Hopping from shop to shop

This year of the rabbit has turned out to be one ‘hoppingly’ active period for us at Jumble Station with the establishment of four different charity shops on our plate. The first is the Brilliant Light Charity shop at Desa Mentari is almost 95% complete after the hefty renovations we had put into the place. Now all that’s needed is to buy the shelves from Ikea, have them installed onto the walls and presto the shop will be ready for business. Of course there is also that issue of getting the MBPJ approval for a business licence and an advertisement licence for our signboard. Both will be looked into by today hopefully.

Next we have the two shoplots, No 8 & 9 at the Jalan Othman Bus Station at PJ Old Town, those two have been painted by William and Kumanan single parents kids who wanted to earn extra income. From the dirty grubby, messy place initially, it’s now been cleaned up and painted white and again, all that’s needed is for the shelves and fan to be installed. These two shops are meant for CES’ homeless and reformed drug addicts to learn the skills of getting back into society and mastering the skills of being responsible for finances and products. The proposed name will be Old Town Thrift Shop (OTTS). JS also got another shop no:20 which has been lent to single father Adrian to start his own little boutique so that he can generate his own income independently and to help raise the funds he needs for surgery to drain the fluid in his head. The surgery if necessary will come up to RM15,000 at least so he is galvanised into building up his much needed finances. Funny thing is that when we first applied for the 3 shops in late November last year, the area was a dead place, had been for the last 2 years but after getting the shops at end January this year, all the other available shops were quickly snapped up - talk about a miracle!

As for the shop at Setapak, William is busy cleaning up the shop and trying to get Tan, the property agent to fix back the ceramic sink and make sure electricity and water are reinstalled in the corner shop. Once that’s done, we can then start putting in the supermarket shelves and wooden shelves needed so that goods can be properly displayed. This shop will be owned and managed by William and his mum to help them generate the income they need to survive and they plan to call it JackWille Bundle.

The shops are going to be ready soon, our biggest problem will be to find the right people to man these shops and therein lies the snag. We had hoped to use Kumanan to man the Brilliant Light shop but his lack of responsibility is such that we had to scrap this move and look for others to fill this role. We’ll have to earnestly pray for the right people to help us make this shop a real success!