Best-dressed in show
I’ve been working hard on getting aspects of my styling business finished and up to scratch following the success at Driffield Show. I’m not really ready to start marketing hard, as I’m running the business from home, and the room in which I keep all the outfits and will dress people in still isn’t finished, and I currently have to run the service from my bedroom!
Doing the show was more successful than I expected, four people came straight away to hire dresses, and many more took cards and contact details and have said they’ll come to see me when they have an occasion. It can be a bit tricky to measure success from doing something such as a show, as people will only contact me when there’s an event, so you might not see them again for months; however I am noticing that there is a definite surge before a local event. Customers are coming from further afield now as well, which has great implications for the quality of my dresses.
was more successful than I expected, four people came straight away to hire , and many more took cards and contact details and have said they’ll come to see me when they have an occasion. It can be a bit tricky to from doing something such as a show, as people will only contact me when there’s an event, so you might not see them again for months; however I am noticing that there is a definite surge before a local event. are coming from further afield now as well, which has great implications for the quality of my dresses.I’ve had some glossy business cards produced and distributed, but apart from that I’m holding off on the marketing for the time being, as I want to make sure everything is in place before I bring in too many more customers. I’m very aware you’ve got to be careful not to run before you can walk. The problem with this is you end up in a bit of a vicious circle; I can’t accommodate a huge number of customers yet, but without much money coming in it’s difficult to invest back into the business and buy materials to finish the room with and a wider variety of dresses, in particular larger sizes as most of my outfits are sizes 8 – 10 and I’m now concentrating on sizes 12-16.
Something I’m increasingly having to realise is that you can never please everyone! If someone comes in and has a very specific idea in mind, wanting a certain dress in a certain size I’m not always going to be able to accommodate them, as I just can’t afford to buy every dress in every size. I am becoming quite successful though at persuading customers to try something they wouldn’t usually have picked, and you’d be surprised how often they go away with it!
It can also be difficult to find dresses to fit every different shape, as of course I’ll have the standard size 10 or 14 dress, and real women aren’t mannequins or models and might fit the top of the dress well but not the bottom for example! I am now developing an increasingly good eye for judging what will work on someone though, both in terms of sizing and colouring. This is all helping me provide an increasingly good level of customer care, and keep people happy and coming back, which is, of course, what I want to do.
