Eight Years of Coming Soon

In 2018 I put a name on a door. The Lumber Outlet Group. A serious name, with a certain expensive calm about it, and a page that said coming soon. There was no inventory yet and no warehouse. There was the name, and the idea behind it.

The sign stayed up for eight years. Friends would ask about it the way you ask about someone's novel. Any day now, I'd say. Every year I kept the lights on anyway. Somewhere around year five, coming soon stopped being a line on a page and became an item on a list.

Brands spend fortunes trying to look like they have been around. Distressed logos, invented founding dates, a heritage stitched on in the same factory as everyone else's. Ours aged in place, which as any tree will tell you is the only way aging actually works. Est. 2018 is true in the one sense that matters: the idea outlasted every year it waited.

So this is the announcement, eight years in the making and shorter than any of the waiting: the store is open. The sign was not lying. It was just early. Welcome to soon.