Entrepreneurial Insights & Fashion Innovation: E-Commerce & Inclusivity | Ashley Lacer

Ashley Lacer, the dynamic force behind Michelle Mae, joins us to share her inspiring entrepreneurial journey from a background in agricultural business to leading a successful women's retail brand. Discover how Ashley's grandparents' small business influence shaped her unique approach to prioritizing team culture and customer satisfaction. Learn how her initial ventures, including a wedding coordination company and the online community Ella Lane, paved the way for her thriving wholesale model that now reaches over 2,000 stores nationwide.

Uncover the secrets of a fashion entrepreneur who has revolutionized the industry with her commitment to size inclusivity, offering styles from extra small to 4XL. By focusing on working on her business rather than just in it, she highlights the critical role of strategic planning, expert hires, and building a warehouse to manage costs and enhance staff benefits. We engage in a heartfelt discussion on overcoming challenges, fostering a supportive company culture, and the pivotal moments that drive business growth.

Balancing the demands of work, life, and business growth is crucial, and our conversation delves into strategies for achieving this equilibrium. From finding the right accountant to building lasting relationships with boutique partners, the importance of trust, authenticity, and quality over digital marketing becomes evident. Ashley's insights on creating a sustainable business model offer valuable lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs aiming to build a stress-free, balanced, and successful work environment. Join us for this enriching episode packed with actionable insights and practical advice.

Ashley Lacer: CEO and Founder of Aspire Growth Advisors

Website(s):
https://www.michellemaewholesale.com/
https://ellalane.com/collections/michelle-mae-brand

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ellalaneboutique/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EllaLaneBoutique

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ellalaneboutique


#PodcastEpisode #Entrepreneurship #SmallBusinessTips #BusinessGrowth #WomenInBusiness #FashionEntrepreneur #RetailSuccess #TeamCulture #CustomerSatisfaction #WholesaleBusiness #SuccessStory #EntrepreneurialJourney #WomenSupportingWomen #WorkLifeBalance #LeadershipTips #AshleyLacer #MichelleMae #SizeInclusivity #SustainableBusiness #BoutiqueBusiness #SmallBusinessGrowth #BusinessCoaching #BusinessStrategy #EntrepreneurshipTips #BusinessPodcast #EntrepreneurSuccess #GrowYourBusiness #StrategicPlanning #SmallBusinessSuccess #EntrepreneurMindset #GrowthStrategies #EntrepreneurLife #OklahomaCity #SmallBusinessPivots #Success #MichaelDMorrison 

Chapters

• 0:00 Small Business Pivots
• 10:33 Overcoming Business Challenges for Growth
• 18:46 Balancing Work, Life, and Business Growth
• 26:33 Building Relationships for Business Success
• 33:36 Small Business Success Strategies

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

All right, welcome to another Small Business Pivots. We have another special guest from around the world, and I know that only the business owner can say their name and their business name like they want it. So tell us a little bit about yourself and your business.

Speaker 2: 0:14

Thanks for having me here. My name is Ashley Lacer. I'm the owner of Michelle May. That is a women's retail brand, but we wholesale, so we manufacture women's clothing. We're in about 2000 stores nationally, so we sell to retailers who then sell to consumers.

Speaker 1: 0:32

Wow, 2000 stores. That's incredible. Well, how do you think we're going to help our listeners today?

Speaker 2: 0:39

I think some of the best things we can talk about are things that might be not on the radar. Usually, business is about how do I make more money or how do I cut my expenses, and I think that if we talk more about the culture of your team and how you treat your customer, that's where we've put our focus and we've seen really good results from that.

Speaker 1: 0:59

This should be interesting because a lot of e-commerce is more focused on digital marketing, and you mentioned culture and other things, so let's introduce the show. We'll be right back.

Speaker 2: 1:11

Sounds good.

Speaker 1: 1:12

Welcome to Small Business Pivots, a podcast designed for small business owners. I'm your host, michael Morrison, a small business coach and founder of BOSS, where we make business ownership simplified for success, so that you can own a business that runs without you. To learn more, go to businessownershipsimplifiedcom. All right, welcome back to Small Business Pivots, ashley. Any specific place you want to start, because we don't typically talk to someone in the e-commerce space. But I also know that with business owners, mindset is a big deal Any trials, tribulations, growing up that got you into entrepreneurship.

Speaker 2: 1:56

I wouldn't say trials per se, but my grandparents were kind of the cornerstone of raising me with their small business owners. My grandpa was a land surveyor, one of the original ones from Sonoma County, California. He was part of the historical society there too and they built their whole life and built our whole family around small business and treating the community, giving back to the community, and I saw what their hard work did for them. They were always there for me and so my whole life I've always known that working for myself was kind of where I wanted to be.

Speaker 1: 2:32

Did you go to college at all?

Speaker 2: 2:34

I did. I went to Oregon State University and got my Bachelor of Science there, but everything else has pretty much been self-taught. I didn't go to fashion school. I didn't go to design school. I actually have a major in ag business for agricultural sector and I was an appraiser for many years and I'm also a real estate broker. So this whole thing was completely self-taught by just learning as I went. This worked, this didn't, and I just leaned into the things that worked, rolled the dice and gambled a few times.

Speaker 1: 3:03

And here I am that worked, rolled the dice and gambled a few times. And here I am. You know, sometimes that's the best way. Some of our most successful business owners we've talked to either didn't go to college, or they went to college and the business they own has nothing to do with their degree, or they were an accidental entrepreneur. But you know, those that aren't really focused on a specific industry usually turn out to be the best. So you started adulting after college. How did you get into entrepreneurship? What's the journey that you took?

Speaker 2: 3:35

Sure. So I've always been a dreamer and I like to create things kind of out of nothing. And so for seven years I ran a wedding coordination company that I sold to the gal that I was training at the time, and when I moved here to Medford, I had just had my second child and I was having a really hard time connecting with women. I didn't know anybody in this new town, and so I created an online community from our retail side called Ella Lane an online community from our retail side called Ella Lane, and for a couple of years that's where I bought other brands and sold to women directly.

Speaker 2: 4:10

I was working out of my living room, packing out of my living room. I eventually had to upgrade and get a PO box at the local place, because my post guy is like this is too much mail. And then we got a little warehouse or, excuse me a storage unit or more inventory and did local events, and then customers were asking where can I buy your things? I want to come shop in person. So then we got a storefront and that's when I hired my my first staff was when I started doing events and a store. So that was kind of how the retail side started and then we quickly learned we were having issues with quality. Deliverables weren't coming on time, we couldn't get things in all sizes, and I thought to myself I can do this better and I want to serve this industry and create a product that other women like me can sell to provide for their family.

Speaker 1: 5:03

Let's go back to that first employee, Cause I know that a lot of business owners they're like when will I know it's time? Cause that's a big commitment. I remember starting my first business two and a half decades ago and I just couldn't pull the plug. It took forever, Cause that's a huge commitment. How did you know it was time?

Speaker 2: 5:21

When I knew that my customers weren't going to get serviced unless I got help, and so, because I run a couple of different companies, I couldn't work a store full time. So my very first employee was Brittany, and she's still with me. I think it's her seventh year with me.

Speaker 2: 5:37

Now she's on vacation this week and so she helped me with all of my events to begin with. Now she does a whole bunch of other things, but she would come to events with me and she would help me sell products and create relationships with clients and she's always been my teammate that can help with all the online components of things. And then, when we got the storefront, I added Katie, who's my manager. So my husband and her husband deployed together to Afghanistan a number of years ago. They're the only people we knew when I moved to this town and I took her to coffee one day, which is now two blocks from our new warehouse, which we just got done building for ourselves.

Speaker 1: 6:13

Wow.

Speaker 2: 6:14

And she had experience in retail and I said, hey, you don't really know me, but I've heard great things about you. Will you take a chance on me? And she's now been with me six years and is like the captain of the ship and nothing. She is such a blessing in my life.

Speaker 1: 6:31

We talk about culture a lot in businesses. How did you establish a culture immediately? Did it take time to foster that?

Speaker 2: 6:45

Yeah, I would say I've made a lot of mistakes along the way, and I think that part of the blessing of my staff is that they've been patient with me and they see the bigger picture and they too believe in the brand, and they've stuck through some really, really, really hard times.

Speaker 2: 6:56

And so for me, asking my staff more questions has been critical, and because sometimes hard conversations can be hard, especially when it's about reflection on you as a leader and your shortcomings or things they need more of, and so I've just really tried to instill in them if there's a problem, please come to me, because I'm imperfect and providing an employment for them is my priority. And so over six to seven years, we've gotten to a really good place of when there's issues or if I need to step up and do something different. They're really good about giving me that feedback and, as a leader and an owner of a company, if you can't make a safe space for your staff to come to you and give you that feedback, they're going to go somewhere else. And so trying to create an open communication line with them has been critical, and I don't always get it right, and but they have patience and grace for me because they love our customers and they love the team and I'm just really appreciative that they're they're sticking with me.

Speaker 1: 7:59

Absolutely. Communication is critical and would you say that's that and what else has made you successful as a leader?

Speaker 2: 8:09

I think just trying to think of like pivoting. Ironically, so many times in this company we'll be faced with an issue and we have to figure out what to do. So, for example, we just had 2000 items delivered that were shipped with another product that had a smell to them. We sell apparel. We can't resell something that has a smell to them. So we tested a whole bunch of theories. The staff took some home and washed them. We hung some up to you know, hung them out to air them out. We were trying all kinds of ozone machine to see what. What solved the problem. And what solves the problem is just letting them air out, which sounds like a simple task. But they have to unpackage, unfold, hang air out, refold, rebag thousands of units and that's two people in the warehouse.

Speaker 1: 8:55

Wow.

Speaker 2: 8:56

So pivot but it saved $60,000 of inventory. It saved $60,000 of inventory.

Speaker 1: 9:03

So let's talk about inventory, Cause we don't have, like I said, very many guests on here that that's in the e-commerce space and on top of that that really have a lot of inventory. So can you share some insights on how to best manage that?

Speaker 2: 9:21

I was hoping you could tell me. So inventory has been a challenge and one of the big things you need to watch out for especially if you're a new business or trying to scale is your inventory is not considered a write-off until your cost of goods is sold. So at the end of the year, if you're over-inventoried, that's considered income you made and reinvested into the business. We got hit with that in 2021. And we just got done getting through that tax debacle because the inventory was disparagingly in one direction and my accountant got it wrong, which is a conversation for a different day.

Speaker 2: 10:01

But inventory management can be challenging and I think knowing your cash flow, knowing what your basis is and knowing what a good turnover is. So we've kind of established there's a certain dollar amount of inventory we need to hold on hand because your in-stock orders are really important. If you're only ever doing pre-orders, if someone calls you and says, hey, I need inventory right now and you have nothing to sell, you just lost a sale. So there's a really fine balance between future orders and future production, but having something right now for the immediate customer that needs something today.

Speaker 1: 10:33

You mentioned fashion earlier and that you didn't go to school for that. So how did you find what works and what doesn't work? That seems very complicating. And to know how much and how many to have, and different sizes, and all that good stuff.

Speaker 2: 10:50

Yeah. So we're really big on size inclusivity, which is a big reason of our brand success, so we offer extra small through 4XL, both XL and 1XL. So the plus size market's very underserved in the fashion world. Most manufacturers stop at size XL, when the average woman is a size 16 in America, I believe and so when it comes to designing, I'm a mom of three kids, but I'm also a professional, so I need something that is cute, classy and casual and easy to wash and wear. So that's what we focus on. You can dress it up, you can dress it down, you can travel well with it and it just appeals to a really wide range of women.

Speaker 1: 11:30

What pivots have you made recently that you would contribute to actually moving the needle in your business? Or was it by mistake?

Speaker 2: 11:39

This one wasn't a mistake. So one of the biggest things that a business owner has obviously is overhead. How do you protect your overhead? How do you control that? And I had a lease for many years and leases have escalation clauses and cam charges. If you don't know what a cam charge is, consider yourself lucky. But those costs can add up really quickly for a small business owner and you have very little control over what those expenses might be. So my husband and I decided to sell a home we had in town. That was just a single family residential rental and we actually 1031-ed it into a bare piece of dirt and we decided to build a warehouse. So we now own our own building. So my overhead is secure. It's not going to go up anymore, minus taxes and insurance. And my motivation for that was if I can pay less in overhead for my space, I can compensate my staff better, because they are my most valuable asset and they deserve the fruits of all of their labor.

Speaker 1: 12:44

And they're sticking with me because yeah well, you're unique in the fact that most business owners are working in the business and everything you just talked about probably just flew right over all their heads Business owners. So it sounds like you're working on the business. How did you get into working on the business?

Speaker 2: 13:06

If you don't work on the business, you won't have a business to work on. I think that's a really big thing that business owners they get. So where's the next sale? Where's my next dollar coming from? Which is kind of more of a short sighted goal or plan. But you have to see one year, five years down the road and my husband always asked me what's our exit plan If, at any point, life changes and you don't want to do this anymore?

Speaker 2: 13:31

Like what's the exit plan? If, at any point, life changes and you don't want to do this anymore? Like what's the exit plan? And I was like I would never exit. What are you talking about? But every business has to have a plan and while I don't have a timeline of what that looks like, I'm here for the long haul. I'm here to provide, you know, jobs for my staff as long as they want to be here. But I think that if you're, if you don't figure out a way to work on all the behind the scenes stuff and it's not the fun stuff, right, nobody loves accounting and if you do, that's great. But what do you want your business to be known for and how are you going to get there?

Speaker 1: 14:10

How did you shift your mindset? Because we have business owners that come to us. I'm a business coach and we own a business coaching company. But we have business owners come to us and they're like I don't want to let my team down. If I'm working on the business, I'm not working with them and they feel guilty.

Speaker 2: 14:26

I try to communicate with them, Like sometimes when I come here I say, hey, ladies, I'm like today I worked on an affiliate linking thing and I had to phone a friend to figure out how to do HTML code on my website, because that's not a strong suit of mine. And so I think one of the biggest things I've also learned is ask for help. I think as business owners, we never ask for help. We try to bear too much on our shoulders for things we don't have skill sets in. I originally did our first website seven years ago and guess what? Earlier this year, it looked like a seven-year-old website. So I called somebody, I hired somebody, they read it our entire website and I can't take photography. I'm not a model, I am not all these things, and so I find those that believe in what we're doing have the same culture of putting others first, and then I hire out the things I can't do myself.

Speaker 1: 15:17

I love that. So it sounds like you really have a lot of strategy in place, so your team is on board with the mission. So do you have mission statements and all that stuff?

Speaker 2: 15:30

You know, what's funny is my manager and I, like four years ago, started a maybe three years ago started like an employee handbook and, to be honest with you, it's still in draft mode. But it's something that I think what's weird about us is we don't have like a mission statement. We don't do the traditional things Like I think there's a checklist for business owners they think they have to have. I don't.

Speaker 2: 15:54

Usually I've never done those things which might be counterintuitive to how most people do business or coach businesses, um, but sometimes I feel like you just have to put out whatever fire is right in front of you at the time. Life moves crazy fast, business moves really fast and there's going to be distractions all over the place and you can't tackle everything at once it's impossible and so I really try to just figure out what's going to have the worst impact. If I don't handle this now, I have to do that now and some stuff gets pushed back a long time, like our employee handbook. But the staff's okay with that because they know what we're trying to do and what priorities are, which is getting shipments out and taking care of our customers.

Speaker 1: 16:39

How did you know these were the right fit for your company?

Speaker 1: 16:41

Because I know that a lot of business owners today have a hard time finding good people and then retaining them too, and it sounds like you've done both.

Speaker 1: 16:50

Any tips on that? You're listening to Small Business Pivots. This episode is proudly brought to you by BOSS, where business ownership is simplified for success. At BOSS, we help business owners create their businesses to run smoothly without them being there 24-7. Our seasoned business coaches, who have walked the path themselves, provide invaluable guidance and support, and with additional services like fast business loans some approved within 24 to 48 hours, comprehensive online courses, detailed workbooks and engaging classes, boss offers a wealth of resources to help you succeed. Discover how small business success begins with Boss at businessownershipsimplifiedcom. If you're enjoying the podcast, make sure to stay connected by hitting that subscribe button, giving us a thumbs up or leaving a positive review. Your support keeps us going. Now let's get back to our incredible guest. How did you know these were the right fit for your company? Because I know that a lot of business owners today have a hard time finding good people and then retaining them too, and it sounds like you've done both. Any tips on that?

Speaker 2: 18:13

place of. They're my most valuable asset and I try to remind them of that, and I've made some pretty big promises about where I'm trying to get the company to go. It takes longer to get places always than you anticipate. Our warehouse was a two-year build. It was supposed to be eight months way over budget, all the kinds of things. But I see the light at the end of the tunnel and I see all the hard work that we've been putting into where we're trying to go and I really think 2025 is going to be a year of not just stability but growth.

Speaker 2: 18:41

So people are always trying to grow your business. Grow your business, make more sales. For me, I would love just a stable business that covers everything I need to, because work-life balance is really important and I don't want to push the envelope all the time. I have a family a husband, three children so for me, the balance of work and life is really important. So we don't work weekends here anymore. Ladies leave at four o'clock. If they have kids or sports events, they take it off. We're super flexible on time. Family should always come first, and so trying to just support them when they need that, I think, is one of the many things I've tried to do so they have the flexibility to be there for their families first.

Speaker 1: 19:24

Is that one of many things that you do to build your culture, because I know we talked about that earlier.

Speaker 2: 19:30

Yeah, I again. I'm an imperfect person and I always think I have room to grow and learn, but I'm so appreciative for them when they give me good feedback. I do offer employees that have been here a certain time to work certain hours of 401k program. I'm a really big believer in retirement and taking care of people in that way as well, and so that's a product that we have available for people. I think that's. If you can afford to do that one for yourself, it's great, because who doesn't love tax deferred income for later? Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 20:03

But it's also a great tool for employee retention, because as a small business owner, you've got to be competitive in the marketplace, and so how are you going to be competitive and how are you going to attract the good staff? You know you can pay them more, you can give them time off, you can do 401k, but if they're not happy with where they are, none of those things matter.

Speaker 1: 20:23

Absolutely. I want to jump a little ways back. You mentioned accounting and accounting not placing something in the right place, and we're we're huge on cost accountants getting the right accountant. What did you learn from that and how did you move forward and what's some advice you can give on finding a good accountant?

Speaker 2: 20:47

You get what you pay for.

Speaker 1: 20:49

Love it.

Speaker 2: 20:51

So I had an accountant that was a friend from college. I won't go into too much detail, but it became very quickly apparent that my company grew and scaled past a point that she was capable of handling and I didn't recognize it in time. And then I hired a professional who I thought could give me good business advice, who acted like a CPA and accountant but was not. And I got more bad advice and it kind of snowballed to the point where one of my real estate clients used to work in a really kind of like a high-end office here and I know they're very expensive and I called her and I said well, they take me, because I can't keep affording these mistakes. So to give you a small idea of how bad it was, my 22s were just filed a month and a half ago.

Speaker 2: 21:41

I hear that all the time.

Speaker 2: 21:43

Yeah. So I'm on my fourth accountant. They've taken over all of my accounts for all of my businesses. I have four returns every year between everything that I do and, while they are expensive, the write-offs that they were able to find me more than paid for themselves. And they're able to actually strategize and tax plan. So when you're looking for an accountant and a CPA, depending on the size of your business and the plan you're going with, you need a plan, you need a business plan, you need an accounting plan. They need to be able to advise you on what to do or not to do with income, expenses, those things, because what it looks like on paper really impacts your bottom line.

Speaker 1: 22:25

Yeah, I feel like I just opened a can of worms, cause my first accountant was a friend that supposedly a bookkeeper but really wasn't even a bookkeeper. All they did was accounts, receivables and payables for the company they worked at. That's not even a bookkeeper, that's just somebody that pays bills and enters bills and things like that. So listeners, heed that warning. I went through the same thing that. That was back in the nineties with my first business and the second year everything snowballed. I started getting things from the Oklahoma tax commission, where I'm at the IRS, and you didn't file this correctly and that, and then penal penalties and interest and it just it didn't go away and finally had to hire a good cost accountant. And then, as the business grew, you mentioned something else that's very applicable for every is your accountant the right accountant for the season of business that you have? Because we went through that as well.

Speaker 2: 23:23

Yeah, I think the biggest thing is not only is that they need to understand the industry right, because your cost of accounting that you have to do and if those words are foreign to you, I'm sorry, I just learned them myself in the past 12 months and I've been in business for, you know, seven years with this company. So I think when you're asking yourself, when do I need to stop doing my own books? And if you can't understand the papers coming back to you from your accountant, you're probably at a level of business where you need somebody who can truly advise you. I didn't understand my own numbers. I knew I had money in the bank account. I knew some months were higher, some months were shorter, but I had no true plan on what that looks like. So with my new company next year we're going to work on inventory management, purchasing plans, all the things with tax strategic things in place. So I'm hoping that next year will be a good tax year after three very rough ones.

Speaker 1: 24:22

Yeah Well, you're not alone. I went through it and I also want to encourage other business owners If, if, if, you're in a place where it's more than one CPA can handle, go hire that firm, because you will outgrow one CPA. In fact, we learned that the hard way. We thought, oh, we'll just hire a controller and bring them in-house. And this was a multi, multi-million dollar company with 100 employees and it was too much for them to even handle and got us in a bad situation. So we finally went and hired a firm.

Speaker 1: 24:59

The nice thing about a firm listeners is they have departments so they can run your taxes, your filings through each department to scrutinize, assess and everything, because not one person can know the whole tax code and then know your industry too. So you make very good man. That is. That's very valuable advice. Right there, I want to talk about the process of e-commerce in itself. So you've got digital marketing, you've got online sales, but you also have retail sales. How do you manage all that? For those that are wanting to get into inventory type businesses, Sure.

Speaker 2: 25:37

So to kind of get a little bit of background, if someone's listening for, like, what is e-commerce? Everyone knows what e-commerce is, but there's kind of two main avenues of e-commerce. One is the direct to consumer, so going to a website, placing an order and it shows up on your door in a couple of days. You know that's like the retail side. Then there's the wholesale side of e-commerce, which is what Michelle May does, and that is the suppliers designing, manufacturing and providing product to the retailers that sell to consumers, and so it's kind of all like an inventory chain, right. Somebody buys the fabric and then they assemble the fabric and then they package it and then it comes to us and then we sell it to mom and pop stores across the nation and then they sell it to consumers mom and pop stores across the nation and then they sell it to consumers.

Speaker 2: 26:33

So for me, what's most rewarding is we're creating a product and a brand that other business owners are making their businesses off of. I'm feeding the small business owners what they need to be successful, and that is one of the most rewarding things I've ever done in my life, because I love small businesses, I'm like a champion for them. I want them to win, and so I have a lot of retailers that buy our product and they message me saying you're the only brand I'm selling in my store right now because of your quality. My customers love it and they're repeat customers. I would say we have over a 95% repeat customer basis right now for our retailers.

Speaker 1: 27:08

Wow, so are these mostly boutiques or are they department stores?

Speaker 2: 27:12

Nope, we're in no department stores as of right now. We're only boutiques only. Again, kind of a small business champion in that, and so if that opportunity came down the road, we'll see, but for now I'm just enjoying working with the small businesses.

Speaker 1: 27:27

Any specific areas where somebody could find your products.

Speaker 2: 27:32

Yeah, so we're actually going to be adding a link to our website here pretty soon where you can find a bunch of different vendors that carry our brand. So our wholesale brand website is just michellemaywholesalecom, and then our retail site, if you wanted to buy from us directly, is ellalanecom.

Speaker 1: 27:51

Okay, if you were in front of a group of business owners all seasons of business, different industries what's something that you could share that might be applicable to all of them?

Speaker 2: 28:04

Your staff is your biggest asset hands down.

Speaker 1: 28:08

You heard it here first. I love it. It's communication staff and a good accountant. Yes, are the three big bullet points that we talk about all the time. Do y'all have systems and processes, by the way? I'm curious.

Speaker 2: 28:27

We do but we don't. So one of the main systems we have is we run pre -orders so we get an idea of demand before we place an item into production. So that's been a part of our plan for a couple of years. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, based upon economy styles, season of year, but essentially if we're required to make a minimum of X number of units but we didn't do a pre-order and we only ordered X number of units, what if the demand was double that? We just lost all of those sales of guaranteed income.

Speaker 2: 29:01

So by doing pre-orders on the wholesale side, we're 100% guaranteeing all of those units will be put into production. It's 100% sell-through rate because we've already have pre-committed people. We take zero money up front. I'm not going to take a small business owner's money until I have the product to deliver to them. So that's a risk because we're fronting the capital cost for all of that up front. But that's been super critical in our e-commerce business is getting an idea of demand before we make the product. So it helps us know if we need to make less of something or more of something and it's really really, really helped our, our margins and profit by making more when they need more.

Speaker 1: 29:45

How do you brand e-commerce, because I know a lot of businesses are like service-based businesses and they're having a hard time fighting for that digital marketing space. Do you have that problem, or do you go directly to the boutiques and do kind of a face-to-face sale?

Speaker 2: 30:03

We do a lot of direct, so we're a lot of word to mouth. In fact, in the boutique apparel world there's fashion markets. One's called Magic. It's in Las Vegas and New York. We just went to our first show back in August and we did a month worth of sales in three days. And so what I like about the word of mouth part is I'm not trying to fight for a bunch of online space, because as a consumer, it can be a bunch of noise and hard to trust. What ad you're seeing? Is that a lie? Is this coming from? Not where they say it's coming from? And so we're starting to get more into the digital space because we realize it's important for people to, from the outside, get to know and love our brand too, not just our retailers. But we're really relationship-based. We'll text our buyers reminders for orders. We have a phone number they can call and the human answers it.

Speaker 1: 30:59

No, tell me no I know, shocker right, wow.

Speaker 2: 31:03

But building that relationship with the people buying from us, I think is more important than trying to fight in a digital space. I know it's a little upside down to what people are doing, but it's working for us and I think it's working because people miss relationships. It's getting to be too digitized.

Speaker 1: 31:22

I love that you're going against the grain on almost every single business tactic.

Speaker 2: 31:27

Fingers crossed. It keeps working.

Speaker 1: 31:30

Where do we see your business in five years, do you think? Where do you want it to be?

Speaker 2: 31:36

In five years. I would like it to be where my staff and myself feel like they can breathe a little more. We kind of always feel like we're under a pressure cooker because we're a small team and we're pivoting all the time. We had to redo our entire fall in three days because of a print copyright issue, which is another pivot we had to do. So they're processing the last of our fall arrivals right now. Today, as we speak. We're about a month late, which for this season is pretty hard, but our customers are super understanding because of the relationship and the honesty, and so we just keep pivoting and we're just going to keep pivoting. And five years from now, my goal would be that we're all maybe taking an annual vacation together or, um, just having more joy and peace in business versus stress and unknown.

Speaker 1: 32:33

Yeah, I love that. I love that. So, if someone wants to follow you closer, are you on social media email website.

Speaker 2: 32:41

I don't use my social media a whole bunch, but I do have one. It's called Entrepreneur Ashley. Okay, Surprisingly it's because I'm an entrepreneur. You can kind of follow me there. You can also follow Michelle May or Ella Lane those are my brands. And then the Entrepreneur Ashley link is basically me with my family and we have a llama farm here in Medford.

Speaker 1: 33:00

So nice Serial entrepreneur. Is there anything we didn't cover that you think our listeners should know or understand in business?

Speaker 2: 33:12

I think my only advice would be just to ask for help. It's okay to not have the answers to everything. I think we put too much pressure on ourselves to be perfect and not make mistakes. But you're going to make mistakes, you're going to need grace, you're going to need forgiveness, you're going to need grace, you're going to need forgiveness. And if you try to just humble yourself with your customers and your staff, I think it's going to go a long way for the longevity of your business.

Speaker 1: 33:36

All right. Well, you've been a wealth of knowledge and a blessing to many. Thank you so much for your time.

Speaker 2: 33:40

Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1: 33:41

My pleasure. Thank you for listening to Small Business Pivots. Please don't forget to subscribe and share this podcast. If your business is stuck, you need help creating a business that can run without you, or you need a fast business loan or line of credit, go to our website businessownershipsimplifiedcom and schedule a free consultation to learn why small business success starts with boss. If you want to talk anything small business related, email me at Michael at Michael D Morrisoncom. We'll see you next time on small business pivots.