After over a dozen years in online retail, while visiting Paducah, Kentucky for Quilt Week, we saw a building for sale and purchased it to be the home of our new brick and mortar quilt boutique. We wanted a very different idea for a shop than what was traditionally opened in quilt retail. We’ve now been open two years and have seen tremendous growth in our foot traffic and product mix. My husband and I have taken many of our successful online strategies and applied them to our in-store business.
One of the top things we needed to figure out right away was “who is our customer.” In fact, our original product mix was all wrong. We prepared for a very different customer than the one who actually came through the doors. Our customer mix is about 97% tourist, which has very different buying habits than a local customer base. Figuring out who your actual consumer is versus the one you have in your mind, or are trying to attract with your marketing, can help you identify where your product mix can be changed for profitability. This was developed by using a customer profile sheet and tracking each customer that came in over a period of two months.
Another major issue we identified is that we are all competing for our customers' attention in various ways that may or may not be right for each business type. Once we discovered who our consumer was, we could actively develop a plan on how to reach them. That plan is very different from our online strategy of content creation. Paducah being on many quilter’s personal “bucket list” of places to visit means we need to help them have an amazing experience in our store. We designed our store more as a boutique than a traditional quilt brick and mortar for that reason.
We still have a robust online presence and mail order business, and a growing and unique brick and mortar experience to accompany it. It can be tricky to help consumers have the same experience online and in-store. We like to make sure our customers in both channels have a similar experience, so we package your in-store purchases with great care and also throw in small goodies like we do your online purchases. We want your experience at home with your purchase to be like opening a gift or as fun as opening a high end purchase, no matter how small it is and no matter which channel you purchased from.
A major factor in our in-store success is to work with our city and visitors bureau to drive more quilt tourist business to Paducah, and learn about what that entails and how that works. I attended the American Bus Association Convention in nearby Nashville, TN to talk to bus companies and see what they are looking for in quilt tourism so that we can help develop that in conjunction with the other stores in Paducah and the National Quilt Museum, which is a short two block walk from our front door. We have been working on day trip itineraries on our website so you can plan the perfect excursion here. By helping create those experiences, each shop in Paducah can benefit. Just as it is important for me to understand how social media platforms drive the algorithm and viewership, it was important for me to learn how Paducah stays top of mind for tourists.
In the meantime, we haven’t forgotten the local customer base. We work with all of our local area quilt guilds and our county extension office to teach classes and work to create new sewing consumers whenever we can. We believe new sewists are made every day, and it’s important to reach them on their social media platforms of choice. We make sure to tag our posts with hashtags for Paducah and use location tags on all platforms, like Instagram, TikTok and Facebook. If you are local, we want to come up in your search too.
As we continue to grow our “click and mortar” business, we find more and more ways to drive our customers from one sales channel to the other. We believe each can feed the other experience, and make each stronger. Understanding your customer and capturing their attention can make all the difference in your profitability and marketing. You can get a copy of our customer profile sheet and try this out for yourself on our B2B Patreon!
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