SHOP TALK WITH THE ALEMBIKA COMMUNITY Beyond ALEMBIKA.com, our fashion community spreads across the US with brick-and-mortar stores from east to west. Each offers an intimate, personal touch as well as a unique shopping experience. Now, on a bi-weekly basis, we will share “Shop Talk” to highlight businesses that are a part of the ALEMBIKA family. TODAY’S STORY: ESENTIAL ELEMENTS, CHICAGO 1. TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT YOURSELF: Hi, I’m Melanie, owner of Essential Elements-Chicago! As a young girl I was always excited when my mom received the Spiegel catalog in the mail, can you believe owner, Joseph Spiegel sent his first mail-order catalog in 1905! That was my early beginnings of falling in love with the world of fashion...
As our team moved to daily Zoom meetings instead of meetings in person, Fatima and Alin maneuvered between work and child care. Three employees had Covid in our office and we had to keep shipping because it was the beginning of a season, one lost a brother to Covid and we know so many of our customer's relatives or employees that passed on. Stores closed and NYC was hurting terribly. But we somehow kept moving on and stayed on track. We put the fear aside. We were in survival mode like the rest of you. All of us. And it worked. We managed. But our bodies remember. These past few weeks I had sensations in my body that I never...
My teacher talked about love this past weekend.
He paused and looked at us in a serious face (through zoom) and said in his heavy Indian accent :
"I am sorry to say, so sorry, as many of my students don't understand what love is. So sorry. Please understand, love is when you give without expecting anything in return. You just give. This is love".
Do you love?
Happy week,
Yael
My Tai Chi teacher said something last week during class that stayed with me.
He said : "Be strong but not stuck. Agile not weak".
I find it so useful and wise. Strong doesn't mean we cannot be flexible. And being flexible is not a weakness.
I will try to practice these traits in my business and my life.
Happy Monday.
Yael
Gail from Bellagio sent me the book "Who Moved My Cheese" which we all heard of and many have read already. A very short book that has everything we need to know as business owners about management. I picked it up this weekend and thought how relevant it is for us, now, where we are after a year under COVID. Here is the one sentence from the book that will stay with me as my mantra for the rest of my business life: "If I want to not only survive in the future but stay competitive, I need to constantly change. I need to keep moving my 'cheese'. While in the past we may have wanted loyal employees, today we...
