exploration

our original idea for this entire venture revolved around two connected storefronts which were selling for an insanely cheap price (something like $60,000 for over 5,000 square feet of retail space--not to mention the second floor). we had plans to open a fair trade store in one storefront and a fair trade coffee house in the other.

we met with several influential people in the community, including the mayor (the owner of the book store), to test the feasibility of our ideas. after many discussions with many people, we came to the conclusion that three rivers was a community that was ready for this kind of a retail operation. we also quickly realized that attempting to open both operations at once was not going to be possible (or wise) and that the original property we had looked into was not going to work.

the entire time we were researching this project, we were working under the assumption that we would purchase the building in which the store would operate. we looked at every building on the market for several months and decided on one with unique character (it featured a walk-through that went underneath the building to the other side) and a manageable amount of space (about 800 square feet).

now, we just had to figure out how we, people with very little financial resources, were going to be able to make this work.