Merging Motherhood and a Boutique Business

Hey, guys, it's time for episode number 204. And today is a two for one. We're going to be bringing in two ladies who can speak to both the wholesale and retail side of business and what it's like to be doing business with a very specific mission in mind. 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. It's not every day in this industry or in any business that you hear people so excited about having a partnership in their business model, having two best friends own a business together that are very tied by a specific cause. And that's why today's story, I think, is so interesting, unique, but also very, very heartfelt. I couldn't be more excited, you guys, than to introduce you today to Leslie and Stacy, the owners of Hawthorne Collection boutiques, retail side, but also their wholesale collection. They are two very busy women who run a very successful business on both ends of the spectrum, but also they have something very important in common and that is their family life. They both are mothers of children, special needs, and in fact, that close bond that they share is something that's really been a mainstay and a central mission of their business. Their family is very involved in their business. And I'm excited for you to hear today because I know that so many of us in the industry are constantly fighting that battle of how can I run a successful business and be a mother and all these other things at the same time. And I think these two women really speak to that well and illustrate the importance of involving your family in your business. So, guys, you're going to learn business tips today, both in terms of retail and wholesale, hearing feedback from these women. But I think this is going to be a great personal episode for you to learn from as well. I really hope you enjoy it. Guys, I can't wait for you to meet Leslie and Stacy and go follow Hawthorne Collection boutique and Hawthorne Wholesale.

Hey, guys, welcome back to the podcast. This week we are going to be blessed with not just one guest, but two guests today because we have a lot to talk about in terms of both wholesale and retail. So please help me welcome Leslie Plank and Stacy Newcount of Hawthorne Collection, which. Oh, my gosh, you guys are going to love these two ladies. We're going to talk about three retail storefronts, actually. Two and a third retail storefront coming and a booming wholesale business. So, ladies, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having us.

Oh, my gosh. You know, we could chat and go down a lot of rabbit holes. I think we've already discovered this, so I can't wait to dig in because I think that your guys story is really unique in the sense of how you've built this business, the why that you have behind the business, and just what you've learned along the way. There's going to be a lot of great nuggets today. Would you agree?

We sure hope so. Yes, absolutely.

Oh, man. Well, let's start here. Talk about kind of the size and the structure of the business. So everyone listening can first understand how you operate the business today, what that looks like.

Okay, so currently we have two brick and mortar stores and we will be opening our third this spring. And then we also have a wholesale division that manufactures clothing for our stores, but then for other boutiques around states.

Perfect. And tell them where you guys are based as well.

We are right outside of Grand Rapids, Michigan. So kind of in the middle.

Yep. So you didn't start off with two storefronts, obviously, and start off manufacturing. I know that's quite process to build which you guys have built today. So tell me more about the backstory, how you guys found each other. I know successful partnerships are almost rare in business today, and you guys do this so well. So how did that all come about?

Yeah, we do. We actually get that same sort of comment a lot. We do get along really pretty well. Yeah. Leslie moved in directly next door to me probably about six years ago now, I think.

Six years ago.

And we just hit it off. It was kind of crazy. We've joked before about how we must have been sisters in another life. I was working as a school psychologist. And Leslie, at the time, you were still working, I think, as.

Yep, I was working. My background is mechanical engineering, so I was kind of working on and off in automotive at the time.

Right. So school psych and mechanical engineer apparently equals boutique owner. I'm not sure. So Leslie. One of Leslie's other hobbies is photography and she had been selling some props at the time, selling them through Etsy. And on many occasions we were drinking wine and I said, why don't you try selling them on some of the boutique deal sites that were starting to pop up online Just because you can sell such large quantities. At one time, she said, sure. And I kind of thought that was. She's way more brave than I am when it comes to.

That was the end of it.

She was like, all right, yes, we're done.

That is the end of the story. But, yeah, I'm kind of a. I don't know. I'm a big ideas person. And so I talked to Stacy into, well, let's just. Let's just buy some jewelry and maybe sell some jewelry on there too.

Right?

That seems like a great idea. So I had a newborn at the time, and between the two of us, we've got five kids. So we were spending a lot of time just hanging out at Stacy's kitchen counter with the littles all around. And we sent, I don't know, $300 to China and got some bracelets and sold them.

Yeah, I thought it was really crazy. That whole concept of able to find a manufacturer and send them money and to receive a product was so foreign to me. I honestly thought she was crazy. I was like, I'm never gonna see this money again. Like, it's gone. But sure enough, like, after that first deal, we would just take that money again and put it right back into the next deal. And it kind of. It was energizing. It was kind of like, this is fun. Let's see where this is gonna go. It was only really meant to be extra spending money, grocery money, vacation money. It wasn't really ever meant to be our job, I guess.

And I think that's part of why it worked so well, is because we never set out to say, I want to have a really big boutique, and I want to own a really big business, and I want to have X number of employees. It was just make a good business decision. And then from that, let's grow a little bit and make another good business decision. And kind of it just snowballed.

Yeah. So we had started those deals in February of 2013, and by November, we had received 40 boxes of product to Leslie's garage. And her husband is a car collector, so you can imagine how thrilled he was.

He was not happy.

Yeah, he was not happy at all about 40 boxes in his garage with his cars.

Oh, yeah. That was a good day. Yeah.

So at that point, I think both of our husbands were a little fed up with all the product in our basements. People would honestly call up Leslie and see if they could come shop her house. And you can imagine how clean her house must be with little kids.

Yeah, it was. I'm not the cleanest person. I'm a creative type. My house is usually a little messy, we would say, so you're just busy. So we started looking at that point for a place to take our business outside of the house. And we found this little. It used to be a veterinarian clinic, this little house off of a major road in our town. And that price was a little bit more than Stacy and I could afford at the time. And so we're like, you know, that rent is more than we want to pay. And we tabled that idea. And then a few months later, there's a women's expo here, which takes place at, like, a big conference hall. And we rented a spot there and went. We had two booth spaces. And we thought that was the biggest money we had ever spent in the world.

Well, that was a couple thousand dollars. And I again, thought Leslie was absolutely crazy because I would never really had that entrepreneurial drive. And so she's like, well, hey, let's do it. Let's do this. And I'm like, I kind of like this girl. She's crazy. Like, I don't know what we're doing, but I'm a do it.

So we rented a booth, and over the course that weekend, what we filled our booth was with was the product that was left over from doing all the deals throughout the year. So you'd do a deal, we'd sell, you know, we'd buy 100 pieces of a product, and we'd sell 92 of them. So then we had eight left of that or, you know, whatever. And so we've filled our booth with just kind of the extras. And that weekend was pretty crazy. It was sold so much product, and so many women were saying, where is your boutique? We want to come shop it. And we didn't have a boutique. We were just out of our basement. So after that weekend, we went back and revisited. All right, we need to find a place to be. We went back and looked at the little house again, and they had dropped the rent. And at that point, that was kind of our sign of, all right, let's do this. So then we opened our first store. Yeah.

And even when we did set it up, it was only really meant to be, like, a shipping center just to get the product out of the house. We had horrible hours. I mean, we were open, like, Wednesday from 1 to 4. Every other Friday, like 10 to 2. It was awful. Like, I don't even know how anybody found us or why they even shot.

Us or why they came back. Oh, we look at some of the early pictures and it was like we had barely had any product in there. It was kind of sad.

No, we would kind. I would like, I would kind of drag home, like old pieces of furniture I'd find by the side of the road. Because money, I'm like, I'm not paying money for fixtures or anything. So I would hawk in my trunk and holiday.

That's perfect. That's what makes the best stories and the best memories, right?

Yeah, it really does. Yes.

So you started that first store and then how long was it until you started the second store?

We were in that location for 18 months. And then again, I was starting to get used to Leslie's crazy ideas.

There's a theme here.

There's a theme here. There was a little storefront in a small, little downtown. It's not that far from us, maybe 15 minutes away. Or whatever. And of course Leslie's like, well, let's try another one.

No, I think I said, I'm just gonna go look at it. Don't worry, Stacey, I'm just gonna go look.

That's her infamous line. And that's when I started shaking my head like, oh, great, we're gonna have a second story store.

Right. So I went to just look and then I called Stacy. We need to, we need to rent this space. So we rented that second space. We were there a year and we were there about a year. And the sales there were really slow. Not so slow that we were losing money, but slow enough that our one store that we had in Hudsonville, which is our first store, was kind of blowing the other store out of the water in terms of sales.

Right. And we were really outgrowing that first space. And I do think that that second location, I think there was a lot of learning that happened there. Yes, it was a cute little location, cute little downtown, but there just wasn't the traffic. I'm having been a school psychologist and kind of a data person and kind of a nerdy data person, and so is Leslie, being an engineer. So we decided we really needed to move that Hudsonville location. And so we actually started looking at traffic patterns. We started looking at how many cars go through certain intersections within our community and identified one of the major intersections and then decided to move to that location. We now have. We are in strip malls. And we've found that that's actually been really helpful for us just because our main demographic tends to be women our age who are 30 to 40 year old moms. And so they're running groceries and then they'll stop by the store, they'll go get coffee, they'll stop by the store. They'll so go to Hallmark and stop by the store. So that's really been nice having that foot traffic that we didn't have before.

So as you both came from unique backgrounds, we'll say before you started the businesses, do you feel like that was an obstacle is just, I mean, you had the understanding and the love of data, which is great. And a lot of people that actually start in fashion probably don't have that. But how did you overcome that obstacle of not having business experience when you started?

Leslie had way more than I did.

I have an mba, which did help a lot. But I think hands on is the way I learned the best. And so having worked in a really large company as an engineer, I came from a corporate world and running a boutique is almost the exact opposite of corporate. And Stacy, coming from the schools as well, it was a really big shift in terms of how to set a business up and how to run a business and how to hire for your business. And we had to learn all of that and that. And we still have to learn a lot. So that's our biggest learning curve is going through the day to day business and just trying to learn all the things that we don't even know that we don't know.

Right. And I think part of that for us isn't only educating ourselves, but then finding the people who do know the answers. We are both kind of do it yourselfers and we try as much as we can, but we've come to realize that it's better for us to hire people who are better at it than we can do, you know, than we are. So this, the last few years have really been putting that infrastructure in place that you would typically find in a corporate world. Policies and procedures, handbooks, those sorts of things that we didn't have. I mean, I felt like at first we were kind of playing shop a little bit, if you will. It was kind of a hobby. But now it's like, nope, this is actually serious. We have 17 part time employees and four full time. Like we are now responsible for these people. So.

Right.

We need to get some structure in here. Right.

Because you feel like that's one of the most underrated parts of business. You. We were all talking about this before we started recording the episode that people don't necessarily prepare you for what it's like to have to hire a team and put those procedures into place. Is there any tips you would say that you could share on that topic or maybe lessons you learned the hard way about growing your team and your company's culture.

We've learned a lot of lessons the hard way in this business.

Yeah.

I think one of the biggest things and a lot of what we've learned has come from the past year. So we've been doing this six years, but the last year was really, I feel like when we hit kind of.

That turning point when we needed sort of that next level of management between us and the employees, when we could no longer be the managers, we had to work sort of on other things that. Yep, yep. Yeah.

And so one of the things, I think looking back when we started, it was just very like, hey, we're going to hire you and you're going to work here. Sounds good. Okay, great, you're done. And then as we moved forward, it was. It was really hard to backtrack and say, okay, actually, we need you here on time every day, and you can't be gone and all of that. So if you're a boutique and you're just starting out and you get to the point of where you want to hire someone, sit down and kind of think through some of those HR things. And what HR things do you need in place? And, you know, what is your system for if someone is screwing up? What is your system for if someone is coming in late every day? How are you going to handle those things? Because going back after you've already been in business two years and some of our employees have been with us from the start.

Right.

Going back and putting those policies into place became very difficult.

Yes, yes. It's much easier to have. To not have to undo some of that.

That learned behavior.

Exactly. Yep. Totally. Psychology right there. Learned behavior.

How about in terms of, like, daily management? I completely relate with where you're at right now in terms of having that next layer, like I think you both described it as. You both have right hand women, right?

Yes, yes, we do.

What is. And how do you, like, instill in your team how to help manage others, which isn't necessarily managing their tasks, but more so managing the relationship of your employees. Yes.

One of the things this year that's been kind of something that we use as sort of a cornerstone of our business is we hire women that are capable. They're really good at what they do. We pay them more because we know they're really good at what they do, and the expectation is that they will get their job done without us holding their hand. That said, Stacy and I have learned this Year, too, that the way you treat your employees sets the tone for your entire company. And it's more important for us some days to come in and be a shoulder they can lean on, you know, someone they can vent to about their weekend if they're having a hard time in a family relationship or situation with their child. Our job some days is not to come in and look at the numbers. Our job is not to pick out what clothes are going to floor. Our most important job is to be there for our employees. And I think those relationships this year have become so important to us. And we realize that that has more effect on how our business runs and how things go in this business than any other thing we could do.

I would agree.

And that's so good. So do you. How do you split this up in terms of. I know, Stacy, you work more on the retail side of things and Leslie, more on the wholesale side of things. Are your employees kind of split up between those two sides of your company as well?

Yes. Yep. So I have my right hand woman, Sarah, and then we have our store employees. I primarily work out of the warehouse, which is split between retail backstock and wholesale. And then Leslie, of course, has her staff. They all fall under the same business. But we just had to kind of divide it up that way to make sure that we were getting everything covered that we needed to have covered that really took place. I mean, that's really been a process this year. I think that's been more so probably.

Since August really was the turning point. We started wholesale last September. So just over a year ago, we split off wholesale's website to be its own website after the first of the year. So just in 2018, wholesales had its own website. And then August was really the turning point from where wholesale went from a little business to all of a sudden wholesale was its own business that needed its own set of employees. I pulled one of one of the ladies from the retail side. She was really pretty good. I'm like, oh, I want to stamp her for wholesale. And so Amy now manages the wholesale side of the warehouse. She does all the shipping and helps with customer service. And then Natalie, who's my right hand gal, she does a lot of our numbers and forecasting and helps me work back and forth with the manufacturing because there's a lot of communication that goes on there.

Absolutely. So I want to. I want to come back to some retail strategies in just a minute. But since we're on the topic of wholesale, I'm curious how you. I guess it all kind of started with that $300 that you invested into bracelets, right?

Yeah.

A lot of people listening are going to go, man, you know, my boutique is starting to do a lot of volume and I'm more interested in dabbling into manufacturing. Where would you say if someone's interested in getting started in that side of the business, where do they start looking for that information?

Okay, so here's the back to the backstory is my dad is a designer and worked for a hardware company doing hardware design. And he through his job worked with China, which made their product for his company and he imported it to the States. And so when, you know, I started doing this and yeah, hey, we want to maybe have our own wholesale line and do some apparel. My dad's quote was, we'll just find someone in China and have them make it for you. And it's really, that's the essential. You find someone in China and you have it make it for you. So the bigger piece of that picture is we went on to Alibaba, which is a website where you can find just about anything in the planet that comes from multiple countries, but China is one of the main ones. And if somebody is looking for, hey, I want to make fuzzy socks, you are going to search on that website to find and you're going to get a ton of people that make fuzzy socks. And then it just starts with a communication chain of find a company that looks like they do what you're looking to have done and talk to them and request a sample and you'll be able to tell from your sample if their quality is what you want or not. And we were pretty lucky that one of the first manufacturers that we found has been phenomenal. We've been working with them from the very beginning. They did a really good job. I fortunately have a background in pattern design. That's one of the things that I did for the automotive world. I made all of the production prototype patterns that went to manufacturing. So that is my background. I don't have a fashion degree, but I was able to speak with the manufacturers. And there's a little bit of a language barrier there, but not as bad as you would think. But I was able to speak with the manufacturers and kind of tell them the changes that we wanted. We really flew by the seat of our pants for the first couple years.

Yeah, it definitely took a lot of back and forth communication and tweaking. I think more than anything, people need to understand it takes time.

It is a slow, it is a.

Very slow go process. Yeah, I would Say, I mean, our.

First product that we sent over there, it was a good six months before we finally got a sample that was exactly what we wanted it to be. Yes.

And you have to be willing. I mean, a lot of times communication happens really late at night because of the difference in hours. So you really have to be willing to put in the work to communicate with those factories, understanding that it's not going to happen overnight. It's going to be a lot of conversation. It's going to be a lot of trial and error. I can't tell you how many samples.

We have upstairs that are just wrong.

Just wrong. But, but when it works, it works great.

Really well.

Yes. And then other, the other aspect of that too is I know a lot of, probably a lot of the boutiques listening are maybe afraid to start with going to China, which their minimums are pretty high. So if you look to, if you're thinking, hey, la, you know, go on fashion go. There are a lot of companies that are on fashion Go and they'll be listed as a manufacturer or a wholesaler. And the ones that are listed as manufacturers typically are producing their own product in a factory. If you are able to meet a minimum, and usually the minimum is around, I don't know, two to 300 pieces, talk to them and just ask them if they'll do custom work for you. There's a good chance that they'll let you pick out your own colors or your own styles or, hey, I really love this shirt that I have. Could I get it sleeveless? That's a really good way to start, is to make those connections with factories that you maybe already buy some things from and they have their own manufacturing space.

Is there anything that you'd say was most eye opening to you about that process or maybe like a protection you think that should be put in place? Like a way that you should protect yourself when you're getting into that side of the business. Because I'm sure it's pretty easy to get taken advantage of along the way as well.

Oh my goodness. That's funny you should even say that because very recently our design and pictures were just on a couple of major websites. And I know it happens all the time. I know Jessica with cheekies. Has that happened to her all the time? You know, it happens. Yep. So I know that we've done some non disclosure type agreements. Yep.

For the most part. I mean, the factories that we worked with in China, the people that are ripping stuff off are not your factories. Those factories want your business and they're not going to share your business with other businesses. I know our factory makes other products for people in the United States. I don't know who they make stuff for, they won't tell me who they make stuff for. And they don't share patterns with me. The people that are ripping people off in China are different factories that see an image on Zulily or someplace online that are like, hey, I want to make that. And they make a cheap knockoff of it. Early on, when I was doing my own line way before Hawthorne, one of the pieces of advice that I got is you need to trust people, especially in the fashion world, especially in fashion design, especially in manufacturing. Nobody's there to rip you off. They're there. They have a business, they have a manufacturing business. And they're not there to rip you off. They're there to make clothes for you. So sending a pattern that you've developed to a manufacturer shouldn't be something that should scare people. Nine times out of 10, they're not going to rip you off. That said, you know, my dad always said don't, don't bet more than you're willing to lose. So we always kind of look at that as the business too. It's easy when you get started to say, I have a million designs and I want to make a million things and I want to make a million of them.

But don't do that.

That's a really bad idea. Start. So make fewer pieces than you think you're going to sell. Sell all of them and then make more.

Yeah, and I think that's a great point. I think the other thing that surprised me when we first started working with China was there's a lot of room for negotiation. Once you've built that trust with someone, there's a lot of room for negotiation. It's not so set in stone. I think when we first started manufacturing one of our best selling sweaters, we were getting 30 per size, I believe. Yep. And so we were getting maybe a hundred, what was it, maybe 120 color or something. I don't know. I don't. It was a very small quantity. But I think once they saw that.

We were, we were actually going to continue to give them business.

Yes. Then, I mean, we've done, I think we just crossed 20,000 of those cardigans this year alone. But we had started with 30 per size. So don't underestimate that. People are, know that people are willing to work with you. You just have to find those people. You have to put in the Time to find them.

Absolutely. So coming from the boutique side of things and getting into wholesale and now having, what is it, about 1500 wholesale customers that you're working with?

Yep.

Is there anything that you wish more boutique owners knew about the wholesale side of things that would make the relationship much smoother?

It's wow. Wholesale has been. And we're not where we want to be yet with wholesale. Right now in our wholesale, we. We're so small that we still. Most of our items are on pre order because we have to pay for everything up front with a factory. And so right now, for us to do business in the most economical fashion, we say, okay, what do you guys want? And then, okay, here's about how many we need. We send our order to the factory and it takes them a while to make it and send it over. So, you know, when things take six to eight weeks to get here, it's not because we're dragging our feet. It's because, you know, manufacturing takes time, shipping takes time, and then there's things that you don't always plan for that take time. One day our truck broke down on the way here, and they just couldn't deliver our product until a couple days later because the truck broke down. Sometimes things get stuck in customs for a week or two. There's things that are outside of our control. It's not. You don't get a shipping notice like you get with UPS where you ship across the United States. And oh, there's my package. I can see exactly where it is and when it's getting here. It doesn't work that way. Always with wholesale and shipping from China, especially if something's on a boat. So things take a lot more time. And, you know, we're still learning, too, just as the stores are learning with their boutiques. We're always learning with wholesale. And we try to make the best decisions that we can, and we try to be nimble and change things in order to make our customers have the best experience possible. But we're people too, and sometimes we screw up.

I think that's such good advice. You know, it's easy. I think you guys would probably agree. You see the same thing happen often. Well, let's say like a retail customer is upset with a boutique owner and so they leave them a terrible review. Right. Sometimes boutique owners may turn around and do the same thing to a wholesaler or manufacturer and not realize, oh my gosh, it's. It's really the same thing.

Absolutely, yes.

Everyone, we're all human, just like you said.

Exactly. Well.

And we are. We are very picky about what we manufacture because we don't have money to waste. Most people don't. But we are very particular about what we get in. We do fit tests. We will get in samples and have our employees wear them for a week, literally, and wash them and wash them and dry them and be rough on them. And there have been times where we have nixed items because they have not held up. We just had recently had gotten a huge shipment, and I noticed after a few washings that this particular print was fading. And what a debacle. I don't know how many pieces. We had thousands of pieces. And it was definitely a learning lesson. I think it was just one of those items where the fabric wasn't right and the dye wasn't right and they weren't.

And that was hard for us because we had to pull. We had sold some wholesale, and it was basically made up a huge chunk of our fall line for retail, and we had to pull them all back.

But we were. I personally, and I know Leslie feels this way, too. I was not comfortable selling a product that I didn't feel was up to par. I would much rather eat that cost than sell my customer a substandard product. I did not want customers coming back into the store complaining about that. That has my name on it. It says Hawthorne right in my product. Same with Leslie. You know, we don't want to sell that to boutique owners because not only are they our customer, but then their customers are a customer. So we had to yank all of that product. That was a hard one.

That was a hard one.

Yeah.

We made it through it.

So we did. So I think, you know, at least for the people listening to us right now, know that if you do buy from Leslie and from our Hawthorne brand, our products go through a lot of testing, a lot of quality checks, and we have a lot of integrity when it comes to the products that we release to our customers.

Would you guys say that through the process you've been in on the wholesale side of things, that you have a different view on the future of this wholesale industry that we're in? You know, traditionally, we've had so many in person apparel markets, and I know there's a lot of people that do business on fashion. Go. But do you guys have any insight on where do you think the industry is moving and how boutique owners will continue to buy into the future?

I read an article a few months ago that talked about some things that are changing in the industry and how industry used to put things out in seasons, and you'll see that it shows. Like, here's our fall line. Here's our spring line. The industry really feels now like it's turning over into these mini seasons, and that's sort of what we do at Hawthorne right now. We're not big enough that we have huge boat shipments coming in every month. So we go through and we have major planning sessions of, okay, what pieces are coming in each month, what's going to coordinate best together, and then we turn those over in sort of that mini season feel. So we're not going to come and say, here's a fall line and here's all the pieces for fall. We're moving faster and slower at the same time than that. We're moving faster in terms of we're going to bring you new items more often. But we don't make our whole fall line at once. So we might make part of our fall line kind of as we're going. So that's kind of the difference that we're working on here. And I see that work really well for our customers. It allows us to be a little bit more nimble in terms of, hey, if something's trending, we can turn that trend around more. This year it was buffalo plaid, man. People can't get enough buffalo plaid. And we started just turning, okay, what, What. What styles can we make in Buffalo plaid? Let's make them. Let's get them to our customers so that they can sell all those styles as well.

But I think selling through a group like we do now, the majority of Leslie's buyers are through the hub, which is just absolutely amazing. I feel like we are really blessed to be part of such an amazing community of women who support each other. I think when you can talk to someone personally through that group and get to know them and get to know their lives and who they are, you build that trust and you're more willing to buy from them. You know, we used to think, well, do we need to go on fashion?

Go.

Do we need to go to shows? I feel like there's no way, like, if we had only done shows, I don't think we would be where we are right now. No, I don't. I feel like the hub has offered so many opportunities to us that that is honestly what made wholesale go through the roof.

Right? We started posting. It was kind of late last spring, earlier this summer, when we started posting the hub of, hey, you know, we've got wholesale, and we were doing a little bit per month. But, man, the hub, it. The hub is really what skyrocketed. My wholesale side, I mean, well, and.

I think when you can personally vouch for somebody, that holds a lot of weight. I know that I would way rather buy from somebody that someone else recommends than trying to find someone on my own as a. As a buyer.

You know what's so cool about that? You guys just, you know, watching this all unfold and evolve is there's a lot of brands that have joined the hub in the last year, and there's also been brands that have left because they didn't exactly know how to use the hub.

Right.

And you guys are such a great example of you got in. And the most important thing that you did was you built relationships with first.

Yes.

You. You got to know the women, you answered their questions.

You.

You truly built relationships. And then the sales came naturally. And I wish that more people could see your example, because I think they would find the hub, you know, so much more easy to navigate when they lead with integrity first.

Oh, my goodness. Yes. And, you know, I, like, I can't tell you how many times Leslie will come up from. We call it the mezzanine at the warehouse. She's like, upstairs, and she'll come down, she'll be like, oh, my gosh, my customers want these. Let's design it real quick and get it out. Like, that's the beauty of it, too, is if you're looking for something and there's enough other women wanting the same thing. We're listening.

Yeah.

I mean, I can't tell you how many designs have changed because someone's screaming out for cheetah or leopard. And that's actually not a huge trend up here in the Midwest.

West. Michigan is not all about the leopard.

Right now, but, like, I can't give leopard away. And yet we are cranking out leopard because we have tons of women in the south and elsewhere wear who want it.

I think I've got some boutique boss socks that are in the mid sample.

Yes. Yeah, we're working on those for you.

But that's fun. I mean, I don't know how many times people have request things, and we're like, yeah, sure, hey, if you want it. We know that we are all very similar. I'm sure someone else is going to want it.

Well, and I think part of that, too, Stacy touches on a point, too, of why we started wholesale. We started wholesale because we just couldn't find things in the market. It really started out as like, hey, this would be really great to have, but the sizing sucks. Or, hey, I'd really like to get some. Some good pants in that go in all sizes for my customer. And there were these holes that we kept finding in the market of stuff that we wanted so badly to have in our retail store, and we just couldn't find it.

Yeah. Actually, one of our best selling items is an upgrade of an item that we used to have. Like, we didn't like the quality, so we actually made it better, which seems probably kind of.

It's the reverse of a knockoff. It is.

It's the reverse of a knockoff.

I mean, it really isn't.

It's. It's a good quality item. I lost my train of thought. We do that.

We're laughing at each other right now because that's kind of our life.

Yeah.

Yep.

You know, I want to switch gears a little bit because we've talked a lot about wholesale. I want to switch gears and talk about retail as well and what you found to be successful. But let's lead off with this, because I don't think you mentioned this earlier. You have something called spontaneous potluck Monday.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, we do. So our warehouse, it started with Cracktober. It started with Cracktober. We have a group of women here in our warehouse, and there's one guy. We have a group of women. And we're all. A lot of us are moms of kids with special needs. And so there's just. There's a friendship aspect of who we work with. We're all very professional, but we've all become very close and kind of bonded over this similarity of all having children with different disabilities. So we've got just a messenger thread going of everybody that works in the warehouse. And there's a lot of giphys and randomness that's happened. But lately the thing has been on Sunday afternoons, someone invariably will pop up, hey, I'm bringing in corn dip tomorrow.

Yeah, there's like a corn dip addiction going on around here. I don't know what it.

So it's turned into spontaneous crock pot Mondays. And I think that's one of the things, as a business owner that makes me really happy. And I feel like that is such a good meter of knowing we're doing things right here. We've got a couple of girls that work in the marketing department, and one of them posted the other day that the other girl in marketing had left a cup on her desk. And it's those little things that our employees are having those friendships together that makes me feel like, we're running this company.

Right, right, man, that. And at the end of the day.

That'S what it's all about. Right?

The relationships that you build along the way and the life that you're able to provide for people.

Absolutely.

I mean, like I said before, come Sunday night, everybody's excited to go back to work. I mean, it's kind of obnoxious around here. Monday morning, everybody is, like, excited to be at work, and there's so much chatter and banter going on, and it's. It's just fun. There's nothing better than going to a place that you love to work, and I feel like everybody is at that.

Place right now, especially if there's corn dip involved.

Well, absolutely.

Yeah. And that makes it amazing.

Yes, there is corn dip out there right now.

Can you tell me more about your why in business? And a lot of times, you guys know we talk about this on the podcast, but one of the biggest reasons I really wanted to share your story and is because leading with why I think is really the key to success in life and business. And you just touched on it a minute ago about, you know, helping people with special needs and how that's so personal to each of you. Can you tell me more about that story?

Yeah. So, having been a school psychologist, of course, my first love has always been helping people. When we first started the business, I was working part time as a school psychologist and then also helping Leslie on my days off, working evenings on the business. It got to a point where it was a lot. I mean, I was at the schools three days a week, and then anytime I was not at the school, I was working on the. On the business. My oldest son, Jack, has a pretty rare syndrome called cardiofacial cutaneous syndrome, and he's cognitively impaired. And then there are, of course, all sorts of other delays and disabilities that go along with that as well as medical issues. And was about four years ago, he had started having seizures, which are part of his syndrome, and we had a really hard time getting him under control. I was going to the doctor all the time, then I was going to school, then I was working on the business. And I honestly felt like I was going to lose my mind. Something had to give. And at that point I decided, you know what? The business gives me the flexibility to be home if he's not feeling well, to pick him up from school, if he gets sick, to take him to therapy appointments, to take him to doctor's appointments. It just gives me the lifestyle that I need in order to be able to take care of my kids the way that I want to take care of them, but then also allowing me to have my own thing and to be able to work, that was still.

Very important to me. To be able to work.

So when I made that decision to leave the schools, you know, of course, naturally, I kind of felt this hole. Like, okay, I love the. I love the boutique business. I love selling clothing. But for me especially, it had to be more than just selling clothes. I felt like so many opportunities had been put in our place, and there were so many times when Leslie and I. Oh, I'm. Hopefully I don't cry. So many times when we would just look at each other and be like, something's going on here. Like, why is this working out the way it's working out?

There were too many moments.

There were too many moments, Leslie. I don't know if you want me to say it.

Yeah. No. My son in his disability. And what's really interesting about this is when I met Stacy, I moved in, and my son was 2, and she actually was my son's school psychologist in his early childhood center. He ended up having a disability. And Stacey and I have talked about the differences between having a son who is born with a disability, like her son, and having a son like mine who is born and you think they're completely normal, but then you find out later that they have a disability. It's two very different things. And it's the same amount of heartbreak. It's the same amount of going through everything. And I think part of why we have such a strong bond is because we kind of walked that path together. And I think one of the things that we talk about, the moments that have happened. When I walked into my house when we were buying it, I instantly felt I knew this was the place I needed to be. And I ended up walking a path with Stacy that I don't know that I could have gotten through that time in my life without having her by my side.

Well, and likewise, there were so many times when, you know, Jack was ill and Leslie had to pick up and carry the business by herself, or her son was getting treatment, and I had to pick up and run the business. There's always been this understanding that it's okay to be in crisis, and I will take care of it for you. And fortunately, I mean, we do joke around. Like, hopefully, we're never in crisis together.

It's kind of the joke is that one of us can be in crisis, but it's never happened where both of Our families are in the crisis at the same time.

Right.

And now I think the business is at a point where if we did end up in that situation, it would be okay.

Yes.

And for every. For people listening, my son has. It's called dmdd. It's a neurological condition. It's kind of a new diagnosis. The best way to describe it is it's a rage disorder where children have a seizure in the part of their brain that controls their emotions. And so my son, from the age of two on up, would become very violently angry over really ridiculous things. He's now 9, and this past year in school, he was becoming so violent and so aggressive in school that we ended up taking him out of school. So for this business for me here, I had my son with me at work every day from January until we found a doctor that could help him. And he is stable now, thankfully, and he is doing so much better. But there were so many days that Stacey and I looked at each other, and it's just this realization of there's no way I could have any type of a normal job. I would have been fired. Every day. The number of calls you get from school, the number of doctor's appointments, visits, therapy that you have to go to when you have a child with special needs, it's just so much different and so much more intense than I think anybody ever realizes, unless you have a child with special needs. So to be able to have that, the business get you through that. And it kind of does get you through that because it's. It's to the point of where, you know, some days, all I could do is come in, and this is what got me through, is knowing I had a place to go and I had a job to do and I could get away from everything else that was going on in my life and just focus on owning a boutique for a day.

Yeah. So we, you know, part of that has always been our why has been, okay, how can we help other people with disabilities or other people affected by disabilities? When we. A few years ago, we were approached by our local intermediate school district about a young woman who had had a brain injury. And they were looking to see if we would be willing to give her an internship to learn some skills. And of course, I was like, 100% we are doing this.

We.

I, having worked in the schools, I knew what kind of accommodations I could make for her. And she's been really successful. She still works for us. She's been with us for a few years now, and for a long time I thought, okay, how can we do we hire more individuals with disabilities? How do we make this work? And then we kind of looked at each other and we were like, well, wait a minute. There's a huge population of moms of children with special needs who can't work, don't have that flexibility. And so we started actively recruiting moms of children with special needs for positions here at the warehouse. We now have three women who work for us that have kids with special needs. Two of them have kids with down syndrome. One has a daughter that has Asperger's, and then one.