‘Tis the season…
Things have been busy thanks to the amount of pre-Christmas balls and parties and I’ve also got a new pool of customers that came about from a show I did at Driffield Rugby Club.
A lady there took a card and gave it to her sister who works for a big firm of solicitors locally. It’s a busy time for solicitors apparently; a lot of formal events and dinners to go to so she ended up hiring two dresses in one appointment, so she was prepared for the next couple of dinners. She’s told all her friends about Styled By and at a speed-marketing event I went to recently, I met someone who’d already heard about me through the grapevine!
The speed marketing event was quite interesting actually; run by Meet Yorkshire which is a company aiding ladies in business in Yorkshire, it gave each attendee 4 minutes to talk to another attendee about what you both did and what you might be able to do for each other before moving on. I also had a stall and lots of ladies took my cards, which was great as any female is a potential customer to me and the event provided me with a perfect captive audience. I made quite a few potential contacts that could be to our mutual benefit as well.
I’ve had to start thinking about what I’m going to do with the dresses when they’ve been worn a few times and become less new and more worn-looking. Obviously I need to keep releasing capital to buy new dresses with, so I think I’ll probably either lower the hire price on them and have a ‘for sale’ rack where I can sell the older dresses. I’ll know better when they’ve been dry-cleaned a few times and I can see how they’re taking it; at the moment they seem to be bearing up very well. I do keep a list of every hire so I can see which dresses are the most popular and how often they’ve been out. I can then use this to make more informed purchases in the future.
