Step 5: Research - Shop Owner Interview

Next, I sat down with Brittany to discuss what was working for her with the business and what were areas that could use some improvement. Brittany keeps channels of communication very open with her core group of customers and had learned from them that they were not as likely to buy items from her store if she didn’t have real life pictures of them. Because she was providing her customers with so many fabric and alteration options and all of her clothes were custom made to order, it was impossible for her to have physical inventory for every product she offered so her shop displayed mock ups of the items. 

We discussed how she was afraid of not giving them enough options and that she might actually be giving them too many. A good chunk of the clothing styles and fabrics she offered were not even selling. She wouldn’t order fabric until an order was placed, which often led to long wait times for orders for customers and higher shipping costs for Brittany since she was having to order her fabric sporadically throughout the month and not altogether.This was not only overwhelming for shoppers, but also led to Brittany having to take on too much extra costs and work.

She decided to revamp her business model. Going forward, she would only take custom orders through her Facebook group the first half of each month. Her website would then be used to sell only items that were already made and ready to ship. This way, she could display pictures of all of the clothing and stop using the mockup model. She’d also move away from having a large assortment of pattern collections, opting instead to arrange patterns by gender and releasing limited edition holiday pattern “drops”.