Today we’d like to introduce you to Jen Clark.
Hi Jen, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
My family and I needed a children’s play place in our town…we were driving across town to take our little one to play when our day jobs required us to get a little uninterrupted work done! I have always been very entrepreneurial and wanted to run our own business. I wrote a children’s potty-training book as our first business venture until the indoor children’s play place came to mind…now we have Prosper Playhouse & Boutique and still sell the potty-training books called ‘Potty Candy’ in the lobby! Prosper Playhouse & Boutique was a long-needed and truly appreciated play place for parents and children in our town and couldn’t have come at a better time with our growing little town (once we made it through the pandemic, of course!) The boutique was added as just seasonal until it took off as it’s the only children’s clothing store in town as well…now it’s a staple, and we have clothing year-round for boys and girls ages 6 months to about age 8 in sizes!
We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It took us one year, December of 2018 to December of 2019, to build and finally open when we were expecting only roughly 6 months! We had to cancel parties that tried to book early with us pending our opening…Then we finally opened our doors in December of 2019!!! We were beyond excited and doing well…booking up for birthday parties, memberships, and had plenty of people coming to see us as they were desperate for a place like ours in Prosper too! But…3 months later, a Worldwide pandemic hit, and we had to close our doors. This was devastating. We were closed for about 4 months and finally reopened by reservation only for several months. Thankfully we both kept our day jobs in order to keep Prosper Playhouse alive through the shutdown. We are alive and well today!
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
Both Jody and I are in IT Sales by day…Jody sells IT hardware to his territory of businesses, including Schools, and I sell IT cloud applications through a network of managed service providers. We have worked hard to get to where we are today and funded the entire Prosper Playhouse project ourselves which was a huge risk given the unknown pandemic on our hands!
Before we let you go, we’ve got to ask if you have any advice for those who are just starting out.
Make sure that what you are about to do is truly a passion and you have the energy to handle the unknown that will surely arise!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.prosperplayhouse.com
- Instagram: Prosperplayhouse
