We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jin And Julia Hann a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Jin and Julia thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
Jin and I have always loved being in a certain environment: beautiful, cozy, inviting and full of things that we loved, usually books, well brewed coffee, unique gifts among other things. We also loved everything spiritual. Most of what we read were spiritually focused and we had a daily meditation practice. We also loved seeking out excellent psychics and other intuitive readers. We were curious about what we couldn’t see with our senses and wanted to experience God in a personal way. Naturally, everywhere we went, in Portland or other cities we would visit while vacationing, we always looked for a place that had everything we loved under one roof. But to our surprise, we could never find a place like that. If it had all the items we wanted to shop, it didn’t have the right vibe/ambience/decor. When we were both unemployed (Jin was recovering from her cancer journey and I was taking a few years off trying to figure out my next steps after quitting my corporate job), she asked me one day “hey, do you think we should try starting a business and sell spiritual books, crystals, gifts and have psychics in house? All the stuff we love in a beautiful retail space?” To my amazement, what came out of my mouth was “yeah, let’s try it and see how it goes!”. That’s how Soulful began, as an idea. Once we said yes to it, it became a real thing. We figured if we would love a space like this, there must be other people who would love it too.
Jin and Julia, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Jin and I are two sisters who used to grind for years at our corporate jobs (Jin as a mortgage broker at Wells Fargo and me as a director of total rewards for tech companies). We had no real retail experience other than the fact that our parents owned a small souvenir shop at Venice Beach, CA when we were young. Soulful is a retail business based in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, OR where we sell a curated selection of books (all self-help/spiritual genres), beautiful crystals, various gift items and offer in-house and remote psychic/medium/tarot readings. What sets us apart is our vibe – it’s an updated, modern version of a metaphysical store, a departure from what people might have grown up with. The space is airy, beautiful, fun and we are super friendly. We love meeting our customers and getting to know them and their stories. In the short time that we have been open (a little over 2 months) we have met so many interesting customers, from published authors to a woman who rescued a baby squirrel, to a man who went to India and met an enlightened yogi. The stories go on and on. Also, we have met several customers going through painful events in life (divorce, death in the family, etc.) who came into the store to find solace in a book or a crystal or a reading. We try our best to hold space for them to come as they are and care for them. We want our store and us to be an extension of their support network.
We are really proud that we took a risk and started a business when we have never done anything like this. Everything was a huge learning curve, from buying books from publishers/distributors, to learning the POS system, going to a gem show to hand pick crystals, etc. But it’s been such a blast. We are working on offering intimate classes and events in the store in the near future. Every day that we come to work, we say to ourselves, “this is the best job we have ever had!”
Where do you think you get most of your clients from?
We have been open for a little over 2 months so we don’t have a lot of history to go off of. But we have noticed a pattern with our repeat customers. That they bring their friends and family members to our store. So, the best source of new customers seems to be our existing customers who love our store and want to share it with their loved ones. Maybe a close second is Facebook. We don’t have a presence on Facebook nor do we advertise on Facebook. But a customer apparently mentioned our store very favorably in the Sellwood – Moreland Facebook group and the locals showed up to check us out! Sellwood is such a neighborly neighborhood where people support local businesses and care about each other. We couldn’t have picked a better spot for our store!
Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?
I am not sure if this counts as a near death but before we found our space in Sellwood, we had signed a lease and were about to get the keys from the landlord on a space in Alberta Arts District. It had taken months to get through the paperwork, meet with the landlord who was out of town a lot, present our business plan, back and forth lease negotiations, etc. Literally, at the last minute, the landlord pulled out for a reason that we couldn’t really understand. It had taken us so long to find a suitable space and now we were back to square one. There may be a lot of commercial spaces available but to find one that is perfect for us, who knew how long that would take? We were pretty worried at this point. Then a week later, we were just driving through Sellwood to get coffee and saw a “for lease” sign next to our favorite ceramics store. It was located on the coveted 13th Avenue which has a ton of foot traffic and it came with parking spaces!! Stars must have aligned because we were able to see the space the same day, and we ended up beating out several other applicants to get the space. It literally took 2 weeks from finding the space to signing the lease. Looking back, we believe that we had to go through the Alberta experience in order to be truly ready for the Sellwood space. After months of dealing with the Alberta landlord, we were ready for anything! It was divine orchestration.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.soulfulpdx.com
- Instagram: soulfulpdx
- Other: on google map and apple map
Image Credits
Nick Mendez
https://www.nickmendez.com