Building a Successful Personal Brand and Business with Emily McCarthy

Hey guys.

I am so excited about this week's conversation on the podcast. My friend Emily McCarthy has not only built an amazing personal brand based off of her own designs, both in print and apparel, but she's also built a wonderful e commerce business and a growing brick and mortar business in Savannah, Georgia. She's done a great job of marrying the concepts of home and gift and lifestyle together with apparel. And her Peril line sells more in coterie than, say, magic. So we're going to be speaking today from lots of different vantage points, from different price points to different customer bases, to how to start an online or e commerce or brick and mortar business turned personal brand and turned apparel line. Emily is not only a busy business owner, but a busy mom as well. So she'll speak about how she manages to get it all done and the lessons, the highs and the lows of her story in between. Get ready to meet my friend Emily McCarthy. Today on the podcast, 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. Hey guys. Welcome back to the podcast this week. Emily, thanks so much for joining me today.

I'm so happy to be here. I've listened to so many podcasts and you've, you've grown such a large platform of resources for, you know, boutiques. And then now, like, now I'm designer, but I still gain so much from it. So thank you for what you do for our community. It's amazing.

Thank you. I appreciate that. I just love the mix of conversations that we're able to have here. And I feel like what you're going to bring to the table today is such a mix of it's not just about retail, it's not just about wholesale, it's not just about design, but it's kind of how do I find my own signature place in this industry that is unique to me? So I'm excited that you're going to be able to share that piece of the story today. But thank you for the compliment. That means a lot. I want to go back. So this is the Hub's 10th year in business. It's our 10th anniversary and we've got this series on the podcast called 10 Years in Business, and this is your 10th year as well, and you've had lots of change and new opportunity and growth in your 10 years. So take me back. I love your backstory. It's very unique. Talk to me about how you got into this industry in the first place.

So I really just started as a creative as far as, like, my life goals with career and, like, what I wanted to go to school in. And I, you know, grew up. My grandmother was an artist and a musician, so I was surrounded by the fine arts, and I knew that that's the direction I wanted to go, you know, through college. In the meantime, I was always working retail. Like, every job that I had, like, was surrounded by retail customer experience. So I think that's kind of what drove my entrepreneurship to, like, understand owning a business, running a small business, or working for a large corporation, you really are kind of born with it. I think it. To want to get into retail is like something you were just born with and you just have a passion for it. And so I worked in retail the whole time, going through college and majored in graphic design. And right out of college, started working for a stationary company designing stationery. But because it was a small business, I was able to learn how to not only design the invitations in the stationery, but also print, package, ship, and then we had a retail store there. So I was involved with those operations. I then moved on to a larger corporation. We had like, 52 stores, and it was a large, like, gift and stationary entertaining store. And it was so much fun. I learned so much through the, you know, I always, like, tell people that want to start their own business, like, please go work for other people for a while because there are so many. Like, don't try to do it right out of college. Like, go learn whatever you can. Because, like, I didn't even realize at the time what I was learning. Like, it felt like, oh, this is so hard. Like, the travel, the hours, the workload. And I didn't realize in the most things that I was going to take away. And now I look back and like, thank goodness, like, for this valuable years.

You don't know what you don't know, right?

Oh, yeah, you don't know what you know. And. And I just, I saw my. The last boss that I had, which was a long time ago.

Sort of.

Recently, and she kind of gave me her stamp of approval for, you know, what's happened in my career and the store and the clothing line. And she's like, I'm just so proud of you done like such amazing things. Like, it's just amazing to get that endorsement from someone that you look up to and you learned from. So I had a few years there and then creatively just wanted to have control over what I was designing. So I started doing a little bit of freelance. Then coming from the world of personalized, I wanted to launch my own product line that was personalized products. However, designing my own fonts so that I didn't just look like every other personalized website that was out there. And that's my biggest takeaway or piece of advice for someone wanting to open a store or start a business is that you figure out what's going to make you different. And I think the industry, especially retail, can become very saturated now with online and social media. It's like, how do you stand out? Like, how do you have a different aesthetic? How do you service your customers? It's different. Like, how do you like really pushing yourself to not just follow what everybody else is doing, but like, really think outside the box and try to be unique? And that's what started the business for me. And that's honestly what put us on the map and what grew our business and our customer base and people now know us for that. So the online business grew. It was, I was just saying to you earlier then, like, no one was really online. Like, no one really had a lot of online business, at least not what it is now. Now I think people started online boutique or an online store and then eventually, or like they do it the opposite way, I guess. But then we started online, then open a brick and mortar. That's what it was. So like I had a lot of friends that own stores and they were trying to figure out like how to put their product on the website. And especially when covet happened, a lot of the stores, like did not really have a strong online business. Yeah, and that's what I think. Like, unfortunately that the side effects of some of the COVID like closures and the dips in business is that, you know, we had to like, I had friends texting me, like, help, like I don't know how to get my, my products online. Like, how do we shift that business? And so we kind of did it the opposite way. Of course, now you're saying you're kind of seeing an upturn in that trend again. So the business just kept growing, honestly and thankfully. And we started in my house. Now it's like the kids rooms. We moved off site for a couple years and then finally decided to open the brick and mortar in 2016, just to make our website come to life and give local customers a way to experience our brand in person. And that was a. It was a shift to take the website and make it an in shop experience and I guess try to capture the same essence of the website. And then our. Our store really took on a few different directions over the years. Just trying to fill a void for our locals. And we really, really service our locals. They're in the majority of our business now and just being a source and a place to come and share memories and have fun and shop and like they're close with all of our staff and it's just very much a place of joy and a place in our community that we love being a part of. And so, yeah, so then came the clothing line.

Just wait before you get into the clothing line, let's pause for a sec. So go back to. It started online and this is when online was. You could get a lot of traffic on social.

Right.

So you had momentum to grow online. But I want to go from that.

Yeah. And like one product we could post and you immediately got orders for it. Like it was in chronological order. Like, I just missed that so much.

Oh, we all do. We all wish that the algorithm would go back.

I know.

Yeah. Take me back though to starting your brick and mortar. So when you started your brick and mortar, was it. It was mainly home and gift that you started in and then you brought in apparel. Talk to me about like what that was like and how you made sure the brick and mortar was successful. And. And also you're in a very historic, beautiful community. So talk to me about that as well.

So we started as home and gift. That's all we had on the website. I designed all the prints, all the personalized fonts. So we filtered in a little bit of like existing product lines to complement. So obviously we couldn't produce everything that we wanted to do. And also, like, production is a whole other side of the conversation that I'm sure we'll get into. But being able to fill a store without meeting huge minimums and things like that, we were still a very small business. And I was determined not to take on debt with opening the store. I was determined to use one part of the business to pay for another. And you know, it takes a long time to see the positive in opening a retail store. So I mean, the least amount of debt that we could take on was my goal. And we opened up that. So we call it that side of the store because we actually had two spaces next to each other. One side was the store and that was home and gift, and the other side was our offices and like shipping and all of that. So we had that, the gift and home part of the store for like two and a half years. And then we had dabbled in scarves. We partnered with like a cover up company and we dropped our prints on, like, cute little, like dock dresses and wraps. And it sort of started to peek us into fashion and our customers loved it. And we're like, okay, well what else can we do with our prints and putting that on clothing? And it was just a world of production and design that I was like, not familiar with at all, nor did I really have the sources to do it. And we also found that locally shopping was a little limited. And we found that if we started carrying a few different lines that we didn't have in Savannah, our customers really started to embrace, like, us carrying clothing, like, in addition to the home and the gift shop. So we moved our offices, we expanded the store, and when we first expanded the store, we didn't have our own clothes yet. Like, it was a. They were planted seeds and we were starting production and design, but we didn't have our own clothes in the store yet. But I knew it was coming and I knew that launching that part of the retail store was just going to help support that, you know, a few months down the road. So clothing did well. We, you know, expanded our customer base. People then kind of learned that we had clothing and came by just for that. We wanted to get into the clothing production and just happen, you know, one of those God moments. You meet the right people at the right time. And our production team was able to take us on and work with us on my designs and my prints and making that come to life and teaching us the process and the relationships with our factories and manufacturers. And so our clothing brand finally launched in 2019, which is a really fun time to see things come to life. After months of working on them, we were used to a very shorter time frame where if we wanted, you know, cheetah printed cups in the store, like, we could order them and have them three weeks later. But clothing is a whole other animal. Like you're working on it months and months in advance. So it takes a lot more patience and finer detail than a lot of the gift in home. But it launched and it was a great launch and we, you know, took on a sales group and then Covid happened. Luckily we were able to to survive the first few months of, you know, taking on our first Big delivery of inventory and trying to figure out how we were going to sell it. When people were shut down, we just got really creative. And as we all did and made it through that, now we're on the other side of it, and we definitely learned a lot. But, yeah, that's kind of the story on how the brick and mortar opened, though, and then the expansion, of course.

Yeah, I want to go back to just the decision to start your own clothing line. So you'd obviously, you dabbled in just like, your own private labels for home and gift first. But how do you think? Like, if someone's listening and they're weighing, man, should I. Should I move from having my own brick and mortar, my own retail business, into designing my own pieces and having my own brand? What do you think are some pros and cons or things that people need to think about and weigh before they make that decision?

Are we talking about clothing in particular or just.

Yeah, well, clothing in particular, I would say. But if you also wanted to say clothing, maybe, versus home and gift products, what are pros and cons? If I create my own line gift.

Your risk is going to be a lot lower. Luckily, you know, there are so many companies in the US that provide a great, like, private label, like, kind of. They call it like digital printing. So you can easily drop your own artwork into a lot of different products, and it allows you to take on very low inventory. You lose a little bit of quality control with that, like color consistencies and things like that. But we were able to have our own products in the store without ordering, like, thousands of each, say, coffee mug or tote bag. So it was kind of a great way to get into the product design without taking a huge risk. And if we only wanted to try, say, six placemats, we can only order six, which was nice. And we could test our customer. And I think that helped us figure out who our customer was, what they were buying. We learned a lot about quality control and the types of products that held up well and did not. So there's a lower risk. There's obviously a lower return in that also, but it's a great way to get started. Clothing is a whole other animal, to be honest. There's a lot more that goes into the clothing than gift and paper and stationery. It's a big risk when it comes to minimums are going to be really high. It's one thing if you're taking existing fabrics and you're having garments made with, like, fabrics that already exist. In our case, we're designing all of our own fabrics. So we have to have like printing minimums for printing. Our yardage. Our solids are all like custom colored. Like everything is custom printed specifically for our line. So. So you've got to have a certain amount of styles for fabrics. Even within those styles, you've got to have a certain minimum like, you know, for like one top and three different colors. We have to reach a minimum for that. But it is really rewarding and it's really fun. I would say when you're mass producing the clothing, your margins are obviously going to be a lot higher and you do have the room to do wholesale. And I think setting your wholesale and your retails from the very beginning is so important, it's hard to think about, well, what do you think, say this top will sell for? And you set a retail. But if you're not building in a wholesale margin in there from the beginning, like, you can't really go backwards. Like, you've got to establish in the very beginning that you do want to expand the clothing line to like reach other retail businesses. So if you do want to manage a wholesale business and retail, like you've got to build in your margins from the, from day one.

Yeah, that's really good advice. It's got to come in your margin. And also how are you going to differentiate how you are selling a product versus how stores who are carrying your product, how they're going to sell it and how are each going to be successful in their own terms? Are there things you've done to help make sure your stores are successful that are carrying your products as well?

Yeah, I think as a designer it is hard because when we ship our product to another store, like we're hoping that they, you know, really are mindful about the brand presentation. But we, I mean, we get other brands too in our retail store and it's hard to, to know what brand story they're going to want us to tell. We, we kind of take all of these different brands and mold them together to create like our shop brand and what our customers love. And like, we kind of put our own twist to styling and pairing things. And I think that's just about knowing your customer. We know a lot of our customers are moms that, you know, might want easy things for day to day. And then they want like great outfits that complement like their changes in their body and like whether they're in their 30s or in, you know, they're maybe even grandmothers in their 60s and 70s. Like we know what they going to feel Confident in. And as a designer, that's, I love having my finger on the pulse of that experience that I know I can walk down there and see how our poppy top is fitting. You know, this woman in her late 30s or this sweet, one of our like sweetest little customers. She's in her 70s and she loves her poppy top. So I know like firsthand, Howard, our clothes are fitting and how our customers are wearing them. And I think that's always going to help us obviously sell our own clothing. And we try to educate stores that carry our line and we get a lot of one on one time with them at markets. So I try to attend as many shows as I can. I love to sit with stores and talk to them about how the line is selling. Like, tell me about your customer. It makes me do my job better. And making sure that we service them. Also make sure that we give them, you know, all the lifestyle photography that they can use on social media and their website. Making sure our website is readily available for them to copy and paste listings and we want them to sell it as well as we do. So just like providing them with all the tools to do that. I mean, I can't tell you how many times we get a delivery from someone and it is like pulling teeth to get images from them because it's not on their website yet and we can't get images, we can't get it online. We're having to find the fabric contents and it's like we don't want it to be that hard for our retailers. So we try to give them everything that they need. And I do think that makes a big difference in sales.

Hey, I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. I wanted to give you something extra and a little special. Each Friday I send out an email with my top tips for the week. It comes in the form of the latest on the podcast. What's new on the blog and what do we see happening in our industry that maybe you want to be aware of too? It's called Free Friday. It's our free email list and I just want to invite you in case you aren't already there. Please check out the link in the show notes or head to the boutiquehub.com, scroll all the way down to the footer of the website and and jump on our email list right there. I can't wait to see your inbox and you every single Friday on our email list. And I promise I will keep it juicy. No fluff allowed. We're here to grow your business. Let's go. Yeah. It has to be a true partnership, and sometimes I feel like that's missing maybe either on the retailer side or the brand side. When you think about your customers, your wholesale customers that have been most successful with your line, what do you think those most successful stores have in common?

I think they're pretty similar to our retail store. Like, they're very colorful stores. They do great social media. They do try ons, they do reels and posts, and like, they're. They're, like, eager to get it out. Like, we will, like, right now. We started shipping our March collection yesterday, and it'll be tomorrow. By the time a couple retailers already have gotten their shipment and already are like, oh, my gosh, I need another small. We had a customer come in and she has to have it. We're like, it's going out tomorrow. Like, our response time to their needs helps us sell so much more. And we, we feel the other end of that when we work with other, like, designers that we carry. It's like when you can't get responses and you can't get, like, instant answers, like, you kind of lose the sale. And we don't want our customers to ever feel that way, that we're not supporting them selling our clothes just as much as we're supporting our own retail store. And I think because we were on the other end of that for so long, like, we know what we want as a, as a store, and we know what kind of service and customer service that we need. So we really try to provide that to our retailers. And it's hands down the first thing they ever say, like, when we get time at market is like, you're always so accommodating. We can't make you enough. Like, my customer, she just really wanted to wear that for this party Saturday night, and you guys got it right out and, like, it made her whole day. I mean, and it translates down to the customer, whether it's for. For their store or it's for our brand. It's like, I still consider that end customer the. The same. So we're servicing them whether it's on a retail level, a wholesale level.

Yeah, that goes a long way. I want to go back to your retail store again, starting in home and gift and then bringing in apparel. And the reason I want to talk about this is because I feel like this has become so much more common, maybe even since COVID I feel like it's become more common. Like gift stores used to think of Themselves as gift stores. Apparel stores used to think of themselves as boutiques and apparel stores. But from my vantage point they're really one in the same and they really can complement one another. What advice would you give to another? We'll say home and gift lifestyle store who is interested in bringing in apparel. What do you think? They need to know about that process.

So I can speak on experience. We started with some swim cover ups and we started with scarves and like some accessory. I think accessories definitely goes both ways and that's easier. We started dabbling in some dresses because I felt like they were kind of easy to just like throw on and didn't require a lot of like styling and fitting. And then you've got to have your dressing rooms. Like I've been in so many gift stores where they had clothing. But it's like, well, you can like pop in here to like the back and try it out. Like you've got to have a nice dressing room with great lighting and privacy and all the things like, I know it sounds so amateur, but you can't sell clothes without giving customers like the full experience and being able to try things on. But I know it's like then changing some of the construction in your store. But I think if you wanted to try, definitely cover ups wraps. Little like, we call them like little dusters or like little like shawl things like that's always easy and then just see how it goes. Another great option is to partner with maybe a clothing line and do a trunk show and you can even buy those cute like pop up dressing rooms. But maybe start bringing in like we used to do pop ups. I don't know if you've ever heard of Boo Ru or you've spoken to Morgan of Boo Ru. She used to come and do pop ups. She has one of those like mobile vans and it's the cutest, like shop within her van, the Sprinters. And so she would come and set up for like two days and our customers loved it because it was another source for clothing locally. So we did that for a while. We would even bring in like another local business boutique. Like we'd bring her in for a pop up. We did a lot of pop ups for a long time to really gauge the interest in the clothing and it was at no risk for us. It created an event. It gave, you know, the clothing line or the company exposure to. So that would be my biggest piece of advice. Try pop ups and just some easy things that don't require a lot of style in the dressing room.

I love that. That's good advice. What about, what about if this scenario was flipped? If you were an apparel store first and you were considering bringing in more lifestyle or home and gift, what do you think are some greatest opportunities there if you were going to test and merge that market?

So I just look at like our customer base. Nine times out of 10, our customers are coming in to like they want to shop clothing, but they also need to grab like a birthday gift for their best friend or they need to buy a housewarming gift for, for new neighbors. A lot of times it's like my friends were doing birthday lunch tomorrow and I need to bring a little something. So like what is that? Is it little like trinket trays? Is it tote? I think tote bags like shawls and hats are always a great way to go into gift. Things that can be picked out as like a personal thing. Like if you're, if you're purchasing an outfit, you need matching earrings. But also like our customer gives a pair of earrings as a gift all the time. So I think it's presentation is key. Like we love hoo hoops. We carry hoo hoops. And I think she does so well because her like great hoop earring comes in like the cute pink gift boxes and it's a great little like treat for yourself. But also it's the easiest girlfriend gift. So accessories, I think that's like the marriage between the two that kind of goes hand in hand. I think getting into home, when you, when you get into like home interiors, I think it's a whole, like a whole nother thing. It's case goods and soft goods can get a little tricky. Like space wise, you've got the real estate to dedicate to that. But I think accessories, tote bags, I think cute little like beach blankets or things like that are a great way to transition.

Emily, you have a lot on your plate with the store and the website and the line and the designing and all the things. And your mom, you busy mom as well. How do you manage all these things? How do you approach a typical day and how do you approach a typical week to get it all done and still be human at the end of the day?

It takes a village for sure. We have a staff a little over 20 and without them none of this would happen. I and it's to say I could like disappear for a week and they would be totally fine. Is 100% telling the truth. They would maybe even be so glad to have me on the office for a couple of Days.

That's a big compliment. That's awesome.

Questions? They're amazing. And they're here because they're passionate about what we're doing and they're excited about where we're growing. So staff is key. I think having a good work life balance is key. Getting tons of rest. Like I, I mean, I'm not one of those, like, stay up all night, like working and thinking about business. Like I am out cold at like 9:30 or 10. I mean, I'm, you know, the days start early. Getting the kids to school and. Sorry. We have this train. It's okay.

It's a long train.

It is a really long train. So it's important for me to be hands on with my kids. I never want them to feel like I am. And he really likes to pop that horn. There's never a day that goes by like I don't want them. Never think that I'm choosing work over them. And they understand. Sometimes we've got to go by mommy's office, you know, Mom's got to go out of town, you know, and it, and it's fine. And they understand that we're, you know, as a family. Those are things for our family also. But I try to separate, you know, get the kids to school. I'm so sorry it's so loud. It's totally fine. I totally get it. He's almost gone. Anyway. Get the kids to school, come into work. I love having the quiet mornings kind of before the staff arrives. It's. And you can ask anyone at 3 o', clock, like, I'm gone. I'm getting the kids from school. I'm taking them to all their activities and being present for them when they need me. And then we have home life in the evening. So life is busy. My kids are both very, very active and have their own goals with their sports and things like that. And it all requires a lot of time and energy too. So thankfully, you know, my husband is super supportive of the business. He also has. He runs his own business as well. So things get a little tricky when it comes to like, just the stress of it all and, you know, talking through. For one person to own their own small business is one thing, but then you have both of us. So we try our best to keep things grounded and not let the stresses get to us and spend the time with the kids and travel and. But taking care of yourself is. You have to like, you can't let the business take you down, you know, take over your entire life or you're just not being the best, like boss and business owner that you can be. So self care is important. I'm always a little rejuvenated when I get a little bit of time away. Even like last week, we're in coterie for the week and even though we were showing and it was busy and it was exciting, like just being able to step out of the business for a week and not be working so much in it, but kind of like on it and getting perspective.