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spencerwright@rainpos.com (Spencer Wright) — Fri, 12 Apr 2024 14:11:26 GMT

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spencerwright@rainpos.com (Spencer Wright) — Fri, 12 Apr 2024 14:11:12 GMT

Susan Hyder, Owner of Hyderhangout - Making Friends Out of Customers | Like Sew

spencerwright@rainpos.com (Spencer Wright) — Fri, 12 Apr 2024 14:11:07 GMT

Episode Summary

Spencer and Susan discuss her career sewing and quilting. From department store alterations early in her career to the long success of Hyderhangout, Susan shares her insights into how to run a successful quilt business.

They discuss how to build a career around a love of sewing and how to position yourself as a professional. Susan also discusses how important it is to approach your business with professionalism and be prepared to be accountable for your decisions. She also shares where she looks for inspiration to grow her business.

Key Insights

There are many careers you can have in sewing, but it’s important to find one that fits your lifestyle.
Be a business owner first and a quilter second.
Look for inspiration for your business everywhere.
Find a niche for your business.

Episode Highlights

“I’m a business owner, first, a quilter second, which is anybody, any small business, and you know, the people open an embroidery, shop, a painting, shop a garden shop, and they have to, if they’re gonna be successful jump over from, ‘Hey, it’s a hobby’ to, ‘Hey, it’s a business’ and business decisions are different than what you would make if it was just a hobby.”
“I think the other thing that I have learned trying to think about, well, there’s certain ways to do things, but there’s probably a better way in listening to everybody you could possibly listen to in the industry, in other quilt shops, in customers, employees, spouses, all of that. You have to listen to everybody else and take all the ideas, but the buck stops here.”
“Using all the information that’s out there and the big community that’s out there to get ideas and not becoming so competitive with the quilt shop down the street or in, in the next county over as your competition… you have to get your niche, your own niche, because you can’t compete with everybody in the world.”

Guest Bio

Susan Hyder brings a high level of commitment to her business and her art. When she made her first quilt at 12 with her grandmother, she decided it wasn’t perfect enough and my seams didn’t match. She got up in the middle of the night, cut it all up in a million pieces and threw it away. Susan applies the same high standards to Hyderhangout in Cleveland, Tennessee.

Website: https://hyderhangout.com/

Transcript

[00:00:00] Spencer: Hi everyone and welcome. We’ve got Susan Hyder here from Hyderhangout in Cleveland, Tennessee. How are you doing?

[00:00:06] Susan: I’m doing wonderful. Weather’s wonderful and I hope you’re doing good over there.

[00:00:11] Spencer: Yeah, we’re doing awesome. We’re over here in Utah. So, you know, also getting a little bit warmer, but you know, kind of nice to have those summer months coming up.

[00:00:19] Well, Susan, I think we just kind of want to get into it as far as talking a little bit about you and your shop, you know, how we got here. So I know that kind of, some of the origins were maybe an eBay shop in 2007-ish. Tell us about you know, how you got here, having Hyderhangouts.

[00:00:35] Susan: Well, 2007-ish, I had eBay sales a little bit before that, but 2007, I actually had a whole bunch of fabric that I bought from a store that went out of business and I put it on eBay. 2008, I quit working as a nurse. Yay! I was a burnout nurse, so, you know, I didn’t wanna go back to work and I’m, you know, what’s happened over the last few 20 years, 15 years is I’m glad.

[00:01:10] And then 2008, I actually opened a business in my basement. I had one of them, big, huge lighted, you know, five foot by eight foot lighted signs and I had hours put on it but people still were afraid to come in because they were afraid they were gonna interrupt. We have a small farm, so they were afraid they were gonna interrupt the small farm.

[00:01:33] But I sat in the store that we set up in my basement those hours and I had a little bit of sales, but about October of 2009, I decided, well, we’re gonna go somewhere else and I just kind of fell into a place downtown Cleveland and it was an experience cuz we went from November of 2009 to November of 2010 and we had one of those landlords and we’ll just leave it at that… We won’t say the names…

[00:02:08] Spencer: Sure. I totally get it.

[00:02:09] Susan: I had a few times I went into my business and there was no electricity or no water. It was interesting. So when it came time for the lease to be renewed, we prayed about it and said, “well, we gotta find somewhere,” and I found this place that I’m at now and I actually got here about an hour before somebody else was gonna give a deposit. I gave a deposit and then over the weekend, I called all my friends, said we’re moving down the street. I wish I had a video of it because it would’ve been really neat because people were just pushing carts down the street, throwing stuff in their cars, driving down and it’s a 3000 square foot building and we went from a 600 square foot to 3000.

[00:02:54] So we put up curtains and stuff, and then we slowly built shelves and built walls and expanded and expanded. And then about a year ago, we expanded all the way to the back door. So now we have two entrances and that’s how I got to 2022, but a lot of growth in between.

[00:03:13] I also did a now defunct website and I can’t even remember the name of it but they ended up… it was such a bad company. They ended up with a lot of lawsuits and stuff against them and they were, I’m not even gonna name it. I just thought of it, but I’m not gonna name it, but they were not what they promised. They kept going up on their price, like monthly. And I don’t even remember how I found you guys. It was not at market, but it was something maybe emailed or something because I didn’t meet you guys until St. Louis market, like face to face, but in 2009, I went with you guys. I’m number 438 and you guys got over 10,000 customers. So when I call in and they ask me my number, I go, “oh, it’s 438.” And they go, “oh, you’ve been here longer than me.”

[00:04:11] Spencer: Oh yeah. Yeah, you’re an original in the Like Sew system and we love and appreciate that. So, tell us a little bit more, I guess, you know, looks like you’ve gone through a lot in trying to start Hyderhangout, right, through eCommerce, different locations, and some pretty crazy growth. Tell us where the passion for quilting comes from. Like where, where did that begin? How did you even say, “yeah. I have a passion for quilting and selling quilt supplies and in engaging with customers in that way”?

[00:04:37] Susan: Oh boy. So you wanna know my whole life story…

[00:04:40] Spencer: Just a little bit about your passion for quilting.

[00:04:42] Susan: Well, I was six years old. I started hand sewing and by the time I was 10, I had a Barbie doll that had 500 hand sew outfits.

[00:04:50] Spencer: Okay. So it really is a life passion.

[00:04:52] Susan: Yes, and then when I was 12, I was somewhat of a geek. Actually I think I was a really bad geek when I was in high school. I mean, I was in the Latin club and, you know, honor society president.

[00:05:03] But my grandmother from Costa Rica, step-grandmother, taught me how to make a quilt when I was 12. And sad thing is we made the top and the next day we were gonna get up and quilt it. But for me the fabric, which is somewhat fluid, wasn’t perfect enough and my seams didn’t match. I got up in the middle of the night, cut it all up in a million pieces and threw it away. I wish for other beginning quilters I still had my beginning quilt, but that was my first.

[00:05:37] You know, of course, I like creating and to me, quilting is an art and so that’s kind of my art. I’ve done a little bit of music and I’ve done a little bit of drawing and a little bit of painting and other crafts, but quilting has been an art. When I was in high school, I worked for a doctor in his laboratory. And then I graduated from high school, went off to college in Springfield, Missouri, and dropped outta college and got married. We’ll just say this right now: I’m on my fourth marriage and we’ve had ups and downs and sometime we’ll get a book written and and it’ll be interesting anyway.

[00:06:19] Spencer: I can’t wait.

[00:06:20] Susan: So when I was married to my first husband, we decided I’d stay home. So I did alterations. That was back in the seventies when you had the leisure suits with the plaid yolks. I’m sure that’s way before your time.

[00:06:34] Spencer: It’s pre my era, but I know what you’re referring to.

[00:06:37] Susan: You’ve seen pictures probably. He and I would have matching outfits. And I mean, I did a lot of self taught, but actually when I was 18, I went to work at Fines Department Store in Savannah, Georgia, and for five years did alterations and I was one of about 18 alteration girls. I was the youngest and we had all kinds of girls that taught me everything. They went all the way up to… we had an 82 year old that was doing the bridal beading. I think I’ve done a little bit of all kinds of sewing.

[00:07:11] Spencer: Yeah.

[00:07:11] Susan: But the art part of quilting is what I liked. I had my own factory in Florida for a while: small quantity garment manufacturing with a screen print component.

[00:07:23] Then I’ve been doing quilting until now and like I said, in 2008, and I also, you know, I went to school, became a nurse. But I think some of the skills you use in nursing or healthcare you’re using in quilting and it’s also as stress relief. So I think there’s a lot of quilters that are nurses or, you know, healthcare professionals. I have found that.

[00:07:49] Spencer: Some crossover there.

[00:07:50] Susan: Yeah. And so then did that answer your question? How I… passion wise, quilt wise.

[00:07:56] Spencer: It does. I think the answer to that is it’s been a lifelong passion for you, right? That you have really been around the sewing, quilting, crafting kind of space for so long that it just came natural to you to kind of open up a shop later on, you know, in that 2007, 2008 era and kind of gone from there.

[00:08:14] So I am curious as far as setting your shop apart, setting Hyderhangout, what makes your shop different than other shops? We want our listeners to be able to, to hear this and think, “oh, how do I set myself apart? How do I set my shop apart from the competitors in the area?”

[00:08:30] Susan: Well, I think the “hangout” part. You know, Hyderhangout. We encourage people to come in. I tell my employees to spend all the time you need to with a customer. There’s some places you go in, and of course the big box, you go in, you can’t find any help. We will spend up to an hour or two sometimes helping somebody find their fabric, figure out their measurements, whatever. And if in the short term, the plus and minuses, as far as time, it doesn’t equal, it still in the long term will and we make friends rather than customers. We have “Quilt Til You Wilt” one day a month. We have classes, we have clubs. So, I think if I had to put it in one short little paragraph there, that’s what sets us apart.

[00:09:17] Spencer: Sure. So it sounds like you’ve done a lot to try to build these relationships with your customers or you say friends, right. That you’ve tried to create A space where they can feel safe to come, spend time, chat, you know, explore more, right, as far as their quilting desires go.

[00:09:34] Susan: …And sewing because I have alteration skills and dress making skills and then I’ve got my sewing machine mechanic and she does dress making and alterations and she teaches the beginning sewing and teaches them how to make a vest, an apron or, something like that.

[00:09:50] Spencer: Okay.

[00:09:51] Susan: The “and more” has grown too, cuz the whole name is “Hyderhangout: Quote, Fabric, and More.”

[00:09:59] Spencer: Yeah. The “and more” has grown. I love that and I think it’s so fun cuz it adds some mystery to it, right? Like what else does Hyderhangout have for me?

[00:10:06] Okay, so kind of going along that same line, tell us a little bit about how you have marketed that, right? Like how have you told people this is a place to come, the Hyderhangout, right? You know, what are you using to get the word out there?

[00:10:18] Susan: Well, I think the most effective one is the word of mouth. Of course with the website, then I also have an Etsy store and an eBay store. One of those may go away sooner than later. Then we have a Facebook page and we also do some Facebook live. I’m teaching.

[00:10:36] For a while I had a talk show on a radio station in town here. I think it was probably up to two and a half, three years, something like that, and one thing led to another and he ended up closing his business, but he’s a DJ and been a lifelong DJ. So we’ve been teaching DJ Rick how to quilt and that’s on live on Tuesday evenings on our Facebook and so that’s one way we’ve grown it. And we encourage people to watch it live and then, you know, chime in with their comments or whatever.

[00:11:07] I’ve done some videos in the past. There was a TV station that I would go in once a week and do a quilting show.

[00:11:15] I haven’t tried mailouts but I do do coupons. So like, handout coupons at quilt shows. I’m involved in a quilt show at the quilt shop that is across the street from my shop and have been involved with that almost the whole time I’ve been open for business. So, lots of ways.

[00:11:33] Spencer: Okay. Tons of mediums, right? I mean, all kinds of ways. Obviously you know, you kind of, hit on the very first thing. Word of mouth is always gonna be one of the most effective ways, especially with a small business like yours, friends and friends of friends and cousins of friends and et cetera, and I think we all kind of know that, but maybe one of the more unexplored mediums that you refer to was TV advertising because that’s not something I think a lot of quilt shops are doing right now. So tell us, I mean, how have you seen that benefit your business?

[00:12:03] Susan: Well, it was a small, local broadcast; six counties in the area and I actually have the recordings of some of them with the link on my website. So some of those videos are able to be watched still. TV advertising in like the bigger TV stations, like one of the big ones in Chattanooga, I haven’t done that. Budget wise, I just couldn’t stretch my budget enough to feel like I could do that.

[00:12:32] Spencer: You wanted to stay more local and by doing that, you’re able to maybe keep a lower budget, right, cuz you’re staying in your local counties.

[00:12:38] Susan: Right, right. If I went to the bigger Chattanooga station, which reaches north Georgia and in North Carolina and stuff, it would be a big chunk of change and that’s probably also why I haven’t bitten off doing a billboard yet cuz those are kind of expensive too.

[00:12:54] Spencer: Sure. Totally understand that, but I think it’s fun to kind of explore the thought of TV advertising knowing that, you know, so many quilt shops are maybe not taking advantage of that.

[00:13:04] All right. So, Susan, I think we’re gonna shift gears here a little bit from the advertising and marketing of your store to more of the general being a quilt retailer and some of the challenges that come with that. So, what would you say, from your experience in the last 10, 15 years, what’s one of the most difficult parts of being a quilt retailer. What kind of challenges are you guys facing?

[00:13:27] Susan: Okay. One of the biggest things I tell anybody that comes is… they’ll say “oh, it must be great to be paid to quilt.” Well, you get paid to quilt, but you get paid to quilt for other people. You can’t always do your own. You also, if you open a quilt shop, you are not opening a place to quilt and have fun. You are becoming a business owner.

[00:13:52] And I’ve seen lots of people who opened a quilt shop and within 5, 10 years closed it. Within a hundred miles of me, there’s probably 20 that I know of just thinking off the top of my head.

[00:14:08] Some of those closings is COVID closed ’em, but some of them, it was just the fact that they could never jump over to the idea that I’m a business owner first, a quilter second, which is anybody, any small business, and you know, the people open an embroidery, shop, a painting, shop a garden shop, and they have to, if they’re gonna be successful jump over from, “Hey, it’s a hobby” to, “Hey, it’s a business” and business decisions are different than what you would make if it was just a hobby.

[00:14:43] Spencer: That is such an important part of being a business owner, especially in the quilt and sewing space. It is sometimes really hard to separate that, especially when it is such a hobby and you view it as, in some ways, a hobby and you have to step outside of that and say, okay, yes, I love to quilt, but also, you know, this is a business and I need to make those decisions. You know, that are best for the business and not best for kind of fueling my hobby, right? To your point, you’re not being paid to quilt for yourself. You’re being paid to quilt for other people. There’s so many other aspects that come with owning a business, right? Taking care of your employees, managing your employees, inventory and accounting and I mean, as a small business owner, literally everything in a business is on your mind. And so it’s not like you could just show up to work and, you know, quilt and leave.

[00:15:34] Susan: Right, right.

[00:15:35] Spencer: You have so much more on your mind and so I totally understand that is being one of the biggest challenges that you’re gonna face.

[00:15:42] Susan: If you can’t multitask, forget being a business owner. And you have to be flexible. I think the other thing that I have learned trying to think about, well, there’s certain ways to do things, but there’s probably a better way in listening to everybody you could possibly listen to in the industry, in other quilt shops, in customers, employees, spouses, all of that. You have to listen to everybody else and take all the ideas, but the buck stops here. I mean, you know, if I don’t do what I need to do, and if I don’t put my foot down and say, no, we can’t do that because… and most of the time, you know, if I listen to other people’s ideas and they say, “well, you should do this, this and this and this.”

[00:16:27] And I say, “you know, that’s a good idea. However, let’s melt this together here. You’re part of the idea of a way to put it on the shelf is great. Let’s change it.” So you have to be very, very flexible and open to everybody else’s ideas.

[00:16:45] Spencer: Yeah, I love that. And I think that’s a big reason why we’re doing this podcast is for other quilt shop owners to be able to listen, and we’re gonna have other owners on the podcast, is to be able to hear from you guys and hear what’s working and what are you struggling with? Because ultimately hearing from other people and learning from their experiences, their failures and their successes is gonna help us grow the most, I think, as, as quilt shop owners.

[00:17:08] Okay. So kind of moving forward here and something that’s really interesting for me is you got kind of started in maybe selling quilt and fabric in really kind of the boom of dot com and eCommerce, right? You know, 2007, eBay’s getting really big. And you know, Etsy kind of continues, you know, years down the road from that, you know, eCommerce. We’ve seen a lot of change in customer behavior in all industries, right? Quilt is not an exception to this. But then we saw, again, a big change in customer behavior when COVID happened.

[00:17:41] Susan: Oh my goodness!

[00:17:42] Spencer: 2020 was a weird year for all of us. No matter what industry you were in, you know, kind of, regardless of that, it touched everyone. So tell me a little bit about how your customer’s behavior, or I guess you prefer to friends, right? Your friends’ behavior: how did that change in the last couple of years?

[00:17:58] Susan: Right. At first… see my husband is self-employed too and he’s got some eCommerce and then he does recycling and he started out recycling electronics, but he’s got actually an Etsy store that has “art supplies” on it, so I went home when they said, oh, we’re gonna close all the shops.

[00:18:18] Of course, everybody’s going, oh no, I’m gonna die. You know, you say, oh no, my shop’s gonna die. How am I gonna pay rent if I have to be closed? And you know, so we went home and we talked and he said, well, hopefully the online sales will be great. And then we looked and we thought, oh, curbside. So, two days later, I look at my online sales and they skyrocketed, like skyrocketed! I mean, I went from, you know, a few a day to 20 to 50 a day.

[00:18:55] Spencer: Oh my goodness gracious!

[00:18:57] Susan: I had to bring my husband in cuz, you know, he knows how to package things. So he was packaging four hours a day and then I have my best friend that was making masks and so I don’t remember how many a day she was making, but lots because people were coming. I actually had to turn away one order for 500 masks and then another one, this company said, “well, we’re just gonna make three of the people that know how to sew make masks. Can you get us some kits?” And I was able to procure elastic during that time, because I wasn’t doing the things like the big boxes were saying we need 20,000 yards at one order, I was doing, you know, a couple rolls at a time

[00:19:42] Susan: And the curbside. So, at first it was a little difficult because everybody was just showing up and I was like, no, we can’t do that and I was getting enough curbside orders that I was doing every 30 minute curbside orders from most days from nine in the morning to six at night. And you couldn’t come before your 30 minutes because between the last 30 minutes and the next one, I was putting the orders together and getting them ready for you to come.

[00:20:11] Sometimes I’d have a few ahead. And that I really loved when Like Sew put that where you could go online and say, “In-store pickup.” When you guys changed that I was like, yes! And you guys seem to do that, where you listen to the rumbles on the ground and do something proactively. And so, April of 2020, my husband and I had one Sunday off and then in May we had two Sundays off and I don’t remember how many days a week my girl was making masks and coming in and helping get the orders. And then my sewing machine mechanic was… people were getting sewing machines out of the closet and so she was inundated that first year with sewing machine repairs and maintenance.

[00:21:02] Spencer: Yeah. Listening to you, what I’m hearing is you needed to adapt, right? At the bottom line, you had to adapt to what your customers wanted and you did, and you found huge success in it and I think that speaks to, you know… really successful business owners adapt when they see a change in the market, a change in behavior or, you know, heaven forbid something as drastic as the pandemic, you see an adaption and that’s what you did, right? The curbside pickup, it blew up because that’s what people needed and that’s what people wanted. And being able to provide that for them is ultimately, I think, such a good sign of successful business owning, especially at kind of a small business level, cuz you know, we talk about big box stores and not being able to adapt as quickly as small business owners are, right? Like, you are the decision maker. You didn’t have to send it to a board for approval and you know, get the shareholders approval and all this kind of stuff. Like, it was you. You get to say, “yeah, this is what we’re gonna have to change,” and your customers responded, it seems like from what I’m hearing, really positively to that.

[00:22:07] Susan: Yeah. I know a few quilt shops that just closed. “I don’t wanna do curbside pickup and I don’t wanna do that and I don’t wanna do online.” So they just… They either retired early or closed for an extended period of time. You have to decide if you wanna work that hard and it is hard work when you have to adapt.

[00:22:26] And right now we’ve been going through a little downturn, big downturn. I don’t know what. April and May were a lot slower than previous years. I haven’t compared to way back years ago. And June is still being a little slow. We aren’t having as many travelers as we normally do and we know that’s because gas is high, but in the last week we’ve seen another small upturn on the purchasing online. So you have to be able to be quick and adapt.

[00:22:58] Spencer: Yeah. Well, let’s explore that a little bit and talk about it. You know, we’re in June of 2022, right, is when we’re recording this podcast. So let’s kind of explore that pattern of behavior you know, as we see, people are really wanting to get outside now, right. People are wanting to get out and do more because they’ve maybe felt like they weren’t able to in the last couple of years.

[00:23:16] Susan: Well, no classes, nobody coming in. And we did do a block of the month this year and we ended up with 28 people on it. Of course we can’t fit all of them all at once in the classroom. But we have more people coming to things and events. There’s gonna be a shop hop. We did have a shop hop last July, and we’re gonna have one this July. We’re hoping for more people, not less, but who knows? We’re hearing more people talking about carpooling rather than just going on the shop hop by themselves. So they may be adapting as far as, “well, let’s save gas by going together.”

[00:23:52] But there are a little bit less travelers than I’ve noticed in the past. Last summer, there were a little bit more travelers, of course there were hardly any in 2020. This was completely different 2020.

[00:24:06] 2021, you had a little bit more travelers and all this year travelers have been more, there’s an upswing on that. We hope it continues. We just don’t know what gas getting higher and higher is gonna do. I mean, sometimes you have to just get groceries and gas and as my husband says, what’s been happening in the last two weeks is these people have been letting FedEx and USPS and UPS pay their gas instead of them coming in. So, that’s kind of what’s going on.

[00:24:38] Spencer: Yeah, I think that totally makes sense and I think you know, you touched on some more really talking about the adaption piece of things is, I think people want to get out and do things and they also want to be with people. And you kind of spoke to that, right?

[00:24:53] You were talking about your classes in the block of the month, the shop hops, right? You’re gonna do that with friends and that’s a big priority. People want to get out and do things and they want to be with their friends and be with their family and that’s one way that it sounds like you guys are really adapting to that is that maybe we don’t have as many individual quilters saying, “okay, I’m gonna go to this store today by myself, buy, you know, some jelly rolls and a piece of fabric, you know, and go back to my house and I’m gonna do my own quilt.” Instead. I’m going to use quilting as a social event to be able to be with my friends and be with my family and I think classes are maybe one of the best ways to fuel that. Is that kinda what you’re seeing in your market?

[00:25:35] Susan: Yeah, that and our events. We do have once a month (for a while we did not have it) the “Quilt Til You Wilt” event. Bring in potluck food and come and hang out and some people come in and they just visit the whole time.

[00:25:51] Spencer: Yeah. Yeah, and that’s totally okay.

[00:25:53] Susan: And we actually have had more people that are doing other things than quilting coming into the Quilt Til You Wilt: crochet or embroidery, And it’s just sitting and visiting. So that’s been kind of cool.

[00:26:05] Spencer: I love that. Okay. So Susan, we’re kind of coming up on our time here. I think parting thoughts, what I wanna hear from you is, if I’m a quilt shop owner, and maybe a new quilt shop owner or I’m, you know, struggling in my quilt shop, give us a piece of advice. You would say the one thing that they really need to do in their business to take it to the next level.

[00:26:25] Susan: Okay. One thing. Oh boy.

[00:26:28] Spencer: I know there’s so many because we’ve tried to explore that over this podcast is all the different things that you’ve done to adapt to a changing market.

[00:26:35] Susan: Using all the information that’s out there and the big community that’s out there to get ideas and not becoming so competitive with viewing the quilt shop down the street or in the next county over as your competition. There are quilt shops that won’t talk to me and that’s not my choice, but there are quilt shop owners that think, “well, I’m in competition with everybody in the world” and you have to get your niche, your own niche, because you can’t compete with everybody in the world.

[00:27:14] I can’t compete with some of the online sellers on Etsy because they don’t have the overhead I have. So I just put my stuff on there at a reasonable price. And, you know, I do look and see what the market is bearing, but we pride ourselves with our relationships.

[00:27:33] You have to be open to all the ideas that are out there and making friendships with other quilt shop owners and vendors and suppliers and you know, your fabric reps and whoever else you can, other business owners that are not even in your industry. I’ve learned a tremendous part… I’m in the Chamber of Commerce and then I’m in Main Street Cleveland and I’m also in a power lunch group and I listen to their struggles and what they do and apply it to my shop in its own way.

[00:28:08] Spencer: I love that. I think from what I’m hearing from you is use your community and be a part of your community to build that niche right? In your case, the Hyderhangout is to let people know this is a hangout, right? This is a place to come and enjoy time with your friends and with us.

[00:28:27] And so I just wanna say, huge thank you, Susan. Thank you for being on the podcast.

[00:28:30] Susan: All right.

[00:28:32] Spencer: Again from Cleveland, Tennessee, right? Not Cleveland, Ohio?

[00:28:35] Susan: Well, there’s also a Cleveland, Georgia. There’s probably a Cleveland in almost every state.

[00:28:38] Spencer: Well, there you go. This one’s Cleveland, Tennessee and it has been just an absolute pleasure to be able to chat with you today. Thank you so much for your time.

[00:28:45] Susan: All right. You’re welcome. Anytime.

Sean Roylance Returns With Q&A About Like Sew | Like Sew

spencerwright@rainpos.com (Spencer Wright) — Fri, 12 Apr 2024 14:11:00 GMT

Managing The Financial Side Of Your Sewing Store with Jacob Curtis | Like Sew

spencerwright@rainpos.com (Spencer Wright) — Fri, 12 Apr 2024 14:10:54 GMT

The Whole Country Caboodle - Staying True To Yourself | Like Sew

spencerwright@rainpos.com (Spencer Wright) — Fri, 12 Apr 2024 14:10:47 GMT

Episode Summary

Leanne and Kaytlyn of Whole Country Caboodle talk about the way they have balanced their quilt and design business throughout the years. As markets have changed and a variety of challenges have come up, Leanne Anderson has used the resources available to navigate the tricky business of quilting.

They discuss how Kaytlyn has helped bring a new perspective to the business. The two have collaborated for years now to build a nimble retail and wholesale business that delivers for shop owners and quilters across the country.

Key Insights

Stay in contact with your customers.
Connect and build relationships. Those relationships will pay off.
Do what is right for the customer.
Sell products that simplify your customers’ lives.
Decide what you can and cannot handle.

Episode Highlights

“Having that newsletter has been great. And we actually built that. We had a shift many years ago, kind of out of wholesale into more retail and then built the newsletter through that, and then with the pandemic shifted back.”
“I’m gonna talk to you and email how I would talk to you in person and you’re gonna get the real us.”
“It’s all about building relationships in whatever business you’re in.”
“We just wanna make what’s best for the quilt shop and not necessarily putting money back in our pocket.”
“We’re trying to simplify the time that it takes our customer. To do a project. And so yes it might be a little bit more expensive, but we’re finding that they don’t mind if they don’t have to take the time to, you know, cut everything out.”
“I think the number one thing in any business that you’re in is knowing what you can and cannot handle.”

Guest Bio

Leanne Anderson started Whole Country Caboodle in Nashua, Iowa 30 years ago. Although Leanne’s daughter, Kaytlyn Kuebler, had spent years with Leanne in the studio, Kaytlyn officially joined the business in 2010. Together they design a whimsical line of fun sewing projects.

Website: https://www.thewholecountrycaboodle.com/

Transcript

[00:00:22] Spencer: Hello and welcome. Thank you so much for being here. We’ve got Kaytlyn and Leanne from The Whole Country Caboodle in Nashua, Iowa. How are you guys doing today?

[00:00:31] Kaytlyn: Doing great, thanks.

[00:00:33] Spencer: Good. Thanks so much for being on the podcast with us today. I think, you know, to kind of get things started, I’d love to hear, tell us a little bit about The Whole Country Caboodle and how you guys got to where you are today.

[00:00:46] Leanne: Well, I’ll start that because it started 30 years ago. This was my 30th year in the industry. Kate was just a wee little one. And I started just doing machine applique and I went to my first market out in Portland, Oregon in 1992 and ,you know, I haven’t looked back since. It’s been an industry that has provided an incredible business for me. It’s been great for my family. I never, ever thought that I would have a child working with me in the business, and that has been a huge blessing. So, yeah, I started that and then two years later started designing fabric. So, been designing fabric almost as long as we have had the business.

[00:01:28] Kaytlyn: Yeah, I remember going to work with my mom and she had a little shop downtown. It wasn’t a retail store, it was just her kind of studio space. And I would sit in the little front window with my little tight kitchen and just play by myself all day. I think that maybe helped me to make me who I am today. I’m very independent, but my mom, she would forget that I was there until she’d just hear my squeaky little voice in the front window, talking to myself. But yeah, I mean, I never thought I would work with her. Here we are, been working for her now for 12 years and since 2019, full time, and yeah, I mean, we make a great team and yeah, we just keep going.

[00:02:06] Spencer: Wow. That’s pretty incredible. I mean, that’s 30 years, that’s… got some experience. So I’m curious, you know, maybe, tell us a little bit about the progression of The Whole Country Caboodle, you know, going from being in that studio space and maybe potentially, you know, kind of what happened after that and how have you grown your business in those 30 years?

[00:02:27] Leanne: Yeah, I rented a building uptown. That’s what Kaytlyn is referring to, the studio space. And we live in a small community, so it was hard because it was on Main Street and any business on Main Street, you know, they thought was for retail space. And so, I was not a brick and mortar. I wasn’t a quilt shop, it was my design studio. And so it was hard at first because it was like people wanting to come in and out and that type of thing. I was in that building for five years. I was strictly with distributors and in the wholesale industry and it was an old building. With a lot of old features, and at that point I said to my husband, we live out in the country, I said, you know, I think maybe we should just build a building. I said I feel very strongly that this business is gonna have some longevity. We had land and so we found a contractor and we built a big two story building out in the country where we’re still located today. And so we’ve been in this location since I believe, ’98, I think.

[00:03:24] We’ve reinvented ourselves many times over in this building. The space that we’re in right now used to be a storage room, and we needed a little bit more of a video studio and where we could set things up a little bit easier. We’ve ebb and flowed and we’ve taken some turns and tried to ride out every storm that we’ve had, you know, we’ve had some ups and downs.

[00:03:45] Kaytlyn: But I feel like you’ve been yourself from the beginning. I showed my husband a picture of mom. It wasn’t 30 years ago, but it was maybe 28 years ago and he said, oh wow, her style hasn’t changed much. And I was like, I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. But we did realize, I mean, she’s been doing appliqué since the beginning and her characters, they have evolved, but, you know, she has stayed true to who she is and, you know, that is one thing. I mean, granted, what she was wearing is now back in style.

[00:04:19] Spencer: Yeah, it goes around, doesn’t it?

[00:04:21] Leanne: Yep. Mom jeans.

[00:04:22] Kaytlyn: Denim on denim but yeah, I mean, you’ve grown a ton in design too, cuz you, when you started designing fabric, it was all hand painted. And I would remember her being out in the shop for hours at night and just painting, hand painting a line. And then Adobe Photoshop came in. So with the years has come, different technologies and learning different things. And then, you know, having me come on board, being younger, and learning, always just trying to keep up with different things.

[00:04:52] Leanne: Well, and always trying to change your skill sets. You know, I said to my older daughter this morning, I said, if I would have to do this podcast by myself, getting everything set up, I said I probably could do it. But Kaytlyn’s skill level in technology is so much greater than mine, and it’s not that I don’t want to learn it, but I don’t have to with her.

[00:05:12] Kaytlyn: But I don’t wanna learn, I don’t wanna learn things she knows how to do either.

[00:05:16] Leanne: So we’re a good team that’s that way.

[00:05:18] Kaytlyn: We’re a good team. Yep.

[00:05:20] Spencer: Yeah I love that. I mean, so you guys are not the first mother daughter team that have been on this podcast, and I think it’s something that is becoming more common in the quilting industry that you have kind of a mother daughter team that really finds a way to bounce off of each other’s skills, right. That you can say there’s youth in one and experience in the other. And you know, you try to fill in the gaps in between there, right? Between technology and expertise.

[00:05:45] And a lot of that comes into just how the industry has evolved in the last few years, right? The need for more technologically savvy shop owners, , and you know, so many things have gone online. You guys have gone online, you have an online presence and we’ll probably talk some about that. And so, yeah, I just, I think it’s so neat to kind of see the mother daughter, you know, symbiosis that’s going on between the two of you.

[00:06:09] So, um, alright. Well, just to set the stage here, The Whole Country Caboodle has, you guys have an online shop, right? You sell direct to consumers from an online store. You’re also in quilt shops. Tell us a little bit about the difference, maybe starting with your online shop and your direct to consumer store, and tell me a little bit about how, you know, that has built over the last, you know, recent years.

[00:06:32] Kaytlyn: Yeah. It’s kind of built differently in the sense of design. We’ve had multiple different websites and then so thankful when I heard about Like Sew, and was really excited to switch it from what we were using to going to that and then learning more about that. But we have built a newsletter for both retail and wholesale. And so that has really helped with the online sales because yeah, we’re not a store for people to come to a physical location. And so having that newsletter has been great. And we had a shift many years ago, kind of out of wholesale into more retail and then built the newsletter through that, and then with the pandemic shifted back.

[00:07:14] And so we’re always just kind of ebb and flowing with the tide of where we need to be and we try to send out one newsletter a month to both retail and wholesale kind of targeted differently. And try to keep it as updated as we can.

[00:07:26] Leanne: Kaytlyn and I kind of like to say that we have a tendency to reinvent ourselves over and over and Yeah, like she said, for years I was strictly wholesale and then, you know, the markets changed. And so then my husband retired from education and he and I decided to go to some retail shows and we loved that. We got to travel together. We did that for about seven years, where we were doing probably 11 shows a year. And so, then that’s where we really built up our retail sales and our newsletter, our email list And then, like Kate said, when that pandemic hit, it’s okay, what are we gonna do to survive? And we just dove right back into the wholesale distributor industry and we will not go back to shows.

[00:08:11] Spencer: Okay. Okay. Curious. So, from what I’m understanding, you started getting into direct-to-consumer by going to retail shows. Mm-hmm. And found some success through that. And then when the pandemic hit, you said, look, we’re not even gonna be able to go to shows anymore, potentially. Who knows how long this could last for? We need to dive back into, you know, getting into retail spaces. I’m curious, how have you found like, new ways and you know, how does one go about getting their product into a retail store like that?

[00:08:44] Leanne: Well, a lot of ours gets there through distributors.

[00:08:46] Spencer: Okay.

[00:08:47] Leanne: I was selling to maybe two distributors off and on, some different ones that kind of came and went in the early years and then I have sold to a couple of distributors very regularly since I started. We are with, I think, seven or eight different distributors now, which that helps us get into the quilt shops. And then just like the recent quilt market that we were able to attend in Houston, it was just a renewed kind of a vibrant feel from people as far as we were concerned.

[00:09:17] Kaytlyn: Yeah. You know, and we try to really promote, if we’re gonna do a newsletter or we try to do a video in our newsletter. If we’re doing a retail newsletter, we tell them, go to your local quilt shop and tell them about our products, tell them about our fabric, and we would love, you know, to get it into their shop and we want them to shop local first if they can. And really just cross promoting each other and yeah, and probably word of mouth too, getting into some different shops.

[00:09:45] Leanne: Absolutely. Absolutely.

[00:09:48] Spencer: Oh wow. That’s, yeah, that’s really interesting. I mean, such, such a neat way how you guys have like, really adjusted your business over the years, right. To come back and forth between, you know, retailers and going into shops.

[00:10:00] Okay. So let’s talk a little bit more about marketing as far as how you guys are marketing your business. and, and kind of specifically talking about social media. What have you guys done on social media in the most recent years to try to develop a brand presence?

[00:10:15] Kaytlyn: Great question. We’re still in the process of doing it. Okay. It’s a constant battle. So, you know, with being home, we were excited to be able to maybe do some more videos and different things even on social media. But then design took over and our presence is not where we’d probably want it to be. We’re, you know, in the process of having someone help us with it. But it’s a constant thing where, I just would love more time in a day to do more with the social media presence that, you know, that we aren’t able to do right now.

[00:10:47] But I think, you know, with the newsletters that we would do, we would always try to do a video. Our biggest thing is we want people to feel like they can come to us and if they have an idea for something or whatever, that’s what we miss with being in person with someone, is just, we love building relationships. That’s what we feel like this industry is. It’s about building relationships. And so that’s what I would kind of want. You know, it’s that balance of what is your social media presence? Is it, you know, just products or is it just kind of letting you in behind the scenes on your company? I mean, so we’re, it’s, we’re still just like really in the process of trying to figure out the best ways to go about all of that. So it’s a growing challenge for us.

[00:11:25] Leanne: It is, and I feel like it’s the one area that, you know, when I started, it was just me for many, many years.

[00:11:32] Spencer: Sure.

[00:11:32] Leanne: And then Kaytlyn came on board part-time, at first. She had another job and so, you know, I was able to bounce some things off of her.

[00:11:40] But actually since just before the pandemic, I’ve been able to hire two full-time people plus two part-time people, plus my husband, who we have doing all kinds of jobs. We find we’re spreading ourselves a little bit thin. So that’s where I know it’s hard. We know what needs to be done. But it’s just hard to know how to get it all done.

[00:12:04] Kaytlyn: Yep. So then our social media has always taken the backseat to everything, but yeah, we’re working on it.

[00:12:11] Spencer: Sure. No, I mean, and I think that, like at the end of the day, social media is a marketing avenue, right? It’s not the marketing avenue. And I think that if you’re able to find different ways you know, whatever it may be, whether that’s a newsletter or it’s, you know, YouTube or it is, you know, actually being in person and going to Quilt Market and shows like that, you know, I think social media is where a lot of eyes are, which is why we’re talking about it, right? Like, you know, it’s very possible that people spend a significant more amount of time on social media than they will on their email, right? Or that they will be going to a show this year, which is why there’s so much talk about it, but it doesn’t mean it’s the only way or the most important way for you to market. So I think that’s important.

[00:13:54] Spencer: Okay, so Kaytyln, you said something I want to explore a little bit. You said something to the effect of, you know, this business is about relationships and with you guys being an online retailer how do you guys develop these relationships? Right. You know, typically I talk with brick and mortar stores, which the easy answer there is I build relationships when people come into the store, right? And we chat and, I suggest this fabric or this pattern, or whatever. How are you guys building those relationships?

[00:14:23] Kaytlyn: The good thing is we had a lot of pre-built relationships before, you know, we kind of all went online. But we still value, you know, if someone calling in, or in how we respond in an email. We kind of bounce back off of each other with, we feel like customer service is really important and we’re gonna do what we can, you know, to… I’m not saying that the customer is always right, but like we’re gonna find a, I wanna find a win-win, you know? Yeah. And sometimes those don’t exist, but I just always want in, how I am talking to someone in an email or whatever, in a message like, for them to be able to understand where we’re coming from and that we are there for them in any ways we need to be. So you kind of just keep, again, just shifting of, I’m gonna talk to you and email how I would talk to you in person and you’re gonna get the real us and Yeah. I mean, but it is just hard. But I would always prefer to do a phone call over an email because then you can really explain yourself and you can hear your tone of voice and different things. And you know, if there’s an issue with something, I’m like, Hey, let’s just, like call them on the phone and have that kind of a conversation.

[00:15:32] Leanne: Another way, Spencer, is, you know, I mean I’ve been going to market, you know, two markets a year, for up until the pandemic. And so for me you know, those first years we wrote lots and lots of orders and then it became more of a networking and we designed fabric for Henry Glass Fabrics now. And so our idea, up until this past, this year really, has been to go to network to continue to build those relationships with people that we’ve either started to work with or areas that we want to go into. For instance, we have a program where we’re doing pillow wrap of the month and we use a little towel and we use a Dunroven product. And so, you know, I had met them before but I made it a point to go to their booth and to show them what we were doing. And to have a discussion about it, I think in person is incredibly important. And I’m old school enough that I have to have that, you know?

[00:16:29] And I’ve always felt like as a business woman, and I’ve been in business even before this for over 40 years, it’s all about building relationships in whatever business you’re in, so that’s just always been a critical part of what I’ve wanted to have in the company and Kaytlyn has continued that as well.

[00:16:47] Spencer: Yeah. I love that. I, I think it’s so neat to hear about the different ways that you guys are building relationships when you’re not necessarily having people come into your store every day, right? Because it seems like that is such an integral piece of what you guys are doing, yet I wouldn’t have guessed that before we started, you know, before we kind of gotten the call today. I was like, yeah, I mean, probably not talking to people, you know, face to face every day, but there’s a brand there and the brand, I mean, the brand is Leanne and Kaytlyn to a degree, and then the products are kind of what comes out of that, the fabric designs and the appliques and stuff like that, how do you establish that? So just really neat.

[00:17:25] So, I’m gonna shift gears here a little bit again. I’m curious, you know, most people listening to this podcast are gonna be quilt shop owners and if I’m a quilt shop owner and I’m wondering how I can promote the sale of products like yours, for example, appliques, specialty fabrics, things that I wouldn’t say are like the most like, you know, kind of mainstream fabrics that are just solids, you know, Bella solids or whatever, right? What do you guys say to a shop owner that’s like, I’m having a hard time promoting the more specialized, you know, fabrics and appliques.

[00:17:58] Kaytlyn: I think one thing that we really promoted at the quilt market was trunk shows. And you know, they might not, I know some people are afraid, like the shop owner themselves, they don’t maybe like applique. But their customers might, but it’s a risk to carry it into their shop. Like to get…

[00:18:14] Spencer: yeah, no, that’s exactly what I’m asking. Right. Like if I’m thinking this is risky, how do I take a chance? How do I know that I should take a chance? Yeah.

[00:18:22] Kaytlyn: Because I mean, we have pre cut applique dogs and we have over a hundred dogs. And so that could take up an entire wall in the shop. Yeah. But think about doing a trunk show with a few different ones. We provide a flyer. You know, like I said, we’re always gonna be willing to do what we can do to get more information. So if you get 12 of our best selling appliques, or our 12 best selling dogs, I’m gonna get you a flyer that has all the different ones on it, and then your customer can pick and choose which ones they want so you don’t have that overhead. And so then with the Trunk show, that’s a great way to do it. We don’t have a cookie cutter trunk show. But then you can kind of see the engagement of the product in the shop and your risk is pretty low.

[00:19:04] You know, we haven’t, but we’d be willing to do a zoom, like a virtual video, like a virtual call or something where, you know, we kind of know, even having gone to the retail shows, no one sells your product like you do. And we’re very passionate about our fabric, like the different collections. Mm-hmm. . And so if we could do, you know, again, it’s how to promote that, that we would love to do a virtual call.

[00:19:29] Again, we also have all these ideas of what we would like to be doing. I would love to do a video with each fabric collection that goes with it, that really explains the why behind and what the fun things are that you can do and then how you use our pre-cut, perfused appliques with the fabric lines, but time. So, okay. It’s just a thing. But yeah, I mean, we’re willing to do whatever.

[00:19:51] Leanne: Yeah. And like Kaytlyn said, with these trunk shows and it was something that we did early on and kind of got out of it. Now we’re really getting back into it, and I’ve always told every shop that I work with, or that we work with is, you know, we will work with you as far as what works best for you. And that’s what Kate was talking about, that the cookie cutter, you know, like we don’t have set trunk shows where it says, okay, this trunk shows dogs. You have to get all these dogs. This trunk shows this. No, you can look through our website. You can say, oh gosh, we’re really focusing on some quick, easy projects. So we’d like this, or we’d like “Christmas in July.” And so we work individually then with the shops and then with our products as well. You know, whether they’re precut or patterns, we just wanna make it what’s best for the quilt shop and not necessarily putting money back in our pocket, if that makes sense, you know?

[00:20:42] Spencer: No, I think that definitely makes sense, that like, there’s not a one size fits all solution for how to promote you know, more specialized products, right? And that, you know, a lot of times talking to the people who designed it can be the greatest resource because then you can draw on, where did the inspiration come from? You know, where did this line come from? How do I communicate that to my customers, right, ultimately, because I think that is where, when people see the passion behind the designs that are being created, I think they’re so much more apt to want to buy and sell that product, right?

[00:21:17] And when I’m going to make a quilt or a pillow or towel or whatever, and I’m like, oh, well this is why this dog is on this towel, right? It’s really easy to say, oh, that’s because Leanne said this, right? And I think that communication is really what brings designs to life in so many ways.

[00:21:33] Kaytlyn: If only we could go to every shop…

[00:21:35] Spencer: yeah, sure.

[00:21:35] Kaytlyn: And just be there to talk about stuff.

[00:21:39] Leanne: Well, and you know, it’s like every shop owner knows that models help sell. And so if they don’t have to make all the models, you know, and can get a trunk show for a couple weeks or something it’s gonna sell product.

[00:21:53] Spencer: All right, so as we kind of look forward over, you know, what the future of the quilting industry is, you know, gonna do, where do you guys see the industry heading in the next few years?

[00:22:04] Leanne: Well, that’s anybody’s guess, you know?

[00:22:07] Spencer: Sure.

[00:22:07] Leanne: I know for us personally, we have found that the quicker we can make projects or, you know, kits for people as far as their time that’s involved and let me explain that…. Years ago, you know, when I was doing applique, it was all, you know, you traced and you ironed and you cut.

[00:22:25] And now with our laser business, we have three big lasers that are running all the time because we’re trying to simplify the time that it takes our customer to do a project. And so yes it might be a little bit more expensive, but we’re finding that they don’t mind. If they don’t have to take the time to, you know, cut everything out, if it comes to them all laser cut.

[00:22:51] So I’d say simplifying, in our would be the thing that would probably be the one thing we could see happening. You know, like Kaytlyn had said earlier, we have always said that staying true to ourselves, I know for me, when I first started, I kind of floundered a little bit. I was over here and over there. And once I stayed true to my design style, I’m very whimsical, we both are, it just worked. And so we’ll continue to do that and to move to the direction that we see, you know, people asking.

[00:23:23] We listen to our customers. That’s another thing that’s very important. We’ll get a suggestion, you know, I mean, that’s why we have over a hundred different dogs. I started with 12 dogs and every person that would come to my booth at a show would say, “Ooh, those are really cute, but do you have a….? And then we would do that dog, and then we would do that dog. And now, I mean, to have over a hundred different laser cut dogs, and that’s just one small portion of our business because we do an applique line with every fabric line that we do. So we just continue to listen.

[00:23:55] Kaytlyn: And I think in the industry as a whole, it’ll kind of ebb and flow with technology, too. And so we know that at some point in our business, we would love to get into more of the embroidery fill stitch or applique embroidery. And in time, you know, we might be able to do that, but you don’t know what you don’t know, so what is the next thing? Like kind of have that goal set of where are we gonna go? Keep doing what you’re doing. And then when you get a little break, like, hey, start learning about it. Or bring in someone younger or different, like a different perspective. I know people are always like, being younger in the industry, where’s it gonna go? I mean, I don’t know. I’m different, where like, I don’t sew. I know how to, I don’t enjoy it. I love design.

[00:24:40] Spencer: Whoa. Can you say that on this podcast?

[00:24:43] Kaytlyn: I said it.

[00:24:44] Spencer: Oh, we’re gonna have to, I don’t know if we’re gonna have to cut that or I, what we’re do, I mean, geez…

[00:24:50] Kaytlyn: out of my own very mouth…

[00:24:52] Leanne: I did teach her though, Spencer.

[00:24:54] Kaytlyn: Yeah, I know how.

[00:24:55] Spencer: Okay. Okay. Leanne, at least you’ve done your due diligence, right. You can wash your hands of that.

[00:24:59] Leanne: That’s right.

[00:24:59] Kaytlyn: I don’t… it doesn’t bring me life, but what it does bring me life is creating products that’s gonna bring life to someone else, that they can sew. And so I love to design a quilt or, you know, I love to design. And so, but then I can’t just keep designing if there’s not people to sew. And so I think it is just gonna be interesting to be able to pass that down to generations.

[00:25:21] And yeah, the industry’s growing older, but then there’s always gonna be people behind, too. I don’t think it’s ever going to die. I think that it’s gonna just maybe shift in different ways, but I feel like it has a great base. And like we’ve said, when you have those relationships built too, and the passion, I feel like an industry built on passion is not gonna go away. And you just keep kind of listening to one another and you just keep moving.

[00:25:46] Leanne: Yeah. I also feel like quilting is a form of art, and I just don’t feel like art’s gonna go away. You know, people are gonna find different ways to do quilts and projects and you know, I just, I can’t see it. I can’t see it going away.

[00:26:03] Kaytlyn: Yeah. Might look different, but, Yeah. Who could know?

[00:26:06] Leanne: right.

[00:26:10] Spencer: Yeah. Okay. It’s fascinating. So, I love your thoughts. I think, you know, real quick, if you listen to the last podcast that I did with Smile Spinners, I think there was like a line in there that was like, “quilting is a science,” right? And Leanne just barely said, “quilting is an art,” right? And I think like, it is both and I talked about that a little bit in the last episode, and I think for you guys it does seem like more of an art because you are in the designing part of it, right? You’re in literally creating art.

[00:26:38] And as I was kind of thinking about this, you know, what does the industry look like in three years or five years, or 10 years? And that can be a little bit anxiety inducing almost, probably for a shop owner where you’re like, man, do I need to be on the cutting edge today so that I’m not behind in three years or five years? And I think that’s across the board, right? Whether you’re a brick and mortar store owner, or you’re a designer, you know, the anxiety to be on the cutting edge is constant and I think that at the end of the day, what I’m hearing from you guys is, if you are designing, if you are selling and creating a place where people can, you know, ultimately, solve a problem or fulfill that passion that they have, you’re gonna be on the cutting edge, right?

[00:27:25] Whether you’re like, designing the most recent technology or you know, whatever, I think, you could do that but if the passion is there from your side, I think the customers are gonna feel and find that.

[00:27:38] Leanne: Yeah. I agree.

[00:27:39] Spencer: And so that was just kind of my quick thoughts there.

[00:27:41] Kaytlyn: Yeah. And I think no matter if we go back to like, full in-person things, you know, or what shops are gonna look like, as long as somehow you’re able to build some sort of community, I think you’re going to have success, whether that’s an online community or an in-person community, I think that is what got us through such hard times was, you know, even though you were scared to sometimes be around someone to be too close, but family and community got you through the hardest of times and so I think as long as we can kind of build that in.

[00:28:13] Plus science is also very important. You know, I think you have a good balance of both and yeah, something’s not working, then figure out the why isn’t working and kind of reimagine it.

[00:28:24] Leanne: Well, and like Kaytlyn had said too, there are certain things that we’ve been asked to do that we want to do. But when we talk about the hours in the day something has to give to pick up something else, or, and, you know, we were talking about this as well, do we need to hire more people? You know, there are pros and cons to all of that. And so, I think the number one thing in any business that you’re in is knowing what you can and cannot handle and if you try to handle too much, you’re not gonna do justice to any of it, and I believe that’s why we’ve been around for 30 years because we’ve tried to do justice to what we’ve done and not tried to… we’re in a little bit of a point where we might say we’re pushing the envelope right now with how much we are doing.

[00:29:17] We have this saying that we can’t wait until we get the cart caught up with the horse because we feel like we’ve got it completely backwards and it’ll get there. But, you know, if we don’t design, we don’t have new product. Right.

[00:29:33] Kaytlyn: It’s also a good problem to have.

[00:29:35] Leanne: Yes.

[00:29:35] Kaytlyn: And you just take each day as it comes and try not to look too much in the distance because it’s a little daunting. So it’s like, what do I need to accomplish?

[00:29:45] Leanne: Yeah.

[00:29:47] Spencer: Yeah, those are great parting thoughts I think to kind of allow people to rest easy a little bit, you know?

[00:29:53] Kaytlyn: Right. You’re doing great! Everyone’s doing great!

[00:29:56] Spencer: I know. That’s what I want to tell shop owners. You know, I I talk to quote shop owners every day, all day, and I’m like, yeah, I mean, it’s gonna be all right. You know, like there’s a lot of uncertainty right now out there you know, with the economy and, you know, like I said, how does the industry look like in five years? You know, there’s concern about the longevity and, I mean, I don’t think there’s mass concern, right? I think it’s just, you know, here and there and we just have to say, look, you know, there’s passion in the quilting industry and, you know, people are gonna carry that through. People are gonna teach that to their daughters and to their sons, hopefully, people like me, right? Like, I mean, you know, I didn’t grow up quilting obviously, but you know, now I’ve got some of the passion.

[00:30:36] Alright. Well, Kaytlyn and Leanne, tell us you know, I guess kind of parting thoughts and, you know, tell us a little bit about where we could find you. Yeah, and, you know, hear from you.

[00:30:44] Kaytlyn: Yep. So you can find us a lot of places online. We have a website thewholecountrycaboodle.com. We have that set for retail and wholesale ordering.

[00:30:54] We’re also through, you can find our products through distributors. We’re on social media at The Whole Country Caboodle on facebook, Instagram, YouTube. Don’t get mad if I don’t post all the time, but I really try to get stuff out there. And yeah, I mean, feel free to email us.

[00:31:11] Leanne: Our fabrics are through Henry Glass Fabrics. So you can contact Henry Glass Fabrics or you know, any of the major distributors. Or contact us, because we don’t typically sell fabric wholesale, but we have a lot of fabric and I’ve filled in for a lot of shops that are running out of pieces of our collections and so, you know, never hesitate to give us a call.

[00:31:33] Kaytlyn: Yeah.

[00:31:34] Spencer: Perfect. Well, thanks so much guys.

[00:31:36] Leanne & Kaytlyn: Thank you.

Smile Spinners - Planting Seeds of Creativity | Like Sew

spencerwright@rainpos.com (Spencer Wright) — Fri, 12 Apr 2024 14:10:39 GMT

Episode Summary

Cathy Queitzsch and Jessica Bacon built their quilting business on a background in healthcare and the fashion industry. They wanted a space where quilters could come together and share with one another and find the newest fabrics available in central Pennsylvania.

They talk with Spencer about how they have overcome the challenges of everything from window shoppers to introducing new segments of the sewing and fashion industry. Cathy and Jessica have taken a fun and analytical approach to how they run their business. They’ll share insights into how they have differentiated their shop and reach new customers.

Smile spinners have experience helping their community of quilters to explore their motivations for creating.

Key Insights

Choose a business that makes it hard to tell where work and play start and stop.
Find a partner that complements each other’s strengths and skills. You’ll each be able to connect with customers in your own ways.
Apply an analytical approach to your business and eliminate the fiddle factor.
Invest in your retail in-store and online experience. If you build it, people will come.

Episode Highlights

So I think one of the biggest challenges that we are facing right now is finding a way to reach our customers who are largely shopping online…because we have created such a cool brick and mortar business that really revolves around, like the experience of Cathy and Jess…we’re kind of competing with … the newest, brightest thing…And so I think that’s our biggest challenge is connecting with our customer who’s online.
We have worked so hard and we have used all of the tools that have been provided to us to create this online experience that is very similar to the experience that you would get in the shop.
We have so many ways that you can search fabrics on our website. We have, you know, colorful videos and content and, you know, we’ve built up our social media so that it really feels like us.
Okay, we are going to invest into this. If we build it, they will come. And sure enough, they did, and people are so excited to be able to have access to really incredible fabrics.

Guest Bio

Cathy Queitzsch left medicine to pursue therapy in a whole new form. Sewing since she could hold a needle and making her own garments since the fourth grade, sewing and quilting were always more than just a creative hobby for Cathy. Fifteen years after launching Smile Spinners, Jessica Bacon (Cathy’s daughter) joined the team after spending 10 years developing textiles and designing for the garment industry in NYC. Jessica’s Fashion Design degree from the Fashion Institute of Technology and industry experience adds an extra layer of expertise and creativity to Cathy’s already extensive creative offerings.

Website: https://www.smilespinners.com/

Transcript

[00:00:22] Spencer: Okay, and welcome. We’ve got Jessica and Cathy from Smile Spinners in Pennsylvania. How are you guys doing today?

[00:00:29] Cathy: We’re great. How is everybody?

[00:00:31] Jessica: Doing well, Spencer, thank you.

[00:00:34] Spencer: Good. Well, thanks so much for being here on this fine Tuesday afternoon with me. I guess first of all, just give us a little bit of context. Where are you guys at in Pennsylvania? And tell us a little bit about your quilt shop. Just give us some context.

[00:00:48] Jessica: So we have a fabric boutique and sewing studio in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Technically we’re in Marysville, but Harrisburg is a cooler landmark for us. It’s the capital.

[00:01:02] Spencer: Okay.

[00:01:03] Jessica: And we are… we’re eight miles from the capital. So I’m gonna claim Harrisburg.

[00:01:10] Spencer: Okay. Awesome. Good. Well just to kind of get things started and get things open up and why don’t we go to you Cathy first. Tell us when did you feel like you wanted to open up a quilt shop? Like, when did you first think, “Yeah, I think opening up a quilt shop is the right thing for me.”

[00:01:26] Cathy: Well, that’s a very long story and so I’m gonna try to give you the abbreviated story. I had a career, a medical career for about 25 years, and at the end of that career, my husband and our family were over in the Middle East, working in a hospital there and when we came back to the United States, we planned on opening our own business. We didn’t, like a quilt shop really wasn’t on my radar. And so when the medical end of it kind of didn’t work out, we were like, What else can we do? So I decided I would open the shop and just do therapy in a different way. So we’ve always looked at the shop as a place where people can come and really gather and have a great time and learn a lot in, you know, while they’re here. So that opening a quilt shop really wasn’t one of those things like, I just like, dreamed about forever and ever. But now that I’ve done it, it’s one of those things I can’t tell where my work starts and my fun, you know, where work and play start and stop.

[00:02:39] Spencer: Yeah, sure. No, that, I mean, I think that totally makes sense and I think that it’s so fun to look at kind of unique journeys. Jessica, I’m curious, so just so everyone knows, we’ve got a mother daughter team here, which is so fun for us to kind of explore, you know, the operations of a quilt shop from a mother daughter team. But Jessica, from your perspective, how long did you grow up in the quilt shop, kind of tell us about that in like, adolescence or what that looked like as far as your childhood.

[00:03:06] Jessica: Sure. So I was 15 when my mom opened Smile Spinners. And I was definitely in the shop a lot and at 15 I was at a very unique stage in being a teenager. Yeah. And I was very punk rock and like, blue mascara and spiky hair and a lot of our typical customers were like, “Ooh, we don’t know that we want this, like, punky kid to help us pick fabric.” But I kind of carved a niche for myself because I just had this love for color and I actually then went to New York City and studied fashion design. I worked in the garment industry developing textiles and working with designers and things like that. And it was actually at the end of my relationship with the fashion industry that I was kind of like at a career crossroads. And I was like, “Mom, what do I do?” And she was like, “You know, I really need somebody to help in the shop. And like, I wish that they knew the shop as well as you.” And I was like, “Well, what if it is me?” And at that point, my career pivoted and I came home and we started to run the business together.

[00:04:19] Spencer: Wow. That is actually like the neatest thing I’ve ever heard. That is so cool. It’s so cool that like, it came…

[00:04:27] Jessica: It’s a very unique story.

[00:04:29] Spencer: It is so unique and that it came through the fashion industry, which has a lot of, I think, reliability in textiles. And then for you to, you know, kind of come and be able to work with your mom how neat.

[00:04:41] Okay. So let’s explore that a little bit more. How do you guys, like, how do you find… you know, is this still a mother-daughter relationship at work or has it become teammates and, how do you find a way to work through that?

[00:04:58] Cathy: You know, it’s like any working relationship. Like sometimes it’s really good and there’s other days that you’re like, Ugh, I’m over this person. Right? And I think it’s the same thing with a mother and daughter relationship where you work together, is that, you know, we’re both very creative people and we’re both very strong personalities and so sometimes we don’t always agree on what we’re gonna do but somebody goes in one direction, somebody goes in another direction, and it works okay because we have customers who relate to me and customers who relate to Jessica. So, you know, we have such a variety of styles with it. I think it works very well.

[00:05:41] Spencer: I love that. Jessica, do you have anything to add on that?

[00:05:45] Jessica: I do. I think that, you know, we’ve always creatively collaborated really well together and there are definitely times where we are, you know, we’re still parallel, but we don’t intersect. And there… it’s almost like waves, you know, Like there are these points where we intersect in the things that we wanna do with, you know, our creative visions or the direction that we wanna take the business. So there’s always. A lot of collaboration and I think we’re really good at ping ponging ideas back and forth and you know, if Cathy has an idea, I’m able to be like, Okay, expand that a little bit, you know, tell me more about that. Or, you know, I’ll have an idea. And she’s like, Okay tell me about this. And I think we actually bring that really beautifully to our customers and that’s what kind of makes us unique

[00:06:42] Spencer: I love that. I mean, how fun to be able to have kind of the two different creative ideas and opinions and then kind of mesh them into one and that’s how you get probably a lot of what comes out of Smile Spinners.

[00:06:54] So in that same vein tell us a little bit about what, I guess from your perspective, sets Smile Spinners apart from, you know, the other competition in your area?

[00:07:04] Cathy: I’ll answer that, then Jessica can join in. I think because of my medical background and my science background, and same with Jessica. Jessica, you know, has a heavy science background and knows lots about fabrics. Like she blows most people’s minds when she starts to talk about like, Oh, you know, all about different fibers. And so, I think what we bring is like that science to the shop. I always talk about sewing as the sewing story. In stories, some of it is factual, some of it is not. So oftentimes sewing stories are kind of handed down and people are like, Well, I’m doing this, but I’m really not sure why I’m doing it. We kind of break through that and we’re like, You know, we don’t care that everybody else is doing it like this. Does this really make any good sense?

[00:07:58] So oftentimes we do things a little bit differently and sometimes people are like, “Oh, what do you mean I’m not gonna do it the way grandma did it?” And then what we say is, “But are you getting better results?” Most times they’re like, “Yeah, we are.” And so it’s like, okay, it’s time to like, like move outta some of those things, but we follow the science.

[00:08:23] It’s not a guesswork here. And I think that really does set us apart from everybody because people come in all the time and they’re like, I learned it like this. And we’re like we wouldn’t do it like that because… and I always say to people, ask us why. Because we have the why. It’s not because my mom taught me that. It’s because we follow the science. So that’s very different.

[00:08:48] Jessica: Yeah, a hundred percent. And mom, you usually say too, you’re like a sewing engineer, right? You know, you’re constantly at the sewing machine and you’re experimenting. And I would say that, you know, what really sets us apart is that we are so curious and we wanna discover new ways to do things. We want to uncover something that, you know, a method that is gonna make things easier. It’s gonna make things faster. It’s gonna make things better.

[00:09:24] And you know, our motto is empowering creativity, right? Or we say, empowering creative people. And the way that we do that is we believe that in order to empower you, we have to teach you. We need to give you education and we need to share knowledge. And that sharing of knowledge really comes from doing a lot of research and a lot of trial and error and I think that’s what our customers really love about us. They know that they’re not gonna get some textbook answer. They’re gonna, ask us a question and we’re gonna say, “Well, we tried this and this is what we found,” or, “we have done this and we didn’t get good results over here, so now we’re doing it like this.” And our customers really love that.

[00:10:15] Cathy also said, about like, you know, ask us why. We really encourage people to say like, “Okay, well, why do you use that needle for this? Why do you set up your machine in this way? Why?” We want you to ask us why. Cuz we really wanna tell you.

[00:10:32] Cathy: I think a lot of times too that I look at things, people will be like, Well, I can make that half square triangle. And my response to that is like, But what’s the fiddle factor? We want the fiddle factor to be really low and your outcome to be really high, not in reverse and then a lot of times that causes people to kind of pause and they’re like, well, yeah, I did really fiddle a whole lot with that and it was hard to make it look good. So that, you know, we’re trying to just show a different way of doing something and we hope that people then start to like, follow what we’re saying because we have made it easier and they keep seeing easier and easier ways to do things.

[00:11:20] Spencer: Wow. No, I mean that was probably one of the most interesting answers that I’ve ever gotten to that question of what sets you guys apart and let me tell you why I see it that way. I think I’ve always looked…. right, like if I were just to say I view quilting as an art and I guess maybe this is something I need to dispel, but I’ve always viewed art and science as opposites in so many ways, right? Like you can get a degree in art or you can get a degree in science. And what you guys are saying is that it is both, right? And that the art is enhanced by the science and that the science is enhanced by the art, right? And that’s… I’m thinking about this and I’m like, Wow. That’s actually the coolest thing. And what a cool way to set your store. Right. I mean, I don’t know… I’ve never heard anyone talk about the science of quilting and boy. I mean, I think we could probably do a whole podcast just talking about that and I would probably need to do more research into the science.

[00:12:16] Jessica: Let’s do it.

[00:12:17] Spencer: But you know, I think that you guys are probably there as the experts on that. So I just wanna say that was so interesting.

[00:12:24] Cathy: So now the other thing that comes in there too is the neurophysiology. That’s our other thing. We’re always like, you older adults who are worried about that, you are starting to get forgetful. You know, our medical backgrounds once again kick in and it’s like, What can we do to create more neuro pathways? So we talk about that in sewing and people sometimes laugh. I’ve got the studies now to show what that does for people. So all of those little things put together that science and the art and the doing and all those things keep our brains young.

[00:13:03] Spencer: Wow. Wow. I’m just… I’m grappling right now with this. No, I think that, that’s so cool. And I think that like…

[00:13:09] Jessica: Spencer’s planning, like a whole other podcast.

[00:13:11] Cathy: You want us to teach you how to sew Spencer?

[00:13:13] Spencer: I’m making a trip to Pennsylvania.

[00:13:15] Cathy: Spencer’s like, “What? Me behind a sewing machine?”

[00:13:21] Jessica: We can teach you via Zoom. We’re so good.

[00:13:24] Spencer: I love that so much. And okay, so. Yeah, I’m just really kind of thinking about that. But let’s talk more on, on like a relatable, you know, for our listeners who I would say the majority are gonna be. You know, quilt and sewing shop owners, from your guys’ perspective, and I’ll go to Jessica first here.

[00:13:41] What would you say, you know, are kind of the biggest challenges that you guys are facing in running your shop right now? And that could be anything from marketing, sales, you know, distribution, inventory or something completely different. You know, tell me, what kind of challenges are you guys facing right now?

[00:13:57] Jessica: So I think one of the biggest challenges that we are facing right now is finding a way to reach our customers who are largely shopping online. I think because we have created such a cool brick and mortar business that really revolves around, like the experience of Cathy and Jess and you know, all of the knowledge that we have to share with customers. I think finding that niche online has been our greatest challenge because, you know, we’re kind of competing with these… you know, okay, this is the newest, brightest thing and you know, sell it until it’s gone. And it’s a trend and it’s very fast. And I would say that’s not really how we run our business inside. You know, in the brick and mortar store, we have a fabric collection. You know we, hardly go on sale. We don’t do closeouts. So to compete in that market where it’s like, Okay, this is new, this is fast, this is trending. We’re like, Yeah no, no, no. We just want you to… we wanna teach you to love this. And so I think that’s our biggest challenge is connecting with our customer who’s online.

[00:15:19] Spencer: Really interesting. Cathy, did you have anything to add there?

[00:15:24] Cathy: No, I would really agree with that. I think that that is a huge challenge with how when you have everything that people can come in and touch and handle, they can look at all the books, they can try out the sewing machines, and then, what do you have to offer that gets the person to shop with you in your shop instead of saying, You know what? I could find a 50 cents less online, so I’m gonna go with that. And that’s really hard to juggle. And I do think that sometimes it’s really sad. Like it makes my heart heavy sometimes when people will come in and they ask you lots and lots and lots of questions and they pick your brains because they know we love to talk about sewing and then they go and buy it online and when you see that they bring their quilt in, then to be machine quilted, it kinda is painful because you know, we get to know the majority of our customers really well. I’ve had the shop for 22 years. People have watched Jessica grow up. So some of that then is really, it’s like, oh, like, what can we do different so that we get that sale instead of losing out by, you know, a couple of cents online.

[00:16:46] Jessica: I just wanted to add that, you know, because this is a podcast with Like Sew, we have worked so hard and we have used all of the tools that have been provided to us to create this online experience that is very similar to the experience that you would get in the shop. We have so many ways that you can search fabrics on our website. We have, you know, colorful videos and content and, you know, we’ve built up our social media so that it really feels like us. And so to still kind of feel like we’re not making that connection is really frustrating.

[00:17:26] Exactly. We have a design wall, so you can have that experience that you would have in the physical shop, you know, of like auditioning fabrics and stuff. So we really have used all the tools of our website, I think to the best of our abilities and then to still feel like, ah, we’re not like getting the face time with our customers that either our competitors or, you know, big box stores would get is so frustrating.

[00:17:53] Spencer: Yeah. I think that is such a relatable problem with the people who are gonna listen to this podcast, right? You know, by and large, they’re gonna be small brick and mortars, you know, 1, 2, 3 locations max. You know, and I’m sure that they’re facing a lot of the same problems as you guys are. And I, you know, first of all, huge kudos to you guys for what you’ve done on your website. You know, I’ve kind of poked around it, and now that you’ve said that, I think I need to do some even more in depth looking. You know, even down to, like, your favicon is like the color wheel, right? The favicon, I guess probably most people don’t know. Favicon is like the small icon that when you have a tab open, it sits there. And even your favicon is customized, right? Which, like, you’re not gonna see that with a lot of like small shops, but you guys are, you’re in the details in your store. That’s the kind of feel like if you were to go to a big box store , you know, website, obviously they’re gonna have their favicon, right? They’re gonna be in the details. And I think that you guys are trying to be there and be in the details with them.

[00:18:50] And I think the other thing, as I’m thinking about this, I was at American Quilt Retailer. It was, you know, kind of a live event. I was in Des Moines a couple of weeks ago and someone mentioned to me something I kind of, as you guys are talking about, people come in store and they talk to you about sewing, and then they go and they buy their fabric somewhere else, maybe at a discount and someone said something like, anecdotally was like, Yeah, a common sewer will drive an hour to save 50 cents on, you know, a piece of fabric. Right. And how frustrating that can be, you know, which like logically sometimes doesn’t make sense. You know? Why would you do that? Like me as a consumer, I’m not that way. No, it doesn’t make sense, but it happens, I think. And from what you guys are describing, it seems like your experience in that as well.

[00:19:33] Jessica: For sure. And you know, we always think that we add a lot of value to a sale. You know, like we think that because we’re knowledgeable and we’re so giving with our knowledge, we’re like, Okay people are gonna be like, You know what, that saving 50 cents it’s not worth it because I know I’m gonna go to Cathy and Jess’s Smile Spinners, and I’m gonna get, you know, hundreds of dollars worth of education, right? But sometimes that’s a miss for customers and I feel like that’s probably a really relatable thing too.

[00:20:05] Spencer: Yeah. Cathy, do you have anything to add there?

[00:20:09] Cathy: We really enjoy that interaction with all of our customers. We really have gotten to know people over the years so that, you know, when they’re here we’re hoping that they’ll shop with us and we do everything that we can to give them knowledge and maybe if it’s not this time, maybe it’s the next time that they’ll think, you know, like, I should go up there and just find out what those guys have to offer. A lot of our customers are like, “Oh, don’t ever try to go to Smile Spinners and like, whip in and get something and get out again because they’re there to talk to you and entertain you and teach you.”

[00:20:47] So we do a lot of that here and I think that’s where I, when I think about the shop, even though the shop was not something that was in my mind, you know, all my life that I wanted to open a shop, that social interaction with everybody and being able to watch people do a better job with their sewing because we’ve taken the time with them, is just so rewarding.

[00:21:15] Spencer: Yeah.

[00:22:14] Spencer: Oh man. I can feel the passion you know, that you guys put into every single customer, and I think. It’s endearing, you know, to a degree, right? And it’s hard to like, say it’s endearing over a podcast, right? I’m sure it’s much more endearing when I’m at Smile Spinners, hopefully, right?

[00:22:28] I’m gonna make the trip out there. But, you know, I think you can feel that passion for the art and the science coming through and I think that your customers do, right? And certainly you know, when you miss those sales. that’s probably, you know, uncomfortable and sad maybe even sometimes. But at, you know, those who are gleaning their knowledge from you guys, I think I’m sure are, you know, super grateful and that’s the feeling I’m kind of getting.

[00:22:55] So let’s talk more about, you know, kind of customer behavior. You know, as we’re doing a podcast about quilt shops, so I think it’s only natural, right? We’re kind of in, you know, the changing of times, you know, per se. As we look at that, how do you guys think that customer behavior, you know, specifically your customer behavior or behaviors have changed in the last couple of years, whether that be, you know, and I’m not saying we need to dig in on covid changes, but just in the last couple of years, obviously Covid was a part of that. You know, people moving online. We’re talking about that. So let’s explore that a little bit more. Cathy, do you want to take that?

[00:23:30] Cathy: Sure. So how our customer has changed and really it’s how we’ve changed and Covid was a huge driving force of that, was that for years, cuz we really believe in education and we have a very nice big classroom here, but that’s how we taught in our classroom face to face, and for years, people were after us. Please, you know, do something online because we don’t live close and we wanna be able to take your classes. So Covid really forced us to change things around to get more comfortable. Our first time that we were live, it was just like, it was like, Oh my gosh, this is horrible. But then, you know, we start to get more and more comfortable. And so now we know that, you know, our customers are demanding lots of different things and are expecting us to be able to come through and to be able to do as good a job teaching all via online as we would face to face.

[00:24:34] So you’ll find that because we have customers who join us from all over the world now for some of our online classes that I think they’ve changed a lot because they’re willing to do some face to face. They’re willing to do some online things, and so I think they’ve changed a lot that way.

[00:24:53] The other thing that we’ve found is, you know, for 22 years, the majority of my customers were quilters. Prior to covid, so many people… yeah, we want to do garments, but we don’t know where to start. Like, can we use those quilting cottons? Which I won’t even get on that cuz Jessica will go wild.

[00:25:20] Jessica: Quilting cotton isn’t a real thing.

[00:25:21] Cathy: It isn’t a real thing…. and you know our background, both of us, if you really were to press us, while we love to make anything out of fabric, it doesn’t matter what it is, but we love to do garments and so when our customers, right prior to Covid, started to ask for garment classes, we were like, Yes, we can finally justify bringing in fabrics that are not just for us, that other people will want them.

[00:25:51] So I think our customer has changed a lot in that they’re just not wanting to do a quilt. They wanna do it all, which is just awesome. I’ve been saying for 22 years, If you make it out of fabric, I love it I wanna do it. So that you don’t see people, and we still see some of them, but a lot of people want to do that whole gamut of things and we’re here to help with that.

[00:26:17] Jessica: Yes. I wanna add to that because…

[00:26:21] Spencer: Yeah, go ahead.

[00:26:23] Jessica: Coming from a, you know, fashion background and leaving the industry, the reason I left was because I was part of like the fast fashion wheel and it’s a pretty toxic wheel. We now are, you know, so conscious of our environment and of workplace ethics and consumers are really, You know, they’re really aware of the people behind the products that they’re purchasing, and I think the motivation for people to sew is evolving as a result of that movement.

[00:27:00] So we’re seeing a lot of people who are tired of the experience that they get in big box stores, which is not a positive experience. They don’t get that one on one interaction. They know that they are not getting good quality that is made in good working environments and they don’t want to be buying all of their stuff. They want to know that they’re making something that is exactly to their specifications. It’s exactly what they want. Whether it’s a garment or something for their home, a quilt for a gift, the motivations behind people sewing, I think, has changed drastically and that’s the difference we’re seeing in the consumer.

[00:27:45] We’re seeing people of all different ages. It’s not just a movement for like Gen Z who wants to thrift and upcycle everything. Yeah, it is people. We have one customer that comes to mind who was a Home Ec. Instructor for a long time, and she’s now taking every single class that we have to offer because she’s like, you know, I really wanna learn a different way of sewing. I always did things really fast. I was trying to get things done, and I didn’t really enjoy the process. Now I wanna enjoy it. I’m retired now. I wanna love this and I wanna love that journey of making something. So, you know, even those mindsets I think are really changing and we’re seeing that across the board for our customers.

[00:28:29] So, yeah, the motivations are changing. Like people wanna sew because it feels good and it doesn’t just feel good to make something that you’ve like, made with your hands. The impact that you’re making in your community, globally, even if it’s a, on a small scale, I think is something that’s really attractive to people who are sewing now.

[00:28:50] Spencer: Yeah, I mean, I think that that’s so interesting to kind of explore the more kind of conscious side of quilting and kind of, by extension, garment making, right? You know, in, in fact, I was in a shop about a month ago. And the shop owner, he’s giving us a tour of a shop and he like, points to this one kind of shelf. And he says, This is dedicated to garment making, Right? And he’s like, I’m kind of allowing people, you know, I’m waiting for someone to prove to me that it’s worth it to stock more garments, kind of driven items, patterns, fabrics that are specific to garment making and things like that.

[00:29:25] And it seems like maybe to a degree your customers have convinced you of that, or you convinced your customers of that vice versa, Right? Maybe some of both.

[00:29:33] Cathy: I think we’ve convinced them.

[00:29:35] Jessica: We did. We definitely… mom, do you remember? We like had this approach where it was like the field of dreams, right? Like, you know, Kevin Costner, Field of Dreams, baseball, “if you build it, they will come.” Yeah. Right? And we were like, Okay, we love garments. People love what we love. And mom, you’ve probably heard this so many times in business. I’m sure everybody who’s listening has, you know, like, you will be told don’t buy stuff for yourself. buy for, you know, and think about your customer. But at the end of the day, like, we are our customer, and we were like, Okay, we are going to invest into this. If we build it, they will come. And sure enough, they did. and people are so excited to be able to have access to really incredible fabrics. And because we’re such fabric nerds, we’re like, Okay, this is from France and this is from Spain, and this is from this. And let me talk to you about all these different, you know, fiber types and what you would make out of this. And you can just see that with each explanation, you’re planting a seed of creativity for somebody. Yeah. And I think that’s the most joyous part of what we get to do in the shop is you know, create that for people.

[00:30:51] And then when they come in with stuff, we’re like, Whoa, you made that? That’s like, we didn’t even think of that. We never even thought about doing that with… like, this is amazing. So like, to see people’s creativity really shine through it’s worth. So, so worth it.

[00:31:07] Spencer: Yeah. I mean, I think that this is a notice to a lot of shops that are like maybe questioning, should I expand my garment section? Right. You know, I think that this could push you over the edge, right? If you’re wondering.

[00:31:17] Cathy: Here’s the thing, we love garments. We know how to sew garments. If you aren’t into it and you just have the stuff on a shelf hoping that somebody will come and pick it up, and you have no way of like being excited about yourself, like, I’m making this top. I just cut it out yesterday. It’s out of this gold knit that we bring in from France, it’s been beautiful to sew with. Like, I’m excited about that. But if it’s just standing there and you’re like, I hope somebody will come in and buy this, they’re not.

[00:31:51] Jessica: You know, if you’re somebody who’s just like, I’m gonna just jump onto this bandwagon. It’s probably not gonna work for you because a lot of times, mom, how many times do people say like, Well, what would you do with this? Right? And we’re like, Okay, you can make this and you can make this and you can try this all the time.

[00:32:09] Cathy: Yeah, I always say, I’m like Forest Gump on the shrimp boat. And they say like, What would you do with shrimp? And he like shrimp gumbo and shrimp scampi and shrimp… and that’s how we are. We’re like, Oh, this is what we would do. And then people like oftentimes, people will say to us you know, we love that you guys are so passionate about this and we really are. You know, we’re not just doing it for show to try to get people to buy things. We really love it and think everybody should be sewing because it is supposed to be fun and relaxing, and that’s what we per promote. And at the end, if you have a quilter or garment, that’s fabulous.

[00:32:51] Jessica: I would say too, with respect to, you know, a shop owner who’s out there listening and is like, “well, I don’t really know that much about garments. I don’t really know that much about, you know, garment fabrics.” You have a whole shop full of garment fabrics. Guys, quilting cotton is a marketing term. You heard it on this podcast. Quilting Cotton is just so that in the seventies, people looking to make quilts knew where to go in the store. Okay? You can go to any mill where they’re making fabric and if you say, make me a quilting cotton, they will be like, What? Right. It’s not a thing. It’s a marketing term. You have cotton poplin in your shop and cotton poplin makes dresses and shirts and pants and shorts and like it makes a plethora of things that you wear on your body. And the indie designers who are out there making patterns, are making patterns for cotton poplin.

[00:33:51] So you don’t have to go and invest all this money in rayons and knits and cotton sateens and you know, flannels or whatever you know, if you are trying to offer this for your customer, you already have the stuff. Put a shirt pattern next to it. Start with the Grainline Studio Scout Tee. You know, something easy.

[00:34:12] Spencer: Wow. I didn’t even ask the question, but like the question that you answered was, if I’m a shop owner, considering putting more into my garment section, that was the answer, right? And so I absolutely loved that and love the passion that I’m, you know, that you kind of exude, both of you guys, you know, Cathy and Jessica.

[00:34:30] So, you know, as we kind of wrap up here, Reminder guys, we’ve got smile spinners here from Marysville, Pennsylvania. Right. Which I think you said that’s not like your most landmark but we’ll say where it is.

[00:34:42] Jessica: Harrisburg. We’re in the capitol of Pennsylvania.

[00:34:45] Spencer: Harrisburg, capital of Pennsylvania. I’m, I’m a Steelers fan. Spent a lot of time in, Pittsburgh. Right. So we’re a bit away, but you know, that’s about as Pennsylvania as I get. But anyways let’s go to Cathy first and then Jessica, you know, any kind of final thoughts. You know, anything about where people can contact you or hear from you, you know, consume your content, stuff like that.

[00:35:04] Cathy: Well, people can find us online. We have a great website thanks to Like Sew, and you know, I think Jessica has probably spent hours on the phone with all of you guys. Me, not so much, but sometimes we’re like, Oh my gosh, like, They’ll probably see it’s Jessica. They’re like, We’re not gonna pick up the phone. We don’t wanna talk to her. Cause what will she want now? So we have a fabulous website, I think, because of that. And so like when Covid came you know, we were ready to pivot right to online because we had put time and effort into developing that. So you can easily find us there.

[00:35:48] We have a YouTube channel, so that we endeavor to do more videos that can be on YouTube, but there’s a lot of variety on there now. or take a trip to Harrisburg and come in and see us in person. It’s much more fun.

[00:36:05] Jessica: Love it. Okay. Jessica, any parting thoughts?

[00:36:09] It’s true. We’re great local ambassadors. Sure. I just wanna remind people too that you can find us on a lot of social media channels. So we’re on Facebook at Smile Spinners. We are on Instagram at Smile Spinners and that’s our handles really across the board. Our website is smile spinners.com. Nice and easy there. You can see the color wheel on the little corner of your tab when you find us.

[00:36:33] But yeah, I wanted to just say, We’re great local ambassadors to Harrisburg. So, one of the fun things that you can actually find on the Visit us part of our website is a map of, you know, the local area and our favorite places to go. So, we have favorite restaurants, places to stay, other places to shop that are not quilt shops. They’re our favorite places. So again, you’re really getting The feeling of Smile Spinners and of us.

[00:37:02] But I think my parting thoughts would be like, since this is a business podcast, there are so many creative people who are looking for you and your business, and we need creativity. Cathy talked at the beginning about, you know, keeping your mind sharp. There’s these movements about sewing for self care and I think what we do as quilt shop owners is we are giving people a beautiful creative outlet. So just like, keep on going and you’re making a huge impact just by existing. That’s certainly how we feel, anyway.

[00:37:45] I think that was beautiful. Such great and just articulate final thoughts from both of you guys. I just want to say again, huge thank you for being on the podcast. And I think we’ll go ahead and end there so thank you so much.

Jason Stoker, Videeo by CommentSold - How to Get Started Live Selling | Like Sew

spencerwright@rainpos.com (Spencer Wright) — Fri, 12 Apr 2024 14:10:31 GMT

Episode Summary

Jason Stoker and Spencer Wright talk about the phenomenon that is Live Selling. They discuss where it came from and where it’s going. They give some ideas about how to overcome common fears and how to get started.

As a long time expert in live selling Jason gives a unique insight into the sales channel. He aso shows how what many perceive as a fad, is proving to be a lucrative new channel that many retail business owners are seeing great success in.

Key Insights

Live selling is an easily accessible way for you to connect with your customers and community.
Take the risk on social selling. There are tremendous opportunities.
Live selling allows you to demonstrate the benefits of your products.
Answer questions in real time during live selling sessions engages audiences.
Don’t be afraid of jumping into live selling. Your customers like you.

Episode Highlights

Look, we have this free medium to go out there and say, Hey, let me post something, try to get viewership.
Double down on every sales channel you have. Sure. You know, I mean, don’t limit, like if there’s a new one, adjust, get in it.
Let me engage one-to-one in real time with a customer. Not only engage them, but then when you have a question in real time, go, it’s a great question. Let me answer it.
The reason when someone follows you as a business owner is because they like you. They believe in your product.
Hey, we’re gonna come together and have the fellowship in the community around something we’re super passionate about.

Guest Bio

Jason Stoker is the Vice President of Key Accounts at Videeo by CommentSold and has developed live selling software. He has been with CommentSold for over four years and a little more than a dozen years hands-on-experience in retail.

Website: https://try.commentsold.com/

Transcript

[00:00:21] Spencer: Hello and welcome to the Quilt Shop podcast. We have Jason Stoker, the VP of Growth at CommentSold with us. Jason, how are you doing today?

[00:00:31] Jason: I’m good. Excited to get to hang out today. Thanks for having me.

[00:00:35] Spencer: Yeah. We’re so excited to have you. We’re excited to be able to talk about the new product Videeo by CommentSold.

[00:00:42] Spencer: So Jason, I guess first of all, you know, give us a little background on you. Tell us, you know, who you are and how did you get into the live selling space?

[00:00:50] Jason: Yeah. So, uh, Jason Stoker, like you said VP of Customer Growth here CommentSold. I’ve been at CommentSold for four and a half years. I actually own a competitor to CommentSold that they acquired, which is what got me to CommentSold.

[00:01:04] Jason: My wife and her business partner, though, have been in the retail space for over, for right at 12 years now. So they started with two brick and mortars and then we morphed into an online only live selling platform. We’ll get into a little bit of that maybe in a minute as we kind of go through some of the conversation today, kind of what it looks like to be on that side from my perspective, seeing my wife’s success, but also seeing it from the CommentSold side. But I got at CommentSold because of that and then obviously, absolutely love working with entrepreneurs and small business owners and walking with them. My team and my role is really about how do we find people that want to grow and how do we give them the data, the actionable data, the resources, the time, and then work with them to make sure that we help their business scale and grow.

[00:01:46] Jason: And really, you know, as we pull back the CommentSold 30,000 feet and we see across six, 7,000 retailers, there’s a lot of commonality, whether it’s quilting, sew, fast fashion, men’s, whatever. There’s just some things that end up trends that we see that say, Hey, if you do these things, and we find success from that, and it may look a little different in each genre of business.

[00:02:09] Jason: But at the end of the day, retails retail, online commerce is online, live selling’s, kind of live selling, and there’s a lot of similarities and so that’s what excites me and that’s what I get to do every day here is work with those shops and to see them, you know, increase sales from a growth standpoint, but also just become a healthier business from a growth standpoint.

[00:02:27] Jason: Growth doesn’t always mean more sells, a lot of times you gotta fix some other things before the sells come and so we really try to look at it from both those angles at CommentSold.

[00:02:36] Spencer: Yeah. Well thank you so much for that, Jason. I think one of the reasons we’re so excited to be able to talk to you on the podcast is because you have kind of that dual perspective, right?

[00:02:44] Spencer: Where you have kind of been both a user and a manager of the product and you know, obviously helping CommentSold grow. You know, over here at Like Sew obviously, we are just giddy about, you know, being able to integrate with Videeo by CommentSold. You know, since I kind of got started with Like Sew a while back, one of the very first things that came up early on for us was we want to do live selling and we want you to help us do it right. And by you, I mean, basically just have Like Sew be kind of the intermediary, right? To help manage the inventory. Kinda like a backup dancer, right? That’s how Like Sew is in this space. But anyways, I just wanted to say how excited we are about it. You know, we’re a few months in and I know we’re already seeing a lot of, you know, stores really find, kind of, their groove.

[00:03:32] Spencer: Okay. Well, Jason let’s continue on here. I think for our listeners who are not super familiar with live selling maybe you could just kind of give some insight into what is live selling.

[00:03:43] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. That’s awesome. Yeah. And so just kind of pull back a little bit, a lot of our retailers were using social media to sell, right?

[00:03:51] Jason: They were, you know, traditional websites. I mean, there’s millions and millions of millions of websites, and how do I get my information in front of somebody, either organically grow it, I do paid ads, you know, whatever it is. But when Facebook and social began to kinda happen, we were like, look, we have this free medium to go out there and say, Hey, let me post something, try to get viewership. And so our sellers that make up CommentSold early on were posting items, posting products, and asking someone to CommentSold, and they would manually invoice them and kind of manage all the comments through.

[00:04:25] Jason: Well, then Facebook opened up and allowed live to begin to happen and so it was like, how do we have that same idea? But then bring it to life really and you think about like, look, I’m a believer. We have websites at CommentSold too. So what I’m fixing to say is not, “don’t have a website.” I’m like, double down on every sales channel you have. You know what I mean? Don’t limit, like if there’s a new one, adjust, get in it. So please, I wanna make sure I’m clear on that. Like, we have mobile apps, websites, all that like at CommentSold. We think all are awesome, but there was this moment for us to say, a website’s fine. You see a static image, there’s a product, I can click on it, kind of read about it.

[00:05:01] Jason: But there’s a whole nother dynamic when I’m standing in front of an audience and holding something up and saying, Hey, this is why this item’s awesome. Let me show you how it works. Let me show you how it looks, show you how it fits. Let me engage one-to-one in real time with a customer. Not only engage them, but then when you have a question in real time and go, it’s a great question. Let me answer it. Everybody’s like, oh, wow. You know? And so it just brought like, it brought it to life. It brought it to this. Walk in my store. And I think that’s one of the things that I tell everyone is, think back 50 years ago in retail when you walked in a store and there was like extreme customer service. I mean, that’s what people built their entire business on is the way you service. Used to be that somebody used to pump your gas for you. You know what I mean? Like if you’re like 30 years old, like that’s like a thought that no one’s ever heard of before, right? But it was like the service element and I feel like live selling is taking service back to another level to say, let me tell you, describe it, show it. Let me sell it to you in a one-to-one relationship, even though I’m doing it one to many. And that’s really what kind of where live selling begin to get a lot of opportunity.

[00:06:07] Jason: The other thing that came out of it is we’re streaming on these platforms and you’re doing for a period of time, the organic opportunity to see it or to boost it or whatever begin to just the reach begin to really have a different opportunity. Facebook, Instagram, all these platforms sort of prioritizing video content over just post. And so it was the combination of really great customer service, really great selling, engaging one-to-one, one to many in a really fun and inviting manner, but also using what these social platforms wanted you to do and just allowing revenue to come. And so, you know, we tell everybody live selling is the intersection of entertainment and like revenue. And so between like me trying to sell you something, entertaining you something, when those two worlds combine, it’s really like when live selling takes its greatest form.

[00:06:59] Jason: And so our best sellers are really good entertaining and then educating, entertaining and educating and revenue coming from that motion. So, we really, I guess to simplify, we had, adapted to how social was moving and then really allowing our retailers to maximize it from a financial standpoint.

[00:07:19] Spencer: Yeah. Wow. No, I mean, I think that’s so interesting to kind of look at the way that you guys have navigated the space, right? That it was kind of like, here’s what people are already kind of doing. Let’s find out how to make it more effective. Right? That’s how I view what CommentSold has been able to do, right? That like, know, users, Facebook users, small business owners, medium, large business owners for you guys at this point. I know you kind of have expanded in, you know, kind of crossing all of those , but you kind of saw, hey, this is what people are doing. How can we facilitate that, right? How can we make this a process that isn’t so arduous?

[00:07:54] Spencer: Because it could be without, kind of, the CommentSold or Videeo by CommentSold tool. It could be a little more arduous, right. And, and I know that we, there are a lot of people who have done that, right. Who have just individually invoiced and it does take a long time. So yeah, just super fascinating to see how you guys have kind of postured there.

[00:08:13] Spencer: Okay, Jason, well, let’s continue forward. I’ve kind of briefly mentioned Videeo by CommentSold. You know, I’d just like to kind of maybe talk about that and if you could maybe help us understand what that means for Like Sew users and just in general and you know, what the difference is there.

[00:08:30] Jason: Yeah, so CommentSold, when we built it, Really had this idea that when people came in, they would kind of adopt the entire ecosystem, right? They’d use our app, our web store, our inventory management, all of that. And obviously I had a lot of success there, a lot of success, you know, did have an integration with some other platforms where you could kinda use that platform per plus us, but there was always some limitation to getting into some of the other verticals cause we really kind of, we did a really great job of like women’s fast fashion, super easy, small, medium, large, pant, top, whatever. As we got into other verticals that began to be more complex and it wasn’t as simple, or they got outside of, Hey, I really need this other software to make my business run effectively. We go, we don’t integrate with that. Like, and trying to integrate with it was just like, it’s gonna be very, very difficult. And every time someone wanted something integrating into it was just gonna be hard. And, And so we kind of pulled back and we’re like, Hey, as we really expand this opportunity for people, how could we build a product that could just sit on top of what other people are already doing?

[00:09:32] Jason: You know, instead of telling you to rip and replace everything that’s happening, how do we just sit on top of it? And so that’s really where the Videeo product really kind of begin to get life is whether it’s swimming upstream to people that are more complex or whether it’s just going out with people that just have different needs, we wanted to eliminate the integration problem. And so what we built is, again, a software that just sits on top. We go, Hey, we’re gonna do the live streaming for you. We’re gonna do it with excellence. Absolutely dynamic product that allows you to stream in multiple places at one time from a single source, literally from a cell phone. I mean, you can go live by yourself with a cell phone and a computer and you’re done. That’s all you need, right? But we want to be able to sit on top and when someone goes to cart the item, we want it to cart into the person’s native site. And so at that point, we don’t have to worry about backing inventory integration. We don’t have to worry about all the complexities of the business. We can just go from our streaming into your system and from your system, they would check out just like they would any either time. And so it was really about eliminating the things that had held us back because so many people wanted to use our product and said, look, like I absolutely have to have this certain kind of point of sales system. And we’re like, well, we don’t integrate. We’re like, well, I can’t use your software. I gotta build it in two different places and manually work over here. We’re like, what a terrible work process and flow. And people were doing it with success, right? Because they just figured it out. But it was really hindering their opportunity to grow and it just wasn’t effective or scalable at that point. And so that’s really what we were trying to solve for is, just set on top of, ease of use, keep what you’re doing, just add this video commerce piece on top of whatever you know, you’re currently doing.

[00:12:13] Spencer: Yeah, Jason, so I just wanna say thank you so much for that answer. So I have had. Or I guess answer your explanation of what is video by CommentSold. I have probably had, you know, a hundred plus conversations trying to explain that and I think that was the most succinct you know, kind of helpful version. So I’m gonna come back and reference that bit, probably in the future, or maybe I’ll just you know, have some, like, I’ll write it and copy and then just send that, because I think that totally explains kind of how we got to this point.

[00:12:42] Spencer: And so just as we kind of look in and think about talking to the people who are gonna listen to this podcast, which are primarily small to medium size business owners you know, typically, obviously of, you know, usually sewing. You know, fabric store of some kind. One of the things that come up really often on this podcast and just in conversations that I have is that when I say, what is the thing that you want to do to improve your business the most? And almost always or I would say a big portion of the time, they say market on social media, right? That is like number one, small business. They know they need to do it, but the barrier to entry seems a little bit high, right? And for me, I view this as a way to kind of get started. So I think Jason, maybe you could talk to us a little bit about, you know, if I am apprehensive about getting started live selling or, you know, really like marketing on, you know, from a social, you know, or live selling perspective, what would you tell me if I’m like, I don’t know, like, is it, you know, is it too complicated or am I, you know, I’m scared to put myself out there. Maybe talk to that a little bit if you can.

[00:13:56] Jason: Yeah. Well, that’s a great question. And it’s, you know, it’s you don’t know what you don’t know. And so it’s, it’s this big unknown and once you like go live, like you recognize everyone seeing it, right? It’s like, yeah, you fell in front of the whole world is how you feel it. and I would just say one of the things that I think makes live selling so good is it’s not like a produced show. I think people feel like it’s gotta be perfect. And in fact, I would say perfect is almost like negative because then it doesn’t feel authentic. It doesn’t feel real. The reason when someone follows you as a business owner is because they like you. They believe in your product. You already have built the bridge to get them in, right?

[00:14:37] Jason: And so, so many times it’s like, oh, I’m just worried, like I’m not good at it. And I’m like, yeah, but they buy from you because they like you and you’re authentic and you’re genuine and if you’ll just start there and be okay if you fail, be like, Hey, look. I’m sorry y’all. That’s just so messed up, like, I’m not bad here. Let me do it again real quick. So sorry. People are like, oh my God, it’s almost like attractive to just be normal because in this day, I think especially on social media, when you get on social, everything is like the best version of anyone’s life, and everybody knows it. Everybody knows it’s all fake. It’s a facade of who we are. When you’re just genuine and real, it’s attractable. so I would just say, take a deep breath, relax. It didn’t have to be perfect. Just be honest, be genuine. Be yourself and I always tell our team at my wife’s boutique, I’m like, look, let’s just fail forward.

[00:15:29] Jason: Like even if it isn’t the best live, maybe it’s not the best launch, maybe it’s not the best, whatever, but we’re taking steps towards something. The worst thing we can do is have fear and not take a step and never move is we know we’re not gonna get a different result. And so let’s just start moving that direction and then, and just start. Right. And so one of the things that we did early on, We did live selling for six months before we could do $500 worth of revenue in a live. Now we do like a hundred dollars a minute. I mean, you know, we go live for an hour and a half to do a hundred dollars, $150 a minute. At my wife’s boutique, we couldn’t do a hundred dollars the first 45 minutes, the first month probably.

[00:16:07] Jason: And so like, you gotta understand that this, it’s not like a sprint. You’re not gonna go live one time and go, oh my goodness. So some people have some moments like that, but it’s like, all right, let’s have a goal. Let me sell one thing today and let me go live next time and sell two things. Like, it’s just like, let’s get the motion going, right?

[00:16:26] Jason: And so one of the things that I always suggest people to do is, Hey, find 10 friends or 10 customers that you know love you and just say, look, would you come on this first live? I need some people to help talk and chat and support me. Get a little bit of like, fam there to like, help kind of get the momentum going.

[00:16:45] Jason: The first handful of times just have no expectation, but just rip the Band-Aid and do it. Because what will happen is the more you do it, the more you’ll become consistent. Your customers will expect it. They’ll know how to respond to you, you know? Go ahead and have some breaks in the live, say after five or six items, I’m gonna ask a question to get my people talking. We had questions like every six or eight items. What’s your favorite vacation spot? Like, it was the middle of pandemic, like, what go-to recipe are you going to right now? Like, things that would make people communicate in the live so that when you’re up there in front of the camera, you don’t feel like it’s crickets on the back end.

[00:17:19] Jason: If I can get people talking in the live, they’re much more likely to buy something in the live cuz they’re opening up. The more comments I get, the more organic reach I get and so I’m trying to play into the algorithm a little bit, but I’m solving multiple things. So I would always say like, have some predetermined questions that are kind of icebreakers. Invite some people that are great customers to say, look, I don’t care if you buy anything. Just come in and engage and ask questions. Help me like, foster some community. And that’s the big thing is like, live selling is about getting people in to build a community. If you come to my wife’s live and watch one of their lives, there’s hundreds of people talking to one another because they built relationships over time. They live on the other ends of the country and they’ve never seen each other face to face, but they’re like talking to one another. And if you get into sewing, you think about like how much, there’s already so much commonality in people that are like leaning in this space, sewing, quilting, whatever it is, there’s already common bond. You’re not trying to figure out how to get a mechanic, you know, a guy mechanic and a lady doing crafting to get on the same page and have commonality, like the commonality? The community’s already built. You’re just fostering it. And as you’re doing the thing like explain and talk and celebrate, like you already have the foundation to make a dynamic live. It’s just bringing that out in fostering it and you need to guide it some, like you really kinda have to tee it up for a little while and then you’ll look up one day and go, we don’t do the questions anymore. We don’t have to ask people to come join. It’s just there, you know, and it’s beginning to happen.

[00:18:48] Jason: But it’s a marathon, right? It’s a marathon and you gotta make sure your stay consistent to the time of the day and the motion, and then over time it begins to build itself. but I think just understanding that you’re not gonna normally gonna come out, have two lives and do $10,000. Like that’s probably not the expectation or reality. Can be. If it is high five, like great, but six months from now, what if you were doing $5,000 a live? How much did it, could that change your business? Most people would say, oh, it’d be, you know, huge. Okay, great. Well let’s have a six month plan to get there, and let’s just bite by bite, get there, you know.

[00:19:29] Spencer: Yeah, I totally understand that. I think that segment was brilliant and something that I hope that our listeners will probably listen to a couple of times, especially if you’re thinking about live selling because there’s so many tidbits there on, you know, just consistency and how to really effectively do this.

[00:19:45] Spencer: And I think this kind of spans live selling, right? Like this is just marketing and especially social marketing in general, right, about posting consistently and creating content consistently, and that it doesn’t have to necessarily be enterprise grade content all the time. And I think that is what really scares so many small and medium business owners is that they feel like the content they have to put out has to be, you know, really perfect, right? Whether that’s a video or an image or whatever it is, that if someone looks at it and they’re like, oh, well, clearly someone made that in, you know, Photoshop at home or whatever, right? They like, you know, or, or that was a picture of a sign that someone drew or whatever, right? That because of this kind of perfectionism that we have in social media, I think it prevents people from actually creating the content that would ultimately help them. And, And I think that’s kind of some of what your message was, jason, is right, that like, in some ways it’s just about going out and getting started and even if success isn’t likely to come out, the very first live, I mean, that’s just, Business, right? Like, how often are grand openings really a line down the block, right? Unless you’re an Apple store or someone who has a giant reputation, it’s not like on your grand opening, there’s thousands of people waiting to get in the store. That’s just not how it works, but it’s consistency and reliability and I think that is what these lives can start to provide for your business, you know, kind of agnostic of your location or space.

[00:21:15] Jason: Yeah. Well you think, yeah, you say you’re a brick and mortar and you’re open on Tuesday and you have a bad sales day. You don’t go, crap, we just gotta close the store tomorrow, but just never reopened. I’m like, well, well, of course you wouldn’t say that. You know, we just had a slow day, had a bad day.

[00:21:26] Jason: You’re gonna have bad lives, you’re gonna have a slow live and you know, but, Just again fail forward. You know, cuz if you’re failing forward, you’re not failing, you’re just, you’re incrementally growing towards the goal and I think that’s, you know, the big takeaway. But yeah.

[00:21:40] Jason: You think about the things that go viral on social are not perfected videos. Now, sometimes they go viral for really bad reasons that we don’t replicate. Tik Tok has become like this viral sensation off of just quick videos that are just very like, quirky, funny, weird. Not mass produced, you know what I mean? Because people want to consume that type of stuff.

[00:22:04] Spencer: Yeah. Okay, Jason, well let’s kind of pivot here and talk more, you know, vertical centric here as far as I know that CommentSold you guys have been, you know, helping quilt and sewing shops find success for years now and obviously Like Sew we’ve kind of started to push that even further, but I would be curious as to, you know, how do you see quilt and sewing shops finding success in this space, specifically you know, selling fabric would probably be the number one thing. You know, obviously kits, things like that. Tell us how you see you know, kind of. The highest producers finding success in this space.

[00:22:41] Jason: Yeah. So I think there’s a lot of ways to get there. I’ll kind of highlight maybe a couple. I don’t want anybody to feel like what I’m fixing to say is the only way, and if…

[00:22:48] Spencer: No, sure.

[00:22:49] Jason: You know, for sure. But I think one of the things about crafting, creating anything is you have an ability to sell things, just flat out like buy this thing that you need but you have such an opportunity to talk about the building creation of that thing, doing that creation, you know, on a live show. I think just fundamentally like, Hey, we’re gonna make something today. I’m gonna show you how to use the things that we’re gonna sell you and we kind of, it’s almost like soft selling it. It’s a little different. Me saying, Hey, I have a phone. Either you buy the phone or you don’t buy the phone. Either like it or you don’t like it, versus like, all right, let me show you these 20 things that together make something, and then, oh, by the way, as I make it, here’s 30 different fabrics that you could use to make the thing.

[00:23:33] Jason: And so I think when I talked earlier about education plus entertainment, like kind of creates this life selling moment. I don’t think any industry is positioned better than someone that’s in this sewing, crafting, quilting kind of space because you can say like, Hey, these are the tools, these are the resources that you’re able to use, and as you’re entertaining them and making something, or just, you know, talking to someone and say, Hey, as you make whatever, or as you’re thinking about your quota, here’s the fabrics we offer, like you already have lined up the thing that they’re gonna do with it, which is when you’re selling clothing, I’ve gotta imagine where I would wear that to. I gotta figure out, do I need another dress? Do I need another pair of denim? But as you’re talking to somebody in y’all’s space, it’s like, yes, of course I’m gonna be buying fabric. This is my hobby. This is what I do. This is what I’m passionate about and so of course I’m gonna buy it. I just need to see what options are out there. I’m already coming with the mindset to buy, you know?

[00:24:32] Jason: And then, Expanding beyond that from a product standpoint is to say, Hey, as I’ve made these things or as I’m making you, here’s some new tools I’m using. Here’s some new ways that I’m making these things and here’s the opportunity to purchase the tools to do it. And so I think the biggest thing for me in this space, and while we’ve found success and the people that have really done a really good job, is they’ve become the expert in the how or the expert in the resource to be able to do it. And they have really positioned themself in that world and they get on there and just have fun with their people and their community, make things with them, and then again, here’s the kit, here’s the fabric opportunities and it feels different than selling them you know, because again, if you’re, if I’m trying to sell you something that you’re not sure you need, then there’s gotta be an overly aggressive mindset to sell. Where in this space, I think it’s more about, just opening up the opportunity to say, as you buy I’m somebody that can sell you something.

[00:25:30] Jason: And then too, I think in y’all’s space, like I live in a town, like I don’t know where we would go to buy the things that your seller’s sell. Like we don’t have a Hobby Lobby, we don’t have some of these major things and I think, you know, just being at the fingertips to be able to get products like this, I think is a big deal and so again, I think being the expert, I think the entertainment value, like, hey, I found a new way to do something, or I want to teach you how to do it, the educational piece and then the soft selling really comes with that and so that’s why I think there’s been so much success is it doesn’t have to feel like I’m putting on a show, you know what I mean? I’m just hanging out with my friends and we’re doing it together. And I, you know, and I was watching a movie the other day and I thought about y’all’s space and so I cannot think of the movie right now. I’ll have to come out, I’ll have to send it to you later, save you this example.

[00:26:20] Jason: But there was this group of men and women who met every single day and they were in there like sewing together, talking, having community, and it was really about sharing life together while they did something they were passionate about. For me, it may be going playing golf with my friends and for Saturday we’re gonna spend four hours together.

[00:26:37] Jason: But golf is kind of the vehicle to have the fellowship that I drive and along for and I think in this space it’s, hey, we’re gonna come together and have the fellowship in the community around something we’re super passionate about. Oh, and by the way, you don’t have to go anywhere to buy these things. I’ve gotta ’em right here for you and I’ll ship ’em to you. That’s why I think we found so much success in this vertical because it’s just so easy and honestly, it meets a need that everybody has; community, relationship, a hobby, and by the way, there’s e-commerce layered on top of all that.

[00:27:10] Spencer: Yeah. Jason, you know, it’s so funny. It’d be almost like you listened to a lot of the podcasts that we’ve had in this space where a really common topic is how do you build community, right? Because the most effective quilt shops that we see are quilt shops that have simply found a niche in a community and expanded upon that, right?

[00:27:30] Spencer: And I think that this, I, if you feel like you don’t already have a community, this can help build that. And if you feel like you have one, then this can like significantly supplement on top of that, right? Where, you know I, I think my favorite part about being in the quilting and sewing space is kind of what you’re saying is that, shopping, I think has this like maybe connotation of like guilty pleasure a little bit, right? Like you’re just in it to like get some extra pants or shirts or whatever. Right? If my wife listens to this she’ll know kind of what I’m referring to there. But I…

[00:28:00] Jason: just steer her to my wife’s boutique. We’ll be fine.. .

[00:28:02] Spencer: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But I don’t think that quilting and sewing necessarily has that connotation of like it’s not a guilty pleasure, like it is a hobby. It is productive in so many different ways. And I think that these kind of community building activities like being on a live or any of the other things that we’ve talked about on this podcast, you know, teaching classes, you know, in-store events, things like that, they are so positive, right? They are so uplifting, kind of what you’re talking about, right. For you it’s golf for so many people in the United States and, and in the world, it’s quilting and sewing. Right? And that’s just like, it’s kind of a heartwarming thing, right? That’s how I view it, right? Like it just, it feels good to be a part of, and it feels good to talk about.

[00:28:45] Jason: Yeah.

[00:28:47] Spencer: Okay, Jason, well, I do want to talk about, you know, for our listeners if they haven’t already started or wanted to get started, how do you get started with, you know, Videeo by CommentSold?

[00:28:59] Jason: Yeah, so, it’s pretty simple, right? So the preferred method would be that they just get in touch with you and obviously you all have this relationship. We’ve built a special relationship with y’all, so we can make sure we take care of your customers in a unique way. I mean, we do a different level of service knowing that we’re able to partner with y’all and have these, you know, I mean, they’re our customers, but you’re also our customer. And so we wanna make sure we take care of both sides of this equation. So I think reaching out to you obviously would be best but we have a special offer that we want to do. So, one of the things in this podcast, hopefully you’re excited about potentially using the product and what you know, the offering that we can, that we want to give is to do a 12 month contract but to get three months free, so you’re actually getting 15 months for the price of 12, which is a huge deal. There’s not a huge investment to get involved, you know, and so I think it’s a small investment on the return that we’re seeing. But we do wanna offer three free months and so if they come through with you and say, look, I heard the podcast. I wanna take care of this offer. We’re gonna run that through February 20th is that special kind of promotion block? Then we’ll give them 15 months for the price of 12, which I think it’ll be big for the clients to be able to get those extra three months at no additional cost.

[00:30:10] Spencer: Awesome. Well amazing, Jason, thank you so much for kind of putting that together. So, yeah, you can email me at spencerwright@staging-likesew.kinsta.cloud. Just shoot me an email and say, Hey, I listened to the podcast. You know, say I love the podcast. Thank you so much. You know, I’m just messing

[00:30:26] Jason: They need to suck up to you a little bit, right, to get the deal.

[00:30:30] Spencer: Yeah. Just but anyways, yeah, just shoot me an email and I will make sure that I get you all the info that you need. This promo’s gonna run for 11 days. You know, starting, I guess today, the day we’re gonna air this podcast and go from there. So we are super excited. Jason, do you have any kind of final thoughts for us? Anything you wanna say before we close?

[00:30:48] Jason: Yeah, I think Look, you’re gonna hear this podcast, you’re gonna think, man, I need to do this and then you’re gonna have something pop up on your radar today that you end up putting energy on and you’re gonna like forget to come back to it, right? I would just say, as you’re listening, if you’re like, look, I know I need to do that. I know this is something I need to do. Like, don’t let the next thing come up, email Spencer and say, look, I need to do it. Even if you can’t do it today, we’ll begin to get the ball rolling. But invest in yourself. Invest in something that we know, or like we did over 1.1 billion in sales through our platform last year. So like, this isn’t like a fad. This is something that is absolutely growing every single year. Get in on this. Change your business. You have the perfect product vertical to be in, to really maximize this and just say, look, this is the year I’m gonna put my best foot forward and it’s not gonna be perfect out of the gate.

[00:31:44] Jason: But knowing that next year when you turn back around, you’re gonna say, man, like this thing begin to really produce fruit in my business and really begin to kind of take my business to the next level. And you don’t have to have it all figured out like, let’s just get the next few and what will happen is if it takes off, you’ll bring some people in to help offset this and there’ll be revenue and profit to be able to do it.

[00:32:05] Jason: So don’t get freaked out on the things that we don’t know yet. Just take the next step. Say, look, I’m in, I wanna do it. Let’s take a shot at it. We got 15 less to figure it out. Huge return on investment opportunities and us three; you the customer, obviously Like Sew, and Videeo by CommentSold, like together I really think we can create something special in this space and make a big impact on your business and that’s what we’re here for on my side and obviously on the Like Sew side as well. So let us just be a partner with you for the rest of 2023.

[00:32:39] Spencer: Perfect. Well thank you Jason, so much for coming on with us. Thank you for your time and your insight, your expertise. We really appreciate it. Just one last final thought. Remember, if you want to, you know, kind of get started, shoot me an email, spencerwright@staging-likesew.kinsta.cloud or you can respond, you know, probably most of you are seeing this in my newsletter. You can respond to my newsletter if that works as well. But anyways, thank you so much for listening. Thank you Jason, for being on the podcast and I hope everyone has an amazing day.

[00:33:05] Jason: Awesome.

Heidi Kaisand, Hen & Chicks Studio - Building An Audience With Retreats | Like Sew

spencerwright@rainpos.com (Spencer Wright) — Fri, 12 Apr 2024 14:10:23 GMT