We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Suzanne Hinnefeld & Brittney Braemer. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Suzanne Hinnefeld & below.

Alright, Suzanne Hinnefeld & thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?

We became best friends in college and always dreamed of opening a cute shop! We graduated and after a year Brittney was feeling very unhappy at her design agency job. She was dreaming of starting something of her own and Suzy was wrapping up a seasonal job! Brittney got in touch with Suzy and said “Hey, I’m going to start a business designing and making stationery while freelancing on the side. Do you want to join me?”. Suzy said yes and the rest is history! We joined forces, met up every morning at the coffee shop at 7a and made to do lists and plans for what we were going to prioritize and work on. We rented a small cheap studio, got a free business mentor through SCORE.org and started leveraging some of our connections to get freelance work. We started designing brands and logos for small local businesses, sold our stationery designs on Etsy and at craft fairs and got organized. A year in we saw a small storefront for rent in Covington and decided just to look at it “for inspiration”. We fell in love with the small space, asked our business mentor if he thought we were ready and then signed a lease and opened our first brick & mortar location a year later! Over the past 6 years our business has grown and changed with us. We moved locations in Covington and shifted our focus and direction to focus 100% on retail. We’re really proud of slow, organic our journey and can’t wait to see how we’ll continue to evolve for the better!

Suzanne Hinnefeld &, 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?

We are Suzy and Brittney—owners and curators of two colorful shops in Covington, KY (Handzy Shop + Studio and Gumdrop). We’re best friends who are living our small business dream by curating these shops! Handzy Shop + Studio is a women’s boutique with bold clothing, accessories, desk supplies, greeting cards and more! We hand-pick each and every product to add flare to everyday life! Handzy is full of unique gifts that bring joy to the ones you love. Gifts that are stand-out and say to your person, “hey, I am thinking of you and you matter!”. Gumdrop is a baby/toddler boutique where you’ll find children’s brands you know and trust, but what we really hope is that you’ll discover something one-of-a-kind for the little ones in your life! We’ve curated a collection of playful baby + toddler clothing, an array of books, unique toys + games and unbelievably cute accessories.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

When we opened our first brick and mortar shop we had a small retail portion in the front and our design studio in the back. We were mainly selling stationery, small paper goods and desk supplies. We loved the retail part of our business but the graphic design was what was paying our bills. We realized that if we wanted to focus on retail we needed to expand our product offering to include products with a higher price point. We asked ourselves what we liked to shop for and slowly started to test our different product categories. At some point we just had to take the leap and decide to focus our energy on the retail side of our business. The pivot was scary but helped us grow the part of our business that we were more passionate about!

Do you sell on your site, or do you use a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc?

We use Shopify to host our websites and also as our point of sale system to sell physical products in our retail locations. We love Shopify. They have an incredible customer service (in our opinion one of the best things you can look for in a platform) and it’s been relatively easy to learn. We decided on Shopify because it could seamlessly sync our in-store inventory to our online inventory—so if something sells out in our shop that is automatically reflected online. The only con is the price. It’s not the cheapest option but in our opinion it’s worth the price tag!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://handzyshopstudio.com/ https://gumdroptots.com/
• Instagram: @handzyshopstudio @gumdroptots
• Facebook: /handzyshopstudio /gumdroptots

Image Credits
Samuel Greenhill