A Litte More About Us

In the last post I told you about how we came about owning the store. This time I wanted to share with you a little bit about what has taken place since we took over the store almost two years ago.

The three of us knew from the beginning that this wasn't going to replace our current jobs any time soon. However, at the time I was able to work from home which meant I could cover the store while getting my "real" work done. Unfortunately, that changed about 6 months after we took over. Once again though, things worked out well. My mother was retired and needed something to get her out of the house and this was perfect! Since we are only open Tuesday through Saturday, she is able to come up during the week and cover it for us.

Now that we had the work schedule figured out, it was time for us to start looking at what we could do to get noticed. The previous owner has set up a web page but at the time it was only a static page with some information and pictures. So our first major project was establishing an ecommerce site. This was a lot more work/trouble than I thought. After several versions and arguments with site designers, we ended up with our current site. www.TexicanImports.com

At the same time we were developing our website, we ran into a gentleman who told us about his store on ebay. It really sparked our interest! So, after playing around with it for a while, we decided to open a store on ebay as well. Texican Imports Home Here you will find some of the same items we have in our store on auction.

Anyway, that will give you a little more history on what we have done since taking over. As new business owner, it has been a HUGE learning experience. What have made a few mistakes along the way but "With a Little Love and Luck We'll Get By"!

P.S. A side note, my wife lived in Galveston for close to 3 years while going to school and we fell in love with the island. We hope and pray that it will come out okay after Ike passes over it.

Where It All Began

I thought it might be best if I started by telling you a little history about Texican Imports -

In the beginning, about 5 years ago, Texican Imports was a side activity for Mary Helen...the original owner. She had start selling items she had picked up from all over at local markets. Things started to pick up and she decided to try moving into a more permanent location. At that time the more permanent location was a storage facility where she operated for a couple of years.

During this time she developed a good following of customers who knew they could find unique western items and Mexican imports with great prices. It wasn't long before she decided to go big time (kind of) and move into and actual store front. Wanting to keep it close to home, she came ago our current location in the historic downtown portion of Mansfield and felt it was perfect.

Mary Helen needed a name that said something about her and the store....hence "Texican". It's actually the name of an old western movie "The Texican", she liked it and it fit.

Let's skip forward a year....

While Mary Helen was getting her new location established, my wife, my best friend and I all started talking about how nice it would be to own a business. Of course our goal was to one day have something that we could do full time. One day after a 5K run through downtown Ft. Worth in the snow, we stopped in Mary Helen's store and really liked it.

We had heard she was possibly selling it so we started talking with her. Come to find out her husband was being transferred and they were moving. She was either going to have to sell the business or close it down. She had several people interested in the store but most of them wanted to change things....we liked it the way it was.

A few months down the road and we ended up buying the store from her. I can't say it has all be easy since but it has definitely been a learning experience. When we bought the store we saw a lot of opportunity, and still do! It has been a lot of work but we have faith that it will be worth it.

Thanks for taking the time to read this...and stop back by to learn more about us and the store.

A quick view of some of our items