Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to April Barker. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

April , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s been the best thing you’ve ever seen (or done yourself) to show a customer that you appreciate them?

I had a customer whose husband had passed, she was a very frequent shopper on my lives. I sent her crumbl cookies and just let her know we had her in out thoughts and prayers. She was very thankful and appreciative of the gesture.

April , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

This is a dream started 10 years ago out of the basement of my home that has come true

It all started 10 years ago with a referral from my sister in law & a ton of support from my husband. I was a new mom, and no idea the career path I wanted to take, /i just knew I wanted to be present for my children, but still earn an income for my family – we jumped head into this and started marketing. My husband was a union Iron Worker working long days, overtime, and I wanted to be able to lessen the burden on him.

I established a large following on social media. Facebook group, Facebook live and I was doing 8-10 pop up trunk shows a week, hosting parties in the space we had for the business in our finished basement. After becoming wildly succesful my big scary dream was to retire my husband so he could run the business along side me

After a year or so, I made this dream happen. He was doing pop up with me, live sales, and we even went as far as traveling across the country in an RV hosting pop ups for our customers all over the country.

After 3 1/2 years with LulaRoe the flame fizzled out, and a passion for creating a fashion line of my own was burning. I prayed on a name for the business as I wanted to have meaning. During this time, we found out we were pregnant with our 4th child. 12 weeks into that pregnancy we found out her heartbeat had stopped, her name would have been Ellie Mae. After hearing a song on the radio titled “Come What May” This is how the name “Come What Mae” came to be.

We traveled all over the country to different markets and vendors sourcing our inventory looking for styling in S-3XL, being size inclusive was key. With our kids in tow, we homeschool all 5 and continue to reach our goals and dreams. A dream was to move the business out of the house and move into a warehouse which we made happen after 6 months of hard word we secured a 3,800 sq ft space in Jackson. After growing our online presence ,gave me even more of an urge to open a store to bring the community together and when our lease would be up in Jackson, I’d dreamt of opening a storefront.

We looked all over the Monmouth and ocean county area and fell in love with the space on 33, and decided to sign the lease.

It will be 2 years in July, and I couldn’t be happier with the decision we made. Our business isnt just about the clothing and things we sell, the story is in the community. We’ve created a beautiful safe space online and in store for women of all ages to come and feel included – a sense of sisterhood.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Owning a small business is not for the faint of heart. There will be really high highs, and extremely low lows. There have been many times I’ve been so stressed from the financial burden and the burn out of running it all I would truthfully dream of just working a 9-5 and clocking in and out leading a normal life. Then I am reminded of all that I have worked for, and how far I have come. I can work on my own terms. I can take my kids to the park at 10am on a Tuesday and chose to work which 80 hours a week I want to work. I have overcome some incredible hurdles with the business, pushing through COVID and staying sustainable, little employement doing all the job titles myself – inventory intake, emails, shipping, customer service, website upkeep, emails, marketing, social media. The simple thing I’ve learned is time management is key and being accountable for mapping out what needs to be done & setting a schedule. Also not being too stubborn to ask for help and delegate tasks.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

I started on Facebook with my business before Facebook Live was even a thing. I made a group and started sharing with friends. They also then shared with their friends and we would do giveaways to get people to add friends to the group. I also started a facebook business page – which we did a lot of posts to start the excitement of what was to come to gain anticipation to be sure to tune in to a big announcement. We also pushed on instagram sharing in stories the step by step and behind the scenes being very relatable with our journey. After launching it truly did help using social media as a crutch to spread more organically. Being true to yourself and following the trends with reels and Tiktok now is huge.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Shopcomewhatmae.com
• Instagram: @shopcomewhatmae
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/shopcomewhatmae