How to Kill a Business Without Really Trying

Well, here's some sad news. One of my favorite specialty stores in the market, Chily Chiles (http://www.chillychiles.com/), is moving; this is bad enough... but they're moving to Navan.

What is in Navan, I ask? "well, our warehouse, which is finely open...., and there's a nice little convenience store across the street.... and a very good butcher who smokes his own meat... Oh, and there's a really nice little home store too..." Pause!

So, what I'm hearing is that you need to work on your sales pitch a little bit. Just to be clear, Navan is a good twenty to thirty minute drive for me.... and presumeably as much for the rest of the store's clientele.

"What made you decide to move? The rent?" thinking of the perenial problem faced by Byward market vendors - the extortionist rents of the National Capital Commission. "No. They're about to start a two year dig down Sussex drive, and they're going to blast their way right through the street. We've already lived with that in our last location and it almost killed us, so we thought we'd just bite the bullet and move out".

The wonders of city planning. A couple of years back, when the condo's at the corner of Rideau and Sussex, a couple of blocks away, were under construction they relaced some of the sewers and, while a bit of a disaster, at least it was over and done with. And now this. In my conspiratorial mind I see the hand of the Big Evil Empire, who's embassy sits right across the street from Chily Chiles; like the sewer and any widening couldn't have been repaired when they built that fortress. Instead, the rest of the us have to suffer.... oh what a microcosm.

So I guess added to my list of things I'm going to do this summer is take a few road trips out to Navan. I hear they have a great little butcher.