New name, new services, new professional organisers - same excellent customer service
The winds of change have been blowing hard for The Ship Shape Shoppe… after a tumultuous 2023, the time has come for a new era of business. I’m so proud to FINALLY announce that I’ve renamed the business, and from here on out we’ll be known as The Decluttering & Organising Co.
I had been rethinking The Ship Shape Shoppe as a business name for around 18 months before I landed on The Decluttering & Organising Co (The D & O Co. for short!). The Ship Shape Shoppe was very personal - the alliteration made me smile, but it also represented a 5 year vision that never came to fruition. As well as doing the decluttering and organising, I wanted to open a retail store with the coolest, most effective and beautiful organising products from around the world - so having “Shoppe” in my business name made sense. That dream died when Covid came along and I realised that retail could be incredibly stressful, and also had a reality check that I just didn’t have the budget to get that dream off the ground. At the same time, my email address was a nightmare - try asking someone to email you at rebekah (“with a k-a-h”) at the ship shape shoppe (“with two p’s and an e”) dot com. Maddening! Haha. So after tossing around several ideas I landed on The Decluttering & Organising Co. It isn’t as short and catchy as I would like, but it is clear what we do and the email address (beks@decluttering.co.nz) is much easier to share!
Beyond the name of the business, the biggest change is who will be doing the decluttering and organising. I have really missed running the business - last year I was run ragged trying to keep up with clients and build Clutter Collect, which meant that the fun stuff that I also really enjoy (blogging, social media content, marketing and business admin) fell by the wayside and I ended up feeling that while I was doing lots of things, I wasn’t doing any of them very well. That’s a yucky feeling! So this year, I won’t be taking on any new clients. I have two clients that I work with every week, and I simply don’t have capacity beyond that. I’m focusing on building a team of amazing decluttering and organising experts that will be trained by me to take care of new clients exactly the same way I would. So far I have the amazing Jo (Senior Professional Organiser) and Rosie (Assistant Professional Organiser) and I’m working on adding at least one more in the next couple of months. Being in business on your own can be a lonely existence, so I’m SUPER excited to be part of a team again. As well as growing the team, I’ve simplified the services that we’re offering. The website still needs to be refined to make it easier to find what you’re looking for, but for now at least the menu is visible and you can go ahead and book.
Many of my clients have seen the new name and brand on the van - I jumped the gun on that back in October last year. LOL. I truly thought I’d be launching a new website and a whole rebrand months ago, but the tail end of 2023 had other plans for me, so here we are - a few months later than intended, but now officially “out and proud”.
Over time the website, my social media, Google, how I answer the phone (!! haha) will transition from The Ship Shape Shoppe to The Decluttering & Organising Co… I wish it had all happened instantly, but sadly I don’t have the resources for an overnight change. I’ve been trying to make that happen for several months now and have realised that I just need to chip away. Much like decluttering and organising your home - the “one and done” idea that so many of us have is usually unrealistic!
So that’s the big business update / download / brain dump. Thanks for reading if you’ve made it this far - go and check out our Services, and if you have any questions you can email me at beks@decluttering.co.nz (see how much easier that is!?) Yahoo!