Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 125117 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125117 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
“This,” Truman said, “is a brainstorming session. That means there is no idea too silly, big, small, or seemingly bananas to go on the board. Just shout them out, and I’ll write them down. Okay?”
The board in question was a large freestanding mirror from Greta’s bedroom onto which Truman had taped scrap paper.
“Okay.”
Ash, it turned out, was terrible at brainstorming. He seemed to need to work out every detail of something in his mind before he’d speak it aloud.
After fifteen minutes of encouraging okay, and-ing, Truman said, “That is not a storm! That’s like a-a-a leaky faucet!”
Ash let out a choked sound that was half giggle and half harrumph and wholly undignified. Truman grinned.
“Just…don’t second-guess your ideas,” he said. “No bad ideas in a brainstorm! Like, okay, how about, um, a flower of the week sale where one kind of flower is half off. It’d get people in the door, but then they’ll see the other stuff and want those too. You can make a sign to put in the window.”
Ash’s brow was furrowed, but he was nodding. “That’s a really good idea.”
“Yay!”
“Maybe I could do a punch card thing where if people buy ten bouquets, they get the eleventh free?”
“Yes, love it, creating customer loyalty and incentivizing purchase through gamification. Uh, I was a business minor,” he added when Ash raised an eyebrow.
“Lucky me.”
“Are there any flowers that are super cheap for you to stock?”
“There are a few that are always cheap, but they aren’t very popular. Then, in the summer, there are always people who grow wildflowers that you can get pretty cheaply. But they’re not what people think of as florist flowers, you know?”
“Okay. But what if you did some kind of specific and different kind of bouquet? Like, if you did wildflower bouquets in recycled jars or something and sold them as picnic bouquets for tourists. Or—wait, better—sold them as a souvenir of Owl Island. You could have little clear stickers with Thorn and an owl on them to put on the outside of the jars. Then you could tie the bouquet with colored twine or something with a loop and say that as soon as the flowers start to wilt, they should hang them upside down and dry them as a souvenir. They could keep the dried flowers in the Owl Island jar. And you could sell it for more because they get a fresh bouquet, a souvenir glass, and a dried bouquet that’ll last.”
“That’s…also a really good idea.” Ash looked thoughtful.
“What are you thinking right now?” Truman asked, energized with ideas and wanting more.
“I’m thinking that I don’t have the cash flow to print stickers, much less signage and labels and all this stuff. I want to do it, I just…”
“Okay, money is always a sticking point, but there are ways around it.”
“Ways around money? I’d love to hear them.”
“Well, I’m still holding out hope for the toppling of the white supremacist capitalist hetero patriarchy, but in the meantime, I meant something slightly lower key. Do you know someone with a printer?”
“I know Greta,” Ash said, and he pointed at the small desk setup she had in the bedroom.
“Oh, right, of course. All you’d need to make the stickers is a design, some clear sticker paper, and a printer. You can ask Greta to use her printer, and I can totally make a design for you. Then, you have six months till tourist season, which is plenty of time to save all your jars. You can ask people in town to save theirs for you too. It’ll look cool if they’re all different. More bespoke. I mean, if you want?”
Ash blinked owlishly at him. “You’d really want to do that?”
“Make you a design for stickers? Yeah, of course. And as for the signage, that’s easy.”
Truman explained how he could use recycled materials, repurpose stock, use a profit-sharing model with artists to sell merchandise in the store. The ideas fell into his head, one after the other, like raindrops.
Ash was nodding, eyes wide.
Finally, Truman forced down his excitement at giving Ash multiple new income streams and focused on Ash’s unblinking eyes.
“You look overwhelmed. Are you overwhelmed?”
“I’m… Yes. I’m overwhelmed.”
Truman dropped onto the couch beside him and forced himself not to spout off any more ideas, even though his mind was spinning with them. Flower crowns for summer tourists’ children, and winter greenery wreaths for the holidays, and a partnership with a local restaurant to provide centerpieces for tables, and…
“Well, the trick is to just break each thing down to its component parts, make a to-do list, and do one thing at a time.” Truman jumped up again and grabbed one of the blank notebooks he kept for just such occasions. “Here, this can be yours.”
Truman sketched the Thorn logo on the front of the notebook, outlined it with his favorite Micron 0.2, shaded it in with his 0.5, and started to add Ash’s name with a 0.8.