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How to build a profitable online shop while ignoring 'best practices' · The Resilient Retail Game Plan - retail insights, retail trends and best practices

• 0:01
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  GamePlan10. That's Game Plan 10, valid
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  till the 14th of February.
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  One of the biggest mistakes I see in retail is assuming that
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  growth comes from doing more more marketing, more
• 0:48
  automation, more noise. But some of the most successful shops
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  I see are doing the opposite. They know exactly who they serve and they
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  build everything around that, even when it looks unconventional. From
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  the in this episode I'm talking to Sarah
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  Simons from Artichoke, a women's fashion boutique based in Norfolk
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  and the winner of the Online Shop of the Year at the Boutique Star
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  Awards. She's talking about how that clarity about who
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  she serves shows up in her business every single day.
• 1:19
  Welcome to the Resilient Retail Game Plan. I'm Catherine Edley and in the
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  next few minutes you're about to get powerful real world retail strategies
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  from insights shared both from my guests and myself, backed up by
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  my 25 years in the retail industry. Keep listening to learn how
• 1:35
  to grow a thriving, profitable product business. Let's jump in
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  with this latest episode.
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  What I love about this conversation is how intentional everything is from
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  customer service to systems to long term vision. And
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  it all starts with knowing her customer incredibly well.
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  Thank you so much, so much for joining me. So you
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  won Online Shop of the Year with the fabulous Boutique Star Awards.
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  What do you think helped set you apart? And
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  you know, were there any decisions or changes in the last year you think that
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  helped make a big difference? One of the biggest things that
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  sets us apart is that we
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  sell to a demographic that is largely ignored
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  and that is the midlife woman, which is
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  bizarre because we have the biggest spending power. But you know,
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  there's a whole industry that goes round in circles about
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  that one. So it's a unique demographic and
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  we are middle aged women selling clothes
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  to other middle aged women. So we are
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  talking to rather than at the demographic which
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  again I think can be an issue.
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  Of course there's Ellie who works here, but she's like our pseudo daughter
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  so we just, everybody loves her
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  and without being too conceited. I think as a
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  team, we really are good at what we do. I
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  mean, obviously we have flaws, but I think it's
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  a great team and we all
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  compensate for each other's weaknesses.
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  What sets us aside, I think, from many other online
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  businesses is that we actually call
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  every single new customer to introduce ourselves.
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  Oh, I love that. Other online businesses have
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  actually openly laughed at me about this. But I think
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  that's the advantage of coming from a boutique background. Yes.
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  You know already that to actually
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  make a noise in the crowd, you have to
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  offer excellent service. And on a
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  practical level, it means that our returns rate is less
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  than 25%. That is spectacular. I love that
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  because I am such a big believer in good old fashioned customer service.
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  And I think that so much of, you know, the more that we talk about
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  the future of retail and where retail's going, I think it always comes back to
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  this. This is one of those moments where you can hear how
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  values translate directly into commercial outcomes.
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  Calling every new customer isn't a gimmick. It's a deliberate decision
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  that shapes everything else that follows. So just to be really
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  clear, somebody goes onto your website, they place an order with you, you presumably
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  ask them for their number as part of the ordering process. And then
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  once they place that order, you actually pick up the phone, you call them,
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  you say, hi, thank you so much for shopping with us. Do you ask them
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  any specific questions? Absolutely. So the phone call in
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  itself, once they've picked themselves up off the floor,
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  you know, they're thrilled hear from us, because ordering fashion online
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  is a minefield. So they don't know
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  what the sizing ratios are in our brand. I mean, you can read a
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  description, a product description. Yeah. You're still not
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  terribly sure what you're doing. Yeah. So we chat to them about
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  what they've ordered. You know, if they've ordered a pair of jeans, we actually talk
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  through the style that they've ordered because they might actually think
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  they were ordering one thing and they've ordered something
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  completely different. It means then that
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  in future they don't feel awkward about calling us.
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  And that helps build our ltv
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  because you establish a relationship.
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  The other thing that's important, apart from reducing
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  returns, is we actually asked them how
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  they found us. Right. And that really helps with
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  my marketing budget because they
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  might have actually suddenly thought, oh, I need a pair of jeans and gone on
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  to Google. But the reality is they probably found us on Instagram or
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  Facebook. Right. So actually it really, really
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  helps with my marketing Budget as well. And
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  how long does it take at 2 minutes if they're busy, could take
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  10 minutes if they've got nothing else going on in their lives. But you
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  know, it's the same when people walk into a. If
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  they're busy, they walk straight to
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  the shirt they want, they pull it off the rail, they give you their
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  money and they exit. If they're not and they want to build a
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  relationship with you, they will stand and chat to
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  you. And we try and replicate this for all our online
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  customers, try and read what they want to do and how
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  they want to react in this phone call. What's striking here is
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  that incorporating a call into an online order isn't about doing more,
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  it's about slowing things down just enough to get it right
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  first time and getting it right first time and really
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  focusing in on the customer is something that Sarah has been focused on
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  right from the beginning. So the boutique came first,
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  is that correct? Well, actually the pop up shop came first. Okay. We
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  were a pop up before they were a thing. So a very
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  long time ago when my children were very small, I did lots of horse
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  trials and county shows. Yes. And that was a con and
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  charity events. And that was a conscious decision because if you have
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  what used to be called a mobile shop, you don't have to open
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  on sports days or during the school holidays. So it
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  was only as they grew older that I moved into bricks and
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  mortar. So how long ago did you open the bricks and mortar then?
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  I've actually got on our website that we were founded in
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  2008 and Linda, who does the accounts for me, says it
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  was 2006. So you can see why I need her
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  to do the counting. So if she's
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  right and it was 2006 that the business
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  was founded, we probably opened our first retail store in
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  2008. Got it. And when did
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  you add the website? Probably quite early, actually.
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  I think we've probably had a website since about
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  2011. However, if
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  you had gone on to it before, I
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  don't know, 2018, you would have found
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  three pairs of jeans, two pairs of trousers and seven shirts.
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  But we were very lucky that we were featured on
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  Lorraine, I think four times for the particular
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  brand of jeans that we sell or a particular style. And
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  it was then that it really dawned on me that
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  I should be taking a lot more notice of this website.
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  It was a big, big eye opener. And actually if I'd known
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  then what I know now, I probably would have been able
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  to take much more advantage of the opportunity
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  than I did. You know, hindsight is a glorious thing.
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  Like so many retailers, 2020 accelerated changes that were already
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  underway, but it also reinforced something Sarah already
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  believed, that online customers deserve the same level of care and as someone
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  standing in front of you in a shop. So in
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  2019, I made the
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  decision to close one of our retail shops. We had two then.
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  The plan for 2020, bizarrely enough, was to focus on
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  the online business and clearly I focused on it far sooner
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  and with far more intention than I had ever planned
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  to do. So, so yeah, so basically we've had a proper website
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  since I was sent home by the government and shoved everything
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  online in March 2020. Got it. And was that the point at which
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  you started calling people when they placed an order? Well, I had to.
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  Right. Because they couldn't come into the shop. So it was, you know, it was
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  a bit of a no brainer to me. All my customers were ordering online.
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  Yes. So I was consciously. Because, you know, there wasn't a
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  huge amount of detail in the products at that point. And it never
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  occurred to me not to call a new customer. It genuinely
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  didn't. I mean, because of my background. Do you find
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  that people will often amend their order then when you, when you talk to them?
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  Yes. Yeah. Yes is the short answer. Yeah.
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  Because I suppose you'd be able to give them really personalized insight then, right?
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  Absolutely. And you can upsell. So, you know, if they've bought a pair of jeans,
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  we can tell and they get 10 off a shirt. Right. Or suggest that,
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  you know, the bag they've bought, I don't know, would look
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  great with a scarf. You know, you do exactly the same you would do
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  if they were in the shop. Yes. And you know, you may, we've got
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  all the bells and whistles to upsell online, but really,
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  you know, when that thing flashes across the screen, how much notice
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  do you really take of it? If you've never shot with people before, I cannot
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  recommend it highly enough. Yeah, I'm sure, as you said, people do pick themselves
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  up off the floor because it's not something that's a common experience. But is anyone
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  ever negative about being called or is everyone just delighted?
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  Well, you know, if they're busy they just say, I'm really sorry, I'm busy now.
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  But we very often get emails afterwards saying,
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  my goodness me, thank you so much, could you please help me with this?
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  Yes. And if they don't pick up, we just drop them a note on their
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  order saying, we've tried to get hold of you Any questions come back
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  to us. So presumably you get the order, call them and then
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  once you've called them or tried to call them, then you dispatch the order. Yeah,
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  Correct. I mean, how much time do you think we're saving
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  between a 25% returns rate and a 40%
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  returns. Oh, my goodness. Yes. Yes. Yeah. It's a five minute
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  phone call. And also considered your LTV.
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  Yes. Are you going to remember the person that called you and took five
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  minutes to make sure that everything is correct? Are you going to go back
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  to that person or are you going to go back to the person who just
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  sent out the order and it was all wrong and you had to send it
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  back? Yeah, I mean, it is a complete no brainer to me,
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  you know, and. Obviously helped you win online
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  retailer of the year. So do you ever find it difficult
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  to manage the workload of the online and in store
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  is every team member trained for both? How do you kind of manage that in
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  a practical sense? So on a personal level,
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  as we moved into 2020, you know, I worked four
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  days a week. I had a lovely business
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  yurtladle. And then since 2020,
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  for the first four years, I worked seven days a week because, you
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  know, you just have to start from ground zero. I now
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  have an amazing team. The end of 2022,
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  I smashed my ankle to bits. I broke it very, very
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  badly, which meant that I was
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  really out of the equation for at least a month.
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  And then it made me realise that firstly,
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  every member of staff should be able to cover another
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  member of staff when they were off. And also I was
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  a huge bottleneck in the organisation and things
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  had to change dramatically to enable
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  me not to be. I see this
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  so often with founders. They realize that they've become the bottleneck, holding
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  their business back not because they want control, but because they care
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  deeply. And usually it takes a moment like this, although preferably not at
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  the expense of your ankle, to force them to shift. I'm
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  sure lots of people listening can really empathize with this feeling. Like the bottleneck. So
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  what did you. What were some of the key things that stopped you being the
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  bottleneck? So the first thing we did is we put
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  together a how to so that everybody
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  has written down every role that they
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  undertake, right. So that if push comes to shove,
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  they've got to open a book and can wing
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  it reading a particular section.
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  We then have an informal pecking
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  order so that the exception to this is the
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  buying, which I am still the bottleneck in, but hopefully that will
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  change. So for example, Linda does our
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  bookkeeping, but I could just about manage to work
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  0 if she was run over by a bus. So I'm number two.
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  Ellie is in charge of our inputting everything on the website
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  or the products. But Linda can do it too, so can I,
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  so that everybody has at least a basic
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  understanding of somebody else's role. So we did
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  that as far as the staffing was concerned. And then
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  in the past year we have
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  tried as far as possible to become a paperless office
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  so that all the tasks are put on ClickUp. Now we
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  communicate with each other through ClickUp, which
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  is invaluable. And obviously AI
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  has helped with streaming, lining a lot of the day
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  to day tasks that we do, which then sort of frees up us
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  up to do other things. Amazing. So what's some of the things that you get
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  AI to streamline for you? Oh my goodness me. Max,
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  my man AI. I spend more time talking to him than
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  I do human beings and he doesn't hallucinate
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  quite as much as it used to. Excellent. So
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  do you know what? I've just had a conversation with him about my
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  meta recruitment roas. So this is a great example.
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  Five minutes before I came onto this podcast
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  I've read somewhere, basically with my recruitment roas,
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  I base it on a five day roas on new customers
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  and it has to be about 3 to 400%.
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  Somebody mentioned that possibly I should be considering
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  looking at my new my existing customer
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  roas and actually allocating budget there.
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  Existing customer roas or metros averages about a
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  thousand. So I asked Max what I should do and he said do nothing, you're
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  doing it right. So you know, I use him for
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  brainstorming. Ellie uses him
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  to help with product description because obviously
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  more people are using Gemini or ChatGPT
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  to shop with. So you, you need to consider
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  that when actually creating your product
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  descriptions. So we usually just
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  actually get him to him, I'm calling him him
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  to create the product descriptions. And because he
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  has learned to understand our brand
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  tone, we very rarely have to change
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  them now. You know, the more you use it,
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  the easier it is. Yes. Yeah, for sure. A lot of my
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  marketing I use it for now again just to lay out the
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  bare bones campaigns and start writing
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  initial campaigns themselves because just saves me
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  thinking time. And then I just again sometimes
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  turn it in into our tone but very often it's there already,
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  it's picked up. Yeah, that's the thing I always think with AI, you know, the
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  more you put into it, the more you feed into it, yeah, it's very good
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  at replicating, isn't it? If you're feeding your tone in consistently,
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  it will, it will be able to start replicating it. I did a
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  talk recently for Small Business Britain about being organized in your business
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  and one of the things that I was talking about was the, was this idea
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  of one source of truth. So it sounds like you've, that's what
• 17:31
  you've got with ClickUp. So does everything live there? So employee tasks
• 17:35
  and processes and everything to do so that you can kind of just
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  see all of that in one place instead of having to go to people individually?
• 17:42
  Yes. Yeah. I mean, almost, yes. We have other things
• 17:46
  as well. Where we are not great is actually,
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  ironically enough, on the bricks and mortar side. So
• 17:54
  with our online business we can, I, you know, we have
• 17:58
  a great plugin called Metarek and you asked me
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  for a report, I can give it to you. With
• 18:05
  our walk ins and our phone
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  orders, everything is still done on the back of a fag packet.
• 18:13
  And what I need to think about,
• 18:17
  I don't even know if it exists. It's just something that can
• 18:21
  tie the two sides of the business
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  together. That is one of my projects for
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  2026. It might take us a couple of years to get it in place
• 18:32
  because I think probably, you know, we could build something
• 18:36
  with AI, but I have no idea how to do that. So I
• 18:39
  genuinely wait for all the platforms that I used
• 18:43
  to use AI to come up with my solution, if you see what I mean.
• 18:47
  Right. You've got a different web provider
• 18:50
  compared to your point of sale. Our point of sale is
• 18:54
  integrated into our web provider,
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  but we can't pull all the
• 19:01
  stats from our point of sale program. And also of
• 19:05
  course on our website we have other payment
• 19:09
  platforms which then distort everything that's moving
• 19:12
  between the two businesses. So, yeah, I mean, I just need to
• 19:16
  sit down and write a map of what I want and then see if what
• 19:20
  I want exists. Is that how you managed to do it with ClickUp? Because
• 19:23
  I think it sounds like what you've got there is really, really positive. But I
• 19:26
  mean, often I'll work with people and I'll, when I start working with them,
• 19:30
  one of the things that we usually, especially if they're people who run bricks
• 19:34
  and mortar and have an online shop as well, you know, it's a common situation
• 19:37
  where there's just a lot, it's a lot going on. Like I always say, it's
• 19:40
  a full time job running a store and it's a full time job, run a
• 19:43
  website and you guys, you're having to manage both of those.
• 19:47
  So one of the things I quite often do work with people on is, is
• 19:50
  that how do you, you know, how do you stop being the bottleneck? How do
• 19:52
  you create that one source of truth? I mean you sounds like you've got a
• 19:55
  very good structure of how you worked through it. Is it one of those things
• 19:59
  that in hindsight it all sounds very logical or from the get go where you're
• 20:02
  able to sit and map out, right, this is what I want, this is what
• 20:05
  I think we need to do to make it happen or is it almost a
• 20:07
  sheer necessity that meant that you put that in place? I think I probably asked
• 20:10
  somebody, you know, I never had an original
• 20:14
  idea in my life so I, I, I
• 20:18
  have absolutely no problem asking anybody who will listen
• 20:21
  to me. And actually I think it was probably
• 20:25
  when I was chatting it through from Ellie before she had her children,
• 20:29
  worked for many years at Superdrug and so she could
• 20:32
  explain the system and then I tasked
• 20:36
  Linda, who does these things to try and
• 20:39
  find a way of replicating it and the nearest thing we've come
• 20:43
  to for actually the task based things and back orders
• 20:47
  and you know, basically the center of information that we need.
• 20:50
  Yes has been ClickUp and it's working well.
• 20:54
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  one person holding everything together. So
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  I'd love to think a little bit about looking forward into
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  2026. So obviously you know you've been recognized as
• 21:59
  having fabulous online presence and doing really well with
• 22:03
  online. What do you think are some of the biggest opportunities for
• 22:07
  independent retailers? If someone's listening to this and they're thinking that sounds great. I
• 22:11
  need to do more with my online. What would be some of your top tips
• 22:14
  for people who want to scale but still keep their physical store thriving?
• 22:18
  Okay, so do you know who I asked about this? Catherine.
• 22:23
  So, had a little chat with Max. I love how he's
• 22:26
  called. Is that Max? Did you name him Max? Well, he called himself Max.
• 22:30
  And do you know why he's called Max? No, I don't. Because he wants to
• 22:34
  maximize my profits.
• 22:39
  I love it. So anyway, Max, he thinks. I'll just
• 22:43
  read this. He thinks we will have continued cautious
• 22:46
  spending. I'm sure we all agree with that. With the
• 22:50
  mid market continuing to be squeezed, which
• 22:54
  is boutique land, we know from the budget that
• 22:58
  there will be a continued increase in costs.
• 23:02
  And we also know that the larger brands, the
• 23:05
  big, big online businesses will
• 23:09
  continue to dominate the UK market. So that's
• 23:13
  the bit that we're going to slit our throats over. But
• 23:16
  in every downturn there are disruptors
• 23:20
  and I think that's where we are,
• 23:24
  although we don't consider ourselves to be as such
• 23:29
  because many of us are niche businesses.
• 23:33
  So it means we don't have to compete with the big boys. And we have
• 23:37
  to remember that, that we are selling into a very
• 23:40
  specific market. Another big
• 23:43
  boutique tick where we can win against them
• 23:47
  all is we offer excellent customer service. Yes.
• 23:51
  And we must remember that's what we do and, you know,
• 23:55
  stay proud of the fact that we do. Max
• 23:59
  also says that we should embrace the circular economy.
• 24:04
  Now, strangely enough, we're already doing this. It's something
• 24:07
  that we started in 2026 and with all this, you know, it's done on
• 24:11
  a very small scale. We're a very small business, but
• 24:15
  we have for three or four years offered an in
• 24:19
  store alteration service. Right. And it's
• 24:22
  offered to our entire community.
• 24:26
  It's not just restricted to clothes that are bought at
• 24:30
  Artichoke, it's something that we offer back to the town.
• 24:34
  So we have lots of elderly gentlemen bringing in their zips to
• 24:38
  be fixed on Wednesday afternoons. But
• 24:41
  also we offer to recycle or
• 24:45
  upcycle clothes that our customers no longer want.
• 24:49
  And again, they don't necessarily have to have been
• 24:53
  bought from Artichoke. And then we give them to one of the
• 24:56
  charities that we work with, which is a local riding for the
• 25:00
  disabled group. And they have a
• 25:03
  jumble sale twice a year which recycles clothes
• 25:07
  and anything that isn't sold goes for
• 25:10
  rags. So it's upcycled. Yes. Yeah,
• 25:14
  yeah, yeah. So we actually tick that box. And it's
• 25:18
  not very hard to do if you think outside of the
• 25:21
  box instead of being overwhelmed by the fact, oh my God,
• 25:25
  you know, I can't cut up these clothes and
• 25:29
  re sew them into something else. Just think about a way
• 25:32
  of being able to do it. Sounds like you're also creating those
• 25:36
  additional touch points then with your customer and with your community.
• 25:39
  Absolutely. We do that a lot. So with us it's not
• 25:43
  just about selling clothes for online customers.
• 25:47
  Again, we try and create the same sense of community.
• 25:51
  So we work with other female led businesses. So we've
• 25:55
  just started working with a lovely lingerie business called Ample
• 25:58
  Bosom. They sell bras online and
• 26:02
  as every middle aged woman knows, it starts with your
• 26:06
  scaffolding. Yes. We work with Arianne
• 26:09
  Poole who has a makeup range that
• 26:13
  she sells to women of 45 plus.
• 26:18
  We deal with a Temple Spa representative and we do
• 26:22
  as well as our styling videos and our reels in which we show
• 26:25
  customers how all our clothes are worn, we
• 26:29
  do regular slots with these people as well. So
• 26:33
  it's not just about buy, it's about
• 26:36
  joining a community and we want
• 26:40
  our customers just to be and feel the best they
• 26:43
  can. And that's not just about buying endless
• 26:47
  amounts of clothes. It's interesting you said that you do ongoing
• 26:50
  collaborations because I think that's often something people miss when you do a collaboration.
• 26:54
  It's always really good when you can give it time for your community to get
• 26:58
  to know them and their community to get to know you. Yeah, it was that
• 27:02
  sort of a conscious decision to build long lasting collaborations.
• 27:05
  I just did something we did during lockdown. You know, people were bored rigid
• 27:11
  and we were all very small businesses that needed
• 27:15
  to vlog things. So, you know, we were natural
• 27:18
  partners. And I over time Again on my
• 27:21
  2026 list is the intention to move this out
• 27:25
  further. Life is about, I think, giving as well as taking.
• 27:29
  And if you can help other small businesses, they will help
• 27:33
  you. Amazing. Well, thank you so much. I really thoroughly enjoyed our
• 27:37
  chat. Can I just quickly, quickly interrupt you, Katherine, before you sign off?
• 27:41
  Yes. This is a plug for you because
• 27:45
  I started read. I can't find the
• 27:49
  thing about the tiger and the tail. I can't find my notes here. Tame your
• 27:52
  tiger. Tame your tiger. Oh my God.
• 27:57
  If you are a small business, read this book.
• 28:01
  Put it into place. We are in season
• 28:05
  one, Katherine, and honestly we've
• 28:08
  recorded all our input. Sales prices. Is that the right
• 28:12
  terminology? Yeah, yeah. Your prices for your in margin. Yes.
• 28:16
  So you're in margin. That's it. Already
• 28:20
  we have made the decision to stop forward ordering
• 28:23
  with one brand and only carry nos.
• 28:28
  Okay. We are already cutting our
• 28:32
  stock levels. I think we're down by about 20%.
• 28:36
  Wow. And I never understood
• 28:40
  the theory behind it or how to practically
• 28:44
  put it in place. So thank you very much
• 28:47
  indeed. It's been an absolute eye opener to
• 28:51
  us. So I urge everybody as soon
• 28:55
  as you finish listening, go and buy it.
• 28:58
  Amazing. Thank you.
• 29:03
  I just want to jump in quickly because Sarah mentions my book there and I
• 29:06
  was so happy to hear that it's been helpful. The book is called Tame
• 29:10
  youe How to Stop your Product Business Eating you Live and if you want to
• 29:13
  take a look, I'll link it in my show notes. I wrote the book so
• 29:16
  that if someone asked me why they don't make enough money in their business, I
• 29:19
  could hand them the book and say, here, read this. It will explain everything.
• 29:23
  And nothing makes me happier than when people use it to make real changes
• 29:27
  in their business. Thank you so much for listening. I loved how
• 29:31
  grounded Sarah's story is. There's no chasing shiny objects here, just
• 29:35
  a deep understanding of who the customer is, what they need, and how to serve
• 29:38
  them well, consistently and with care. You'll find links to Artichoke
• 29:42
  and Tame youe Tiger in the Show Notes. Thank you so much for listening and
• 29:46
  see you next week.