When I first started putting The Quiet Edit together, I had a clear idea of what I wanted it to be. I'd thought about opening a store for years, but it never seemed like quite the right time.

I knew exactly the kind of pieces I wanted to source, how I wanted the website to look and, more importantly, how I wanted everything to feel.

What I hadn't quite appreciated was the amount of other things I was going to have to learn to actually make it happen. I thought the hard part would be finding the right pieces.

Shopify

I design websites, so I had very definite ideas about how I wanted the website to look. Unfortunately, Shopify and I didn't always agree.

I was working with a template, which seemed perfectly reasonable at the beginning, until I wanted to change something. Then something else. And then something that to my mind, should have been an incredibly simple adjustment but apparently required rewriting half the code.

I couldn't afford to pay a developer, not when you're starting a business on a very tight budget, so I started learning how to change the code myself.

Or, more accurately, I started asking AI how to change the code, copying bits of it into the back end of Shopify, holding my breath and hoping I hadn't broken the entire website.

Sometimes it worked brilliantly. Other times I spent hours going around in circles trying to change something that wasn't even possible. Many nights I felt like I was going insane.

And then there was Meta

I honestly don't know how many evenings I spent trying to understand the various Meta platforms.

Meta Business Suite, Business Manager, Commerce Manager, Ads Manager, Instagram Shopping. Every time I thought I'd figured out where I needed to be, I seemed to find myself in another dashboard with another set of instructions and ten webpages layered on top of each other on my laptop, in bed, at 12.30am.

I spent the best part of a week last summer trying to work out how to sell directly through Instagram. You know that little shopping bag icon I could have sworn I'd seen on so many pages? Well, ChatGPT, my summer fling, enthusiastically guided me through one possible solution after another, before finally discovering that what I was trying to do wasn't actually available to me.

ONE WHOLE WEEK of wasted time. That's many nights of no Netflix!

And while we're at it, who knew how much there was to learn about SEO, Meta descriptions, image alt text, search terms, product titles? All these little things that apparently make the difference between someone finding your website and it getting lost in the internet's back end. I know what hole I'd like to have flung my computer. 

And honestly, how many different ways are there to pay for things nowadays? I currently have 14 neat little colourful (which I'd much rather were monochrome, but I'm not going down that particular road again) payment logos balancing precariously at the bottom of the page. Surely there's a limit to how many ways one needs to pay?

The photography department

I've worked with photographers for years and have a very clear idea of the images I like. Sure, I bloody love photography. However, having a sense of what makes a good photograph and actually taking one are two very different things.

There was the light — too much of it, not enough of it, too yellow, too flat. And the endless business of moving objects around, taking fifty photographs and deciding the third one was actually the best.

Sourcing

Sourcing is the part of the business that is natural to me. It's something I've done for years as an interior designer, and it's my favourite thing to do.

But the reality of buying for a shop is a different proposition.

There are minimum order quantities, shipping costs, margins, customs, packaging and the slightly terrifying realisation that you're committing money to stock without knowing when, or even if, it's going to sell.

Then there are the suppliers who simply don't want to deal with you.

I found some wonderful makers and companies whose products I would have loved to include, only to discover that they weren't interested in supplying an unknown little shop with no established sales history.

Which is entirely understandable from their point of view, but still quite disheartening when you've spent ages researching and imagining how their work might fit into your collection.

You reach out again and hope for a positive response… and that's before you've even attempted to sell anything.