I know all about hard times finding things for our business. It's rather pathetic in my opinion even with city ordinances. We can't have the business where our target market is because of zoning and yet the city complains about the amount of vacancy in that district.

My wife wants to file for a variance (as we have a verbal commitment from someone saying that he'd be fine with us moving into his space) with the zoning commission to see if we can sneak in as a non-conformity but I highly doubt that it would be approved and if not then we could go to the city commission but I have a feeling that we'd probably end up being crucified before they would budge even though we have a whole slew of supporters.

Not only is it hard to find space though, it's hard to find people who will provide all sorts of other services, lawyers, accountants, web designers. I had one of my high school friends flat out say not to me to paying him to design a website for me because he didn't want to have his name associated with "that sort" of company.

I think that part of it is because people don't quite get what we're going for - we're not looking at opening a dingy dark flourescent lit shop full of shrink wrapped products, but the complete opposite. We are looking at opening a sex positive, open and inviting space focusing on education and safety. We are looking at opening something where you can handle products to feel the weight, texture, etc. before making a purchase, something clean and well lit.

You'd think that people would understand that we are looking at starting a boutique, not something sketchy hence the word "boutique" in the name.

So, we have access to a number of other shops that are quite like ours that would be able to provide us with pictures of what we are looking at opening - do you think that would possibly help take us up an notch and hopefully sway to get the stereotypical image out of their minds if we DO decide to apply for a variance?