New Stores & Existing Stores, and clasps

Good morning Prayer Partners! I have been so encouraged by you over the last week because of those of you who have seen me in person and told me you are reading these blog posts and praying for Alegria. We can feel it! This journey is HARD, starting a company from scratch is HARD, communicating in 2 different languages and 2 different cultures and 2 different governments with 2 different tax systems and 2 different currencies is HARD. But hard work is gratifying to our souls, as the Lord told us it would be and I am grateful for the hard work.

This morning, these are the biggest things I'm taking to the Lord on behalf of Alegria. Would you carry it to him too?

1. Appointments with potential new stores. Last week's prospecting calls went better than most weeks and I have 10 appointments with potential new stores this week.  Please pray that the ones we should be in would open their account and place their first orders. (this is the season stores try new brands - we opened 2 new accounts last week, if you have friends in Norfolk, VA or Boulder, CO, we just added them to our shop in person map)
2. Some of our existing stores are struggling. Earnings reports are down for large retailers, and that often speaks to the trends overall. I want to assure you that Alegria is just slightly up for the year, but so are our expenses, so we are holding our own. But now that wholesale has become 1/2 of our revenue, we want to pray even more for our stores that carry Alegria.  Would you open the Shop in Person map this week and just choose a handful of stores to pray for by name? Or pray over the whole map.
3. In Honduras, our artisans are hard at work and have our July collection complete and have started work on our August collection (it's our first fall collection and I'm dying to show you - they are gorgeous!) BUT, our shipment of clasps to our bisuteria in Honduras was lost by DHL and had to be reordered.  So we are waiting for clasps to be able to finish and ship that July collection. Let's pray for that DHL box to be found and the new shipment to arrive very quickly.

Dear Prayer Partner, thank you for praying with me this morning.