For those of you that have been following our story, you know that we started Goulet Pens back in 2009 on our dining table, with just the two of us. We never could have imagined that it would blossom into what it is now: a team of 41 amazing people in a 12,000sf space. We’ve moved and expanded our space several times over the last several years, expanding into 3 connected suites in our existing building. Early last year we started thinking ahead, about our current lease term coming to an end and whether we thought we would continue to grow or if we should stay and expand further in our building or just try to make it work.

These kinds of decisions are never easy. Being an online retailer you would think that physical location isn’t much of a consideration for us like a retailer with a storefront. And while that’s true to some degree, we still have a lot of space needs with a large team and a lot of inventory to store! A decision to renew a lease or move is a huge decision.

Ultimately, it boiled down to one thing: are we going to make a conscious effort to grow or not?

For any of you that have run or worked with a small business before, you know this is a gut-wrenching decision. There’s so much uncertainty, there’s so much fear and doubt about the future. What if we expand and the economy takes a turn? What if we overextend ourselves and can’t emotionally or mentally handle the growth? What if, what if, what if…? These are all battles we’ve had to fight in our own minds, as we know that past success is no guarantee of future success. We’ve read the statistics about the likelihood of start up businesses to fail…and while being 8 years in we’ve beat most of the odds, it’s always something on our mind. The thing is though, we don’t live our lives by fear. We are optimistic, realistic, and really, really hard working. We believe in what we’re doing, and we have a whole team that believes in the Goulet Pens mission: “To provide fountain pen enthusiasts with the most personal online shopping experience, through comprehensive education, exemplary service, and products we believe in.”

In order for us to continue to live out our mission, allow for future expansion into opportunities we see on the horizon, and better accommodate our team with a physical space that reflects the amazing culture that we’ve built here, we decided we would make the investment and move to a new location that’s close to double the size of what we have now. It’s about 10 minutes away from where we are now, and while it’s slightly further for the two of us to drive, it’s closer for just about all of our team. It’s going to be a larger, more functional, and much more intentionally designed space to accommodate the way our team operates and where we plan to expand in the future. We’ve also funded this whole project without debt, as that’s something we feel is important to us. That alone has been a challenge, and has kept us laser-focused.

All that said, this has been a huge, massive project requiring gobs of time, money, and energy. We started shopping for a commercial broker in January 2016, and we were looking at spaces throughout the spring and summer last year (while also working through our miscarriage). Once we found a place last summer, we then negotiated the lease and buildout terms over many months, hired a designer, shopped for construction crews, and have been overseeing a very sizable buildout. We’ve done all this unbeknownst to you, because there was so much in flux throughout the whole project, we weren’t sure how and when it would affect our ability to serve you as we normally do. We wanted to focus on still providing a great customer experience despite this moving project. We’re letting you know now because we are wrapping up the final stage of construction and we have official dates to share with you that will impact our normal availability.

So without further ado, here are the key dates and questions we can think to answer for you:

Our move will commence on Wed. August 9th and proceed through the weekend of August 13th. We will be fully operational in our new building starting on Monday, August 14th.

The Moving Schedule:

August 9 (Wed)