A New Day (Updated 1/1/24)

Update 1: We've been asked by many people if there is a way to donate without making a purchase (especially by those who don't make jewelry). We've reactivated our previous GoFundMe campaign that was originally for Butcher Block Gallery. Since this is the space we'll be using and trying to fix up for Allegory Gallery to move into, we felt this was the best way to move forward with a fundraiser. 

https://gofund.me/5902edd0

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Original Post:

Hello Friends,

As many of you already know, this past year has been one of the hardest for us. Andrew's father was diagnosed with stage four kidney cancer and is currently under hospice care; he also lost several very important relationships in his life, William had a health scare with his heart, our cat was gravely ill and we thought was going to pass away, and then William’s other job burned to the ground on Christmas. His other job was our safety net that paid for our house bills. This is an incredible blow for us as this has been one of the most difficult years at the shop.

Despite our best efforts, our sales in our in-person location have dwindled over the past few years. We really feel that the way people shop has changed and most of our business has moved online. Since our sales have been so down, we haven’t had the extra income to get Butcher Block Gallery off the ground the way we had wanted. We have been working away on it in the background as time and money allowed.

We have been torn about what to do about the brick and mortar. It has been such an important part of our lives and it was the place that we first set down roots. Ligonier has been intertwined with our journey. The in-person location has been in decline since the pandemic, but we didn’t want to make any rash decisions. We worked the numbers and figured out that we could keep things going as is if we could (ideally) grow or maintain the same. However, when William’s other job burned over Christmas, we took a huge hit and had to make a decision about the future of the business.

We've decided to move Allegory Gallery to the Johnstown location.

This means that our plans for Butcher Block Gallery will be put on hold until we get settled in. We’ll continue to build out the website and hopefully grow an online presence for that business. The hope is that once things settle down, we can try again for a physical location. I know that some of you were excited about our original plan and we are sorry to disappoint, but this move will allow us to keep everything going and survive one of the hardest years we have had both personally and professionally.

Over the next few months, we’ll be making repairs and updates to the Johnstown building, having moving sales and trying to downsize our current space. It is going to be extremely difficult as we transition away from Ligonier, but we’re hopeful.

To this end, we're announcing our New Day campaign. We'll be creating a lot of new items to help raise money for all that we have to do to move our store and rearrange our lives and business. If you saw our live yesterday, you got a sneak peek at some of the newest items. Those items are now available in our online store, and we hope that you'll take a look at them in our New Day Collection. 

Click here to visit the collection (new items will be added often) and take a look below at some of our debut offerings!

Thank you so much for your support and for your love and friendship. We look forward to a bright 2024 ahead because we are surrounded by such light and love. 

Your friends,

William & Andrew