This one's for my small biz people

I have been predicting this year to be a wild one for a while. I keep up with business news and astrology daily (so. many. parallels.) and the two have been on a collision course aimed at bursting the bubble that was created in 2020. I have been prepping my own team and my clients to just be buckled up in case of turbulence. At team Amor and team Victoria Winter Consulting we do NOT panic (ok we do. but for like 30 mins and move on) we prepare. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t slightly…. excited? for a business shakeup. There are entirely too many people producing too many items mindlessly to get a stab at the rabid consumerism market we have been in than we can sustain. People who didn’t start businesses or creative ventures because they were obsessed, but because, armed with free time in the pandemic thought, why not? Maybe they can panic a little, but if it wasn’t your path sometimes it’s ok to get pushed off of it. The biggest growth opportunities I have had in my entrepreneurial career have been in really challenging times. It’s going to hurt like hell and your imposter syndrome will be LOUD AND PROUD. But you are going to make it through and be so glad you did.

Orrrrr nothing will happen and we will all be fine and laugh about all the pivot plotting we did!

I am a stickler for authenticity in all forms of business so I have been really struggling with how we can overcome the slump in social media reach and low web traffic and remind our clients when they want to shop, we are here as always without any sort of pressure to buy. But I never want it to feel like a pity party either? I finally wrote out an email today that I think really strikes the balance and so I wanted to share it with you for a couple of reasons. One: if you have a business and you need client feedback but don’t know how to approach it and like the way I did, PLEASE steal my approach! Two: This is basically my whole marketing strategy and it works really well and can be applied to so many types of businesses outside of retail. Where can you use your clients feedback to help you shape your own venture? Where can you get them to be your marketing team?

Here’s the email going out to my customer list at Amor this weekend (and my team thinks no one will read it bc its too long but I wanted to paint the full picture and like always I know my team will be absolutely right but I’m doing it anyway ha!)

Hi!

My name is Victoria Winter, and I founded Amor 10 years ago. Our origin story makes me so happy, and I don’t think I have ever shared it with our customers!

Back in 2012, I was managing a store in Baton Rouge after college, and I started to notice that my favorite customers were the ones driving in from Lafayette. If you’ve never been to Lafayette, you are missing out. The people (and food) are what make it unlike any other place on earth. A true Lafayettian has a zest for life and can truly make a party out of anything—literally anything. They had a willingness to go bold and fun with the way they dressed, which was a stylist’s DREAM. My wheels started spinning, and I began keeping track of how often we got Lafayette customers. It was a lot. So I decided that was all the market research I needed, and I set off to uproot my life and bring more shopping options to these lovely people.

When we opened, Instagram was in its prime. We leaned into using the platform as a way to make it easier for our clients to pre-shop and see what’s new from the comfort of their phones. It was wildly successful and put us on a fantastic growth trajectory from day one. We listened to the feedback on what people liked and didn’t like via post performance (ah, the good old pre-algorithm days!) combined with in-store feedback, which gave us clear guides to help in our buying decisions and knowing what our customers truly wanted—not just our opinions.

Flash forward 5 years, and I knew the Lafayette store was in fantastic hands with Mamie. I took that blessing to turn the day-to-day operations over to her so I could move to Charleston, SC, to be closer to my family. I knew we had a major opportunity to reach more customers online thanks to our social media growth, but I just couldn’t figure out how to implement what makes us great in-store in the cold, online sales world. We are a people-forward business in every way, shape, and form. We love being a part of our clients’ lives. We are often the first to know when clients are pregnant, we open after hours and deliver clothes for funerals, and we have watched girls grow up shopping with their moms to now being clients themselves. How could you possibly do that online?

Well, then 2020 came right around the bend and didn’t give us any other options but to fully lean into giving online a go. Outside of the pandemic itself, which was awful obviously, it was such a creative experiment. Our vendors supported us in many of my wild asks—pre-selling clothes from their warehouses, “digital trunk shows,” virtual try-ons. We started putting more of our amazing staff on socials. We responded to every DM. We set up systems to make sure emails were responded to quickly and thoughtfully, just as they would be in-store. We watched the web traffic and back-in-stock alerts to give us a picture of what this new world of online shoppers wanted. And you know what? It worked! We were able to have a web presence that felt authentic to us.

We are very conscious about being extremely straightforward with our clients. We don’t like heavily styled editorial shoots. 99% of the pictures on our website are shot on our style team’s cell phones. We want it to look as close to what you are actually going to receive as possible. Why try to make our clothes look like they will be going on an influencer trip to Bali when we know full well they are going to be worn to three back-to-back kids’ birthday parties and hopefully a happy hour with your girlfriends after? We never want to make our customers feel like they need to be any way but themselves. We want our clients to feel seen, comfortable, and put together in our clothes. We want the shopping experience to be fun, but we know the Amor girl is BUSY, so we need to make the whole process as simple as possible.

This past year has been one we expected to come for a while. People have been shopping for years post-pandemic, and now the focus is turning to shopping in your closet a little more (which we love!!!!) with a murky economy. This whole time we have been growing our business, we have remained committed to being 100% organically grown. We have never placed a single paid ad. When we need a boost in our social media algorithm, we just do a giveaway so our clients can be our marketing team—not give that money to huge corporations. It’s always worked like a charm—we LOVE spending “ad dollars” on fun giveaways to customers for simple asks like “Where are you going on vacation?” It helps us get to know you more, get our posts seen more because you interact with them, and a client gets free money! Win-win!!!

Now, Instagram punishes our account anytime we do a call to action that gets a lot of comments. As business people, we understand—they are there to make money, and they are going to shut down anything that gets in the way of that. We have been able to hack our way into reaching all of you wonderful people without paying a cent to Instagram, and that feels like an amazing run. But now that things are changing and traffic to our site is on a big decline, we have to get back to the drawing board on how we can serve you better. How can we remind you we are here for all your feel-good fashion needs?

We are very mindful that we don’t like to clog anyone’s inbox, so we only send two emails a week. We try to keep texts at a minimum because, again, the Amor girl is way too busy for another ding on her phone. We don’t use any lack messaging in our posts to create urgency. We absolutely do not want to shove our business in our clients’ faces when they are trying to buy less, but we do want to be there to let you know there are other choices than Amazon when it comes to easy online shopping.

So that got us thinking—instead of just trying to get in the head of our customers, why not just ask??? What could we do to serve you better? What could we do to make you feel good about where you shop AND make it easier for you? If you still have time after reading this very long email, we would LOVE to have your feedback in shaping Amor. We wouldn’t be here without you, and we value and respect our customers so much. The form is linked here below (and of COURSE, you will be entered for a $500 gift card for filling it out, duh!!!), and we cannot wait to know your thoughts!!

Excited for the future with you,

Victoria