In the mid nineties, Elizabeth Oliver moved to Phoenix and started working for Lockheed Martin in Goodyear. She worked for a short time with David Rall whose wife Vicki was a quilting enthusiast. Liz is an excellent student and was quick to work on the patterns and designs Vicki was showing her and the ones she found in the many magazines she was reading. Over the course of 5 years, Vicki and Liz stayed in touch and discussed each other's projects and life experiences.
Liz left Phoenix in 2000 to come to work on an opportunity in New Mexico. She was doing very well in her professional life, but had a yearning for working with fabric. You might say, she wanted to satisfy the itch to stich.
Vicki, in the meanwhile, started working at Joanne's in Phoenix, one of the busiest Joanne's supercenter stores there is. Many times, the store in Glendale would be running a dead heat with one other store in the country for the most sales each month. Vicki quickly moved up the corporate ladder and was the Home Decor Specialist within a year. Vicki was really enjoying the business side of running her own department, training her new employees, and being accountable for the bottom line and customer satisfaction by helping others find what was needed to complete their projects.
In 2006, Liz heard there was a quilt store for sale in Las Cruces. She called Vicki. Vicki and her husband came out to discuss the venture in April of that year. Although that business deal fell through, it started the desire in Vicki and Liz to run their own business. Liz had already done a tremendous amount of research on how to run a small business. She talked with the small business support group in Las Cruces, and found it was a definate possibility. But all the complexities of finding a new location, securing a business loan, training a staff, establishing accounts with the major vendors, ordering the 1000+ bolts of fabric, all of this seemed to be a very daunting task. But Vicki and Liz had the desire and tenacity to make it happen. Within 60 days, the loans were secured, the retail shop at Spruce Plaza was located, accounts were established with Moda, Robert Kaufman, and the other major vendor representatives. Everything was falling into place. Every obstacle was removed as soon as it was presented, like someone else was paving the way to ensure this business was started and that Vicki and her family would move to New Mexico. The last obstacle for moving out the entire family though was for her husband to find an opportunity near Las Cruces. Both Vicki and her husband felt this was meant to be, someone was pushing them towards Las Cruces, and knew something would present itself.
Having faith that something would happen to allow her husband to get to Las Cruces, Vicki and her son Matthew moved to Las Cruces the end of June, shortly after Matt completed the 8th grade. Both Liz and Vicki had their families come out in July of 2006 to help with the making of the store at Spruce Plaza, see below. After 30 days of painting, building shelves, and stowing fabric, the store was opened.
Everything was on track for opening the store but it was a rough time for Vicki and her husband for those several months while he waited for an opportunity to present itself so he could move as well. It took 3 very long months before that opportunity came and the family was reunited. The real blessing though was that the opportunity was with the same company and a relocation plan was made available to provide the support necessary to make the move as painless as possible.
The Organ Mountain Quilt Shop spent their first year in Spruce Plaza. Here are some photos of the making of the store at Spruce Plaza.
