While we are talking about steps to reopen our businesses, we realized how much we improved and how we kind of took “advantage” of this catastrophic situation to improve our zones of weakness.
2019 was a very good year for us. We expanded our retail services and created and designed two pop-up stores, one in Miami and one in NYC.
Beginning of 2020 was a dream: we opened our own boutique in Chelsea and organized the US launch of French organic Beauty brand, Beauty Garden, and also the return of iconic 100-year old cosmetic brand Payot. We were on the road to success!
So when covid19 stopped us, we froze for a second but quickly decided to take the digital path!
Actually, since the beginning of our entrepreneurial journey and with the help of amazing mentor such as Catherine Barba we always knew the power of digital and e-commerce.
We then created an embryo of a multivendors marketplace few years ago but never really had the occasion to invest time and budget on it. Our focus was in retail experiences because it’s where we’re good at and what we enjoy to do.
covid19 forced us to realize that we need to pull up our sleeves and dive into new app, codes, networks, contents, marketing, new languages to continue to be alive!!!
And it’s amazing to realize that when we’ll be back to normal things, we won’t go back where we were but further! We may have been stuck at home but our business grew so fast!
Here is what we improved:
Our logistics
- We developed dropshipping with our vendors.
- We convinced our partners, OCabanon, who had to close their restaurant to learn about how to handle orders and bet on ecommerce to save their business and maintain ours. The next day they were ready to deliver and perform pick pack send.
- We learned how to fully use UPS services. The current situation of USPS in New York (unreasonable delay and lost packages) proved that we were right.
- We invested more on our ecommerce manager that we are involving more in our strategy
Our playground
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Beyond the brands, we convince distributors to change their work habits and to test with us B2C.
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We were already on shopify but learned about add-ons applications and shipping rates optimization.
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We ensure shipping all over the US and overseas but did not forget about our local customers. Now you can order online and pick up at the store! Products available for pick up are tagged with a special label to make the life of our customers easier.
Our Communication
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We hired a marketing and social media content specialist who is helping us to create an editorial calendar, boost our visibility on every platform: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, twitter and Pinterest ; and that last one was worth it! In May, we had 166k viewers and +6.000% increasing traffic to our website (in 15 days)!!
Our identity
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We launched our new logo
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New icons for our categories, more blog posts, stories and Q&A.
Our offers
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We learned about bundle product
- We created gift boxes, gift cards.
- We sourced new products and brands and created entire new collections such as the sustainable or the teen one.
Our visibility
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We just hired a SEO expert to help us be more visible on the www ;) And the good news is that this is not the end but only the beginning of a chapter. We’ll soon offer a livestream shopping experience to our customers so be ready to shop French wink products online while enjoying our DNA ;)
