For What It’s Worth, This is What I’ve Learnt
To those on the outside, the decisions that businesses make can sometimes seem out of the blue. They rarely are. Case in point, my decision to close the shop. I had been loosely mulling it over for a year, increasingly giving it more thought in the past six months and then really knowing that it was the right decision for both me and the overall business in the recent couple of months. By the time I actually announced my decision, it felt like old news to me. And if I’m honest, a relief.
My decision to start the shop had a similar trajectory except in reverse. Starting with a slow trickle of an idea and building into a tsunami of thoughts that all pointed towards retail. At the time that I started the shop, I was still running The Assembly Hall - a wonderfully happy workshop business with my partner Kate Gallagher. We adored The Assembly Hall and I met and taught so many people - many of who went on to become firm friends. I really enjoyed the interaction with people (which is kind of surprising as it is a bit of a joke amongst friends that I am a notorious recluse - rarely letting people in. Like all good jokes, there is a kernel of truth to it - I definitely keep a small circle of people close to me).
At the same time I was Instagramming a lot. And every time I would post something I would get requests to share where I had bought things. I was never an influencer so I wasn’t getting paid to send traffic to other businesses - which is partly why I thought I should probably curate my own shop and round out my service based business with a product component. Coupled with the fact that I was hardly buying anything within Singapore because I couldn’t find what I loved, and the idea for Shop Lottie Lifestyle started.
Those early days were my favourite. Finding brands to work with and thinking through how each brand would complement one another and how an individual customer might be able to buy various products, all of which would work seamlessly together. I knew exactly what I was solving and who my customer was. And I loved pulling the look of the shop together - designing the website, logo, colour palette, shooting the products and styling and photographing products in situ. This is what I loved.
But apparently retail isn’t just about that. It’s also about selling. (Hang on…what?) Selling? Ohhh. I don’t think I’d ever really thought through the fact that I am not a salesperson. As with The Assembly Hall, I loved meeting customers but my sales technique sucked. Sometimes customers would come to see me and I would end up saying “well, just think about it. Don’t buy anything you really don’t need to”. Pretty sure that’s not a go-get-em sales technique. I cringed a little over selling stuff. I wanted everyone to love what I was doing as much as I did, but I didn’t actually want anyone to feel pressured to buy anything. I wanted it to just happen organically. Which is possibly naive and a bit silly. (A friend and business peer once said to me “I want to see more explicit product sales content on your instagram. You don’t push your products enough”). Hmm. Initially it did grow organically, because when something is new in Singapore it does well. We are all stuck in some kind of Groundhog Day living here. The weather is the same, the sun rises and sets at the same time every day, no seasons - just a kind of blur of endless days and weeks. When something new comes to town, it’s exciting….”oooh, something new!” But that wains quickly.
Just as I launched the shop, Covid hit. The Assembly Hall had to close which was really sad. And so the shop became my whole business at that point. That was never the intention. I had purchased all of the stock and shipped a shop full of items before Covid took hold. But as the first year of the shop would draw to a close, I had to rethink working with certain brands because shipping was skyrocketing and supply issues were starting to become a problem as well. Many brands decided to rein in their wholesale businesses and became retailers themselves. And then Covid really dug in. Any notion that the disruption we had braved in the first year of Covid dissipated and the realisation that we were in this for the long haul started to crystallise. It was a dark time for many retailers - year one of Covid had been kind but year two saw retail sales fall off a cliff. Especially in the Singapore expat market.. It makes sense because we were grappling with some big issues - questioning whether we could stay living away, stressed about not being able to see family, unwelcome in our host country and locked out of our home countries. We all just had our heads down, masks on, trying to cope. No one wanted a tablecloth or new glassware.
Those Covid years altered everything for all of us. Not just my shop. Not just Singapore. But everyone everywhere. I don’t think we have properly reconciled that yet. We were all so exhausted and wrung out by the experience that by the time restrictions eased, we were so depleted that it felt like we were just going through the motions of making our way back into the activities that we used to enjoy - eating out, socialising, shopping, travelling. Genuine gratitude that we were safe and able to leave our house and see people again, but everything tinged with a strange falseness - like we were play acting what it felt like to be happy and free again. None of us truly feeling it anymore. It could just be me - but I think this feeling still persists for many of us.
The practical upshot of these years was that many many people left Singapore. During the worst of the restrictions, expats made their plans to leave. And leave they did, en masse. The exodus continues and the next wave of expats will leave in the coming weeks. When I look through my extensive customer list, about 50% or more of them have already left or will leave imminently. Customer loyalty is something that is built over time and I have been incredibly fortunate to have a very loyal customer base that started long before I actually opened the shop. They were there for me from the moment the doors opened until the very last day they closed and I feel incredibly grateful for this. It is hard to overstate just how much it meant to me - every single sale, every single customer. You hear small businesses owners say this a lot and it is kind of getting to be ho hum - but every time you read one of those cheesy quotes on Instagram that says something like “every time you buy something a small business owner does a little dance” it’s actually true. Our businesses don’t exist without a customer base. It’s a relationship.
For the remaining customers that have stayed (or have arrived recently) another crisis is upon us. The rental situation. Housing in Singapore has become eye wateringly unaffordable and with it disposable income for lovely, but discretionary, items (new napkins anyone?) is sensibly being reined in. (On a side note: this housing crisis is happening everywhere - not just in Singapore. The UK / Australia / U.S. - many of our home countries are experiencing the exact same housing affordability issues. We would be fools to not recognise this. On this count, the grass is definitely not greener).
If I was dedicated and passionate about retail, I probably could have navigated around some of these negative macro influences but beyond the external factors, there was something else brewing. I wanted to get back to the kind of work that I love. Not long after launching the shop, I started a digital magazine. It quickly became a passion. Writing, creating content, editing the magazine, working with contributors - these are all things that fill me with joy and I would like to see what could happen if I give myself a little more time around this aspect of what I do.
Starting a shop is no small undertaking and I have learnt a huge amount over these past couple of years - including what it is I’m good at and what it is that I love. (*Spoiler alert, they kind of match up. Shocker, I know). But beyond just personal realisations, I have also learnt some nuggets about retail in general that might help others who are considering opening a retail venture / or already have one underway.
For what it’s worth, this is what I’ve learnt
keep things fresh and new
See if you can negotiate with suppliers to waive their minimum order quantities so that you can be nimble with your stock. Smaller orders that change and refresh often are the answer to buyers fatigue.
don’t tease for too long
When you have new stock coming in, don’t tease it for weeks on instagram. By the time it arrives in store, your audience will already think it’s old. Like they’ve already seen it before. (Our ability to bore easily these days seems to be at an all time high).
figure out what you’re good at and employ someone to do everything else
If you are not good at presenting your products, photographing them, writing captions, creating newsletters - get somebody else to do it for you. Likewise, if you’re not good at sales (ahem), or accounting…or the myriad of other tasks that fall under your stewardship, seek help or learn how to do it yourself.
just because you love it doesn’t mean it’s right
You might really really love a product or a whole range of products and feel utterly convinced by them, but if your customers don’t feel the same, it won’t work. I think there is a space to work with your customers to find out what they like and what they want. If you want to keep your ideas private, then get a small focus group together who you trust with confidentiality, and ask them. If you feel braver to cast the net wide, ask your customers on a bigger stage like social media, to provide you with feedback. “Do you want this? or this?” Feedback will help to mitigate stock errors.
photograph your products properly
As a content creator who writes a blog and a magazine, I often can’t include Singaporean based products in my round ups because they are simply not photographed properly. If you want to get extra recommendations from bloggers etc and be included in product round up montages, then you need to have good photography of your products. I can’t stress this enough. It might seem like an expensive undertaking, but it makes a massive difference. Similarly, make your product photography for the shopify site unified. Almost all shopping is done online now, and even if you’re a small retailer, you are competing with all of the big guns so you need to make your online shop feel professional.
consider the mix of stock
How much of your stock can only be bought once? vs. multiple times? If most of your products are a “one and done” item, then you will need a lot of customers to make it work. Similarly, look for big vs small ticket items. Selling one big ticket item will earn you the same as selling 30 of a smaller product. Try and have a mix.
before buying anything, curate off line
If you are adding new stock into the existing mix, or starting from scratch with a brand new shop, curate everything off line to make sure it works. Look at your mix of products from lots of different angles (when I first started the shop, I had pages of products separated into different categories - by type, by room, by colour etc). Create visual guides on everything to make sure it works before you commit to buying the stock.
and finally, some general business advice
Have a go
Always do a business and marketing plan and make it thorough
In the beginning, try and do everything yourself but make it professional (learn the skills you’ll need to run your business so you can reduce the amount of costs associated with hiring others).
As soon as you can, hire someone to help you
Seek advice but keep the circle of advisors small and trusted
Don’t worry about starting something and then stopping it - don’t hang on to anything that isn’t working out for you
Ignore what others are doing - comparison can be the thief of joy and confidence
Be kind to yourself
When in doubt, return to your business plan. It should be the blueprint to remind you why you started.
And last but not least…thank you. For everything. For shopping with me, for following me on Instagram, for reading this blog and the magazine and for sending me the loveliest of messages on DM to offer me kind thoughts and well wishes. Thank you.
Stay tuned. 2023 is around the corner and who knows…? maybe I can continue to delight you for another year or two yet.
