," and giving courtesy discounts. Mazel Tov.

But OK.  So, now, I'm moved.  Where?  I don't want to go through the entire process with you, but trust me; it wasn't a charmer.   The cost of renting a new space, buying a new space, adding a new space onto my home, squeezing everything I needed into my house as is; were all possibilities.

I have a friend who thinks I ought to have had a Plan.  Are you kidding? What plan?  I needed to get out of the building in order to save the overall   company--you know, the proverbial handwriting on the wall:  I needed to stop the financial hemorrhaging, and the mistakes.  This wasn't something that was self-contained and dependent on my decisions, alone; rather it demanded that all the outsiders' chips fell in their own proper order.

One day, a guy makes an offer on the building.  OK.  I figure it all out.  Get it all ready.  Then the sale falls through.  Plan?  So I continue on, in my original operational mode.  Six months later, another offer.  OK. This time, the thing goes through but with closing in four weeks.  An entire--if small--77 year old manufacturing operation--close down, sort, and pack up in 20 days; all the while with orders in work.  

In the meantime, the folks I was going to take with me to a new, littler shop, decided to retire, altogether. Surprise...  

So that's the end of the factory.  In all fairness, one former worker is 80, another is 73; we're not talking Spring Chickens, here.  But between the first and second purported sales of the building, everything changed, including any kind of income projection.  Thus, rentals/purchases of smaller manufacturing facilities, were out the window.  How now, Brown Cow?

The bids to add on a home office came in at $35,000.  For 10'x10'.  No kidding. Small volume pricing. Thus, I rented: An inside storage facility unit. Same size as the home add-on, but for $181/month including insurance.  At this rate, I can keep my new "satellite office" for almost 17 years, before I come close to the $35,000 addition.  

You would love the satellite office.  It's two blocks away, so Sydney--my dog--and I can walk to work.  It's done in used brick with Columbia blue and white trim, and looks like traditional model homes.  (The complex cries out for red geraniums).  The place has all the comforts of home except electricity (other than the bare bulb overhead); and the bathroom that is three buildings away.

It's almost perfect.  I have Kleenex, a chair, a shipping table with a scale, my boxes/tape/wrapping tissue/labels, a broom and dustpan along with a wastebasket, step-stool, 15 file cabinets of payables and receivables, and over 200 aprons that I couldn't bear to part with (let me know if you're interested in purchasing...)   It's the best.  A mezuzah is on the doorpost, along with a Jewish calendar for the year, 5774. The UPS office is down the street; I pack up the uniforms in this petite shipping department, and schlep box after box rather than paying extra for the driver in the big brown truck, to pick up.

My family-room at home in the basement, along with my upstairs study, comprise the rest of my corporate offices. Downstairs are the "accounting and business offices."  Everything I need to run the show, as long as I don't have to cut cloth in my own shop.  I can cut cloth with other folks; I can press; I can sew--all outside. I can screen-print and embroider.  Same thing. But I can't cut in-house.  So far. That's my limit.  I have others who can do the manufacturing in their own shops (aka contractors and sub-contractors), or I can sell ready-to-wear (uniforms from other manufacturers that are made off-shore and merely pulled from shelves, and shipped.)

Upstairs is the "creative/executive" office with all the business machines.  Yes.  I'm writing to you from this office, right now.

I'm continually getting settled, as the days go by.  Still working like mad to squeeze it all in.  Adding new activities, as my hours and time are now my own. No one I have to apologise for or yell at.  No machines to fail or be damaged by well-intentioned "experts."  I'm working every day and so far, longer than I ought. Just to get caught up and get on some kind of schedule. (Sometimes, a customer may get a call from me as late as 1:00 a.m....)

Now, you tell me.  People say, "Ohhhhh, I'm so happy you retired!"   Am I retired?  I have 3 office spaces, separate phone/fax/email /business cards, and UPS bills.  "Well, but no, you're at home, now, so that's not really working." Maybe if I drove around the block every morning before I sat down at my desk so that I could "arrive" at my offices by 8:00, that would help.  

Others write books about "transitioning."  My own "transition" either must be because I've morphed from young to old, and/or because America has given up the ghost where blue-collar skills are concerned.  It's the same business, the same name, the same Stuff.  No in-house factory to be sure, but in every other way, it's the same.  We've always had cottage industry. Even this isn't new.

Tell me, what have I transitioned besides my moving from my factory to my home?  Still feels the same to me.  I answer the phone the same.  I dunno.  I guess the transition is in the loss of overhead and liabilities, and I don't have to apologise so much, any more.

Finally, and best, are those who insist I'm re-inventing myself.  Um, I lost 10 pounds.  Does that mean I'm re-invented?  Trust me: I'm still the same impossible person I have always been, which is why I'm not a team player and work for myself.  I'm in the same business, doing the same thing: Fashion.  Only, I'm more relaxed now because I can focus on selling the clothing, rather than putting out all the fires and rescuing the help.