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Blog: 10 Years of Ultrapom: Year 3

Photo by: Morgan Miller Photography

In 2013, we ran out of room. My little 768 sf house looked like a hoarder lived there, with paths around boxes to get through the living room. No problem, I thought. We want to move the family downtown, let’s buy a warehouse in the Crossroads and convert it to a live/work situation!  Except, banks don’t give loans to businesses that are only 2 years old, and netted no income in one of those 2 years.  And traditional residential mortgages don’t work for commercial businesses. So, we bought a bigger house in the Westside, with a 2 car garage and a basement! 

We were still growing though, with revenue more than doubling from the year before.  My porch often was filled with returned orders!

We were also learning that it was hard to make money just doing tabletop decor, and that there was demand for other kinds of specialty rentals.  So we dove in to dishware, flatware and glassware, starting with our Modern Gold Flatware, and quickly adding Colored Glass Estateware. We still wanted to focus on the specialty side of things, and leave the more standard rentals to the traditional rental company. Moving to this category meant figuring out how to properly clean and store these items. It was quite the learning process, and there’s no real class on how to run a rental company! We also SHIPPED these items – especially the gold flatware.  It was expensive to ship, but people on the coasts were happy to pay the shipping, as it was still cheaper to rent from us than to get it from a company in more expensive markets (maybe that’s why a certain LA specialty rental company blocked us on Instagram…)  But sometimes, people would ship flatware back dirty, with fish still stuck to them, wrapped up in a plastic bag, for DAYS on a FedEx truck.  It was disgusting.  

Honestly, 2013 was one of the hardest years of my life.  I had a baby to take care of, my business was twice the size it was the year before, and I still only could afford a couple of part time people, because twice as much revenue still didn’t mean I could afford to hire someone full time. I remember not sleeping much and crying a lot that year, and singing the words to Bastille’s song, Pompeii, wrong to reassure myself (“I’m going to be an optimist about this.”)

But I was also meeting a bunch of great industry folks, and getting Ultrapom’s name out there through networking like crazy.  Time to grow some more!

GIVEAWAY: Head over to our Instagram post for today’s giveaway, which is themed with us starting to provide items for EATING and DINNER in 2013 (HINT HINT)!

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4 Comments

  1. Megan Nass
    Posted 27 January 2021 at 1:35 pm | Permalink

    Love these stories of growth! Cheers to 10 years!

  2. Lindsay
    Posted 27 January 2021 at 1:45 pm | Permalink

    Oh the joys of flatware! And obviously Olive is amazing. Great post!

  3. Laurie Sorenson
    Posted 27 January 2021 at 3:31 pm | Permalink

    Sounds like you are having fun! Here’s to 10 more years.

  4. Posted 28 January 2021 at 4:31 pm | Permalink

    I fondly remember picking items up from this porch, including lots of sequins linens!

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