Boutique Chat #209 | Balancing a Large, Growing Business and Being a Mom | Tori Gerbig of Pink Lily

Well, hey there. Are you guys ready for this one?

It's episode number 209 with someone I know you are going to love to hear their story. Get ready to hear from Tori Gerbig from the Pink Lily Boutique. Let's talk about your business strategy and the juicy details of what actually works, from mainstream fashion to fashion on Main.

Street and the entire ecosystem behind it.

How do we scale your company and do it with the balance and the happiness that we all seek? Let's hear from those insiders, experts, and strategists that actually make it happen. I'm your host, Ashley Alderson from the.

Boutique Hub, and I can't wait to chat.

You know, I think inside of any industry, we all have people that we look up to as leaders or people who've paved the way or people who've done something unique in the space that we're all building in. And so I know today many of you are probably already familiar with the Pink Lily Boutique and Tori Gerbig and have kind of watched this really unique growth from afar, saying, man, what is she doing? I want to do a little bit of that because I think it's pretty unique and special. So I'm really excited today, you guys, that Tori is joining us on the podcast so you can hear more of her story of what's happening inside of the Pink Lily with the amazing growth that they've had over the last couple of years. And I hope that you get some great takeaways as Tori is really open about kind of lifting the veil to some of their strategy and how they operate on a daily basis, how they're working with influencer influencers, and really what's next for some of their marketing strategy things like building out into really unique collections to how they work with influencers, all the things that they are doing both on Facebook and Instagram. Now with over 1.6 million followers on Facebook and 500,000 followers on Instagram, I hope there's some fun nuggets that you're able to pick up through this conversation. Guys, I think it's so cool. Anytime we can have a conversation with somebody who's not only a leader in our industry, but but it's also a member of the Boutique Hub and someone that's been kind and made themselves open to conversation with our entire industry, I think that's really cool to watch and to celebrate. So I'm curious to hear because, you know, I'm big on action. We all can be motivated by listening to a podcast, but motivation only takes us so far, action takes us the real leg of the journey. So I want to hear let us know over on Instagram, uticabusiness or on my personal Instagram J. Alderson and let me know what is your biggest takeaway from today and the one thing you're going to do to take action on what you learned each and every week. I love hearing these stories. So you guys don't forget to do that, take us over on Instagram or mention it in your story. We're happy to repost it for you. But at the end of the day, what this is all about is how can we lean in together in community over competition and help one another succeed in the boutique retail space. So thank you to Tori for being our special guest today and I'm really looking forward to hearing your guys takeaways from this episode. Enjoy you guys.

All right, guys, I know you're in for such a treat on the podcast this week because our guest is someone that if you have been around the boutique world for any amount of time, this is definitely going to be no stranger to you. So I am so excited to be joined by the co owner, co founder, CEO of the Pink Lily, Ms. Tori Gerbig. Hey, Tori, thanks for being on the show today.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited.

Oh, man. Now you and I went back and forth for a while to put this together. I know you're such a busy woman, so I'm so happy that this worked and that we're able to get together because we're going to drop a lot of bombs today.

Yeah, for sure. Thank you so much for having me. And I do apologize it takes so long to get anything on my calendar because my days are just so jam packed these days. For sure.

Absolutely. Well, let's start at the beginning. I know we've got a lot of really specific topics that we want to cover so that everyone listening's got some great takeaways and inspiration today. But no, I think to set the stage, let's go back to the beginning. As every story begins, talk to me about the Pink Lily, how it got started and just kind of how you stepped into this evolution of growth that you've had up till today.

Yeah, basically how it got started was my husband and I were just looking for another way to pay off student loans and pay off some debt. We both worked full time, so we started selling things on ebay here and there for a few years. But then after my son was born, I was on maternity leave and you know, it was kind of the beginning of online boutiques. Very few were out there. It wasn't very many at all. And I was like, you know, that's something I really think that I would like to do, and I think I would do it well, but I don't want to just start a website. So what I did was I got my reseller's license at that point and started selling clothes. I started a Facebook group. So I was literally just selling clothes out of my house and out of the trunk of my car. I was meeting people all around town four or five days a week. They would come to my work and pick up stuff, but basically, like, just a clothing dealer, like, outside of my. My vehicle. So I. It got to the point where it was just too much. I was so tired of running everywhere to meet people. And as much as I wanted to, I just. I knew we had to launch a website because I. There was so much more interest and so many more women that wanted to shop with me, But I was only one person, and I was literally driving to and from everybody, like, to see my collection and, like, hosting events every weekend, and there was just so much interest. So from there, we just decided. In January 2014, we launched our website, and it just. It took off from there.

Oh, man. So 2014, so fast forward. Gosh, I'm just trying to think. Instagram was pretty new around that time, and you started to get traction pretty quick after you took off on the website. Would you say there's help that you had along the way or one strategy that you were like, man, once I launch this website, this is what I'm going to do to keep the ball rolling?

And I do have a marketing degree, so I'm really good with social media marketing because I did go to school for that. And I graduated college in 2009. So, you know, this was just five years after college. I have a lot of information fresh in my head. So basically all I did the first year was sell our products through Facebook, not through their platform. Like, I just directed customers from Facebook to our website. But I did not focus on Instagram. I barely focused on Pinterest. I was like, you know, running it for the first six months all by myself. So I did all the social media and the orders and everything. So it was literally just okay post a few times on Facebook. But back then, everybody saw, you know, at the page, it would just show up in their feed. So I would do contests. And we grew really fast to having, you know, three and 400,000 followers within a six month, time span. So anything you'd post, you know, four or 500,000 people would see it. So. So of course that's not today's Facebook. Like it's totally changed, but it grew really fast, really quickly due to social media, man.

So fast forward me to today because it's crazy how that takes place when social media was organic back in the day. Today you guys, I know, have been really nationally recognized with BigCommerce. And I know you've been writing for some big magazines. You've got a new warehouse. What does the business look like today versus back then? Tell me a little more on that.

Yeah, back then, right after we launched in 2014, for the first seven months, we did it right out of my house. So our first million dollars of sales came from my dining room table. So that's where we packaged orders. We did. The post office hated us because they'd have to pick up every day like 100 packages. It was just basically my husband, myself, my mom and my sister in law and we were still working our full time jobs for a while during that time frame. Then fast forward to today. We've got our 50,000 square foot warehouse. We have 55 full time employees. We just had a meeting about an hour ago about bringing on at least 10 more full time employees. Because of our growth, we have a studio for photo shoots right upstairs. We have pickers, packers inspecting team, monogram team, our graphic tee design team, marketing team. Like just a huge overall corporation. And our retail also, we have one retail store now too. So definitely changed very quickly in five years.

Pretty crazy rapid growth right there. At what point did you and Chris look at each other and go, holy smokes, like we've got something. We've got a rocket ship here. We better change paths or take this seriously or whatever that conversation was like, when did that happen?

That was probably about four or five months in. That was like right before I quit my job. Of course. You know, the first four or five months I was working full time. We did have a toddler running and doing this on the side. I would stay up till two or three every morning. You know, I was like trying to find new clothes, look, talk to vendors, schedule, post on Facebook for the next day. Then I'd wake up and go to work eight to five, come home, take care of my son. After he'd go to bed from 10 to 2 or 3, answer questions. So it was just, it was too much. And we were like, okay, something's gotta give. Like how much can we sell to start making what we make in our combined salary, you know, like we both had great jobs, probably making $125,000 combined. So that was a lot to be like, okay, we're going to walk away from our jobs now. But we just knew we were like, we have to devote ourselves full time to this because we could do a lot more with it than just doing it as a side hobby. Both of our parents thought we were insane because they're just, you know, a generation where you don't just quit a good job and leave for a job on the Internet, you know, or a job, you know, to be self employed to sell stuff on the Internet. They thought we were insane and tried to talk us out of it. And we just obviously followed our hearts and it was definitely for the best man.

Tell me about this part of the growth. This is fascinating to me to think about 55 full time employees right now. How did you balance or was there a mindset shift that you and Chris needed to make at a certain point where you were like, okay, in order to sustain the level of growth we have now and prepare for the next level of growth that we see coming, we know we need to hire X number of people. How did you balance that process of knowing how much team to bring on at what point? Because you knew where that ship was going.

I mean, we're still trying to figure that out. Honestly, we, we struggle with it because I mean, for the first year, for the first six months, it was just a four man team. By the end of December of 2014, we had done $4 million in sales and there was just six of us. Like, we literally ran it lean. The following year we grew to 12 million and we still only had nine of us. We always ran it really lean. And then after that, once we built this warehouse, we're like, okay, now we have to, we have to add labor. Like, we have to stop worrying about the payroll expenses because we have to grow the company. So now we're still to that point. Like I said, we have 55. We honestly, with our increase in sales, I mean we're having 1500 to 2000 orders a day. We probably need 75 full time employees or a second shift or something. So I mean that's still, we still talk about it all the time. Like, because we, it was like, okay, now we have 20 full time employees, now we have 30, now we have 40. So like, we've never gone backwards. We've never had to let people go. We've never, I mean, unless it was performance, but not because of, you know, we can't afford payroll. So we have that conversation probably every few months.

It's such a. It's a shift to go, you know what I'm going to hire for where I'm going, not for where I am right now. And I think that's like a scarcity mindset thing that many business owners really get caught in that trap of what way you're going to look through it. What lens? Was there someone you went to, a mentor or inspiration outside of this industry that you were like, man, someone can talk to me about what it's really like to grow a business of this scale?

Nope. My husband and I have made this all decisions all by ourselves. We would obviously love to have a mentor, but it's really hard to find somebody with the same situation as us because most companies, there's a lot of people are like, oh, I've been in the industry for 20 years. I'm like, okay, I've only been in it for five years, you know, but like, so we don't compare to just the people who've been in it for so long because we've had such a rapid growth and we've had to make quick strategies and, you know, quick choices. And it's just, I really, I haven't found anybody yet that I can compare the situation to being kind of the same.

Absolutely. And certainly not in this industry. Very unique. Talk to me about, like, that growth along the way. Is there things you look back at and go, you know what, man, that was a. That was a failure, or not necessarily a failure, but that was an obstacle I was facing at the time, or maybe something that didn't go the way you wanted it to go. That looking back, you know, Heinz 2020, and you're. You're happy that it happened. Was there an obstacle you turned into an opportunity along the way?

Not really anything that turned into an opportunity. There's definitely obstacles that we were like, oh, wow. That we should have, like, thought this through a little bit more. Definitely. Kind of with our labor and with like, our Black Friday sales and some of that. We promoted and we pushed and we did so much with marketing, but then we didn't think through how long it was going to take to package all those orders that came in. So we were about two and a half weeks out after our Black Friday sale because we, from Thursday through Cyber Monday had over, I think, 20,000 orders. So that was definitely an obstacle. We couldn't keep the staff, our staff. I feel bad. We had to work them, like, literally 60 hours. And, I mean, I was in here packaging on the weekends. I didn't. I didn't think it all the way through. I was like, let's push it, push it, push it. Let's sail it. We'll have all these awesome 25 sweaters that are normally 50 bucks. We'll have all these orders coming in. We'll have 150 influencers lined up for the day, and never once did I think, oh, okay, we don't have this stuff to handle all the orders. So that was kind of the biggest. In retrospect, I should have been like, oh, you know, our customers might get pissed if they have to wait three weeks to get their order, or maybe we should try to find more staff to do that. But I was just, like, focused on the. Let's just get the sales numbers up there.

Right. Good problem to have. So when you think about organic strategy, I know one thing that you are so good. You just said you had 150 influencers lined up. And I know that's kind of a big question for a lot of retailers today is, man, how do I maximize that relationship with influencers? And you just had this really cool trip to Cabo and launched a Cabo collection on your website. Talk to me about that evolution a little bit. And how did you dip your toe in that water and find, like, man, I know this works for my business, or this is the type of influencer I know finally I can latch onto because it works for me. How did that work?

Yeah, I mean, it's still a learning game because, I mean, we just heavily started getting into it back in the fall. Prior to that, we had, like, a very, very small influencer budget, and we would work with some of the same ones over and over again or, you know, just gift them items. But then from there, I finally convinced my husband. He's the cfo, and of course I'm the marketing. I oversee all the marketing. So I'm like, we have to increase our budget. So he finally agreed to it. So from there, at first, we were like, let's just find anybody and everybody. But that's just really not how I think about it now. There's so many people, especially with the influencer world, that, yeah, they might have a lot of followers, but those followers don't really convert. So it's not. You've got to kind of learn as you go and, like, give the influencers code, see how many orders they're actually bringing to your site, see how many clicks they're getting for you, because you don't want to pay them $500 or $1,000 or $2,000 and then bring in 0 clicks to your site. Like, that's not the point of. To me, it's, you know, it's just the same as an ad. We want to have a three to four times roi. We want to get a return on that investment that we see spent for them to post for us. So since the fall, we've gotten pickier with who we use. We do have certain ones that we have a contract with for three to six months to a year. So we're like, okay, here. If you post three times a month for us or six times a month for us, we negotiate discounts with them as much as we can. But for the most part, we definitely try to go after up and coming ones too, because they're going to be.