The Closing of It's Quite Cool

We want to take this time to thank everyone who appreciated and visited It’s Quite Cool during its existence on Kitchener Street in Martinborough. We sincerely wish we could have made this business viable because we understand how much everyone enjoyed the Gelato and Sorbets as well as the space and time that they experienced there.

It wasn’t just the high rent or remark about competitors that drove us to close. Our first lease term was for 2 summers and 1 winter and we were able to put enough away for the winter months, but nothing was left for a worker’s salary. Our next term would have been for 2 winters and 1 summer – meaning we simply would not be able to save enough for rent nor have someone work the store for free for another 18 months. We seriously considered opening in a more affordable location - and we were offered some wonderful options from local businesses and loyal customers - but we can not afford the restructure of the business... and we have no emotional capacity to handle the challenge of a competitor at our old space. This is a very difficult acknowledgement with emotions ranging from anger, to guilt, to stupidity to heartbreaking loss.

We put our hearts and souls into creating something unique and well-liked. We invested our time, our energy, our savings and basically put our lives on hold while we worked hard to get this business to prosper. We could be passive about the whole ordeal and try to move forward without a statement, but how does that help others to be more respectful of small business owners and their efforts to develop something special.

Do it folks! Because some people have given up high paying jobs, their security, their growing families and solitary partners, their summers and their vacations, their tidy homes and tranquil gardens, their lonely pets, their workouts and hot baths, their restful nights and their relaxing mornings to make Martinborough an exceptional place to live and travel to.

But with all the negativity we are battling within ourselves, we still want this type of business for the town. We watched many positive things happen in this space with this product and we are most proud to have witnessed some really wonderful situations. We had families come together in large and small groups with each of them enjoying the company of one another. We had fancy well-born persons waiting their turn after the sweaty farmer and then both of the parties chortling and offering advice over what sizes and flavours to order. We had groups, and couples, and kindred spirits hanging out, either laughing, or flirting, or the telling of secrets. We had children jumping for joy, excited to see pink cups, dancing to our music while they waited for their treats hardly able to comprehend their parent’s insistence to ‘Remember to say Thank-You!!’. We had the bikers perched in front of their parked bikes, admiring it under the guise of cone eating. And we had the mere mortals who came in all on their own to take that much needed time for themselves with a treat while they read, or watched or wondered.

And those kinds of times are what we enjoyed most about this little business of ours. The moments in time that come and go all too fast – just as we did.

“Sometimes you will never know the value

of the moment until it becomes a memory”.

~ Dr. Seuss ~

Thank you for all the endearing memories.

~ Karen and Steve ~