how it all started

I've always had retail in my blood, one of my first memories is my mother removing the the price tag from the plush rabbit that became my steadfast friend through my early childhood. He accompanied me on all of the outings my mother and I made, he sat next to me in the shopping cart while she pushed us around the Kroger market, he kept me company while I conducted myself like the perfect little gentleman as she searched the sale racks at the Halle Brothers Department store and he was there when I tried on my first pair of Stride Rites, Church shoes, she called them, for Sunday School. My mother was responsible for my first exposure to the "shopping experience" that launched me on my career in the glamorous, frustrating but always entertaining world of stockrooms and rolling racks.