Post by JW on Jul 24, 2013 17:22:31 GMT -5
Well I went back to Habitat for the first time in almost two years yesterday to drop off a couple things and to see who all was working that was there when I was. I kind of expected the fan section to be not as well taken care of (I mean who besides us specializes in fans) but what I saw blew my mind...
There were ONLY newer fans for sale, with the exception of one bright brass 4-blade Original (at $150). They had obviously made no effort to straighten the blade brackets. The cheapest fan I think was $35. They had others (mainly flush mounts) just sitting out on the shelves.
There were about five times as many sets of blades as there were when I was there. Most of them were off vintage fans, which tells me they are apparently parting out anything vintage except Originals.
They built kind of an "office" for the fan guy to go back there and assemble fans. However instead of keeping all the parts locked away somewhere, there are buckets and buckets of them, and most of them are sitting out for the customers to rummage through and take whatever at $1 a part.
I don't expect for other people to do things the way that I do them, but going back and seeing how quickly it has declined in two years is very discouraging, although I can't say I'm surprised. I wish I had the time to devote to going back and getting things back in order, not to mention the drive to do so or the tolerance for all the thieves and rude customers, but doing so would be a task ten times as monumental as it was when I first started.
There were ONLY newer fans for sale, with the exception of one bright brass 4-blade Original (at $150). They had obviously made no effort to straighten the blade brackets. The cheapest fan I think was $35. They had others (mainly flush mounts) just sitting out on the shelves.
There were about five times as many sets of blades as there were when I was there. Most of them were off vintage fans, which tells me they are apparently parting out anything vintage except Originals.
They built kind of an "office" for the fan guy to go back there and assemble fans. However instead of keeping all the parts locked away somewhere, there are buckets and buckets of them, and most of them are sitting out for the customers to rummage through and take whatever at $1 a part.
I don't expect for other people to do things the way that I do them, but going back and seeing how quickly it has declined in two years is very discouraging, although I can't say I'm surprised. I wish I had the time to devote to going back and getting things back in order, not to mention the drive to do so or the tolerance for all the thieves and rude customers, but doing so would be a task ten times as monumental as it was when I first started.
