We were lucky to catch up with Tanya Ball recently and have shared our conversation below.
Tanya, appreciate you joining us today. One deeply underappreciated facet of entrepreneurship is the kind of crazy stuff we have to deal with as business owners. Sometimes it’s crazy positive sometimes it’s crazy negative, but crazy experiences unite entrepreneurs regardless of industry. Can you share a crazy story with our readers?
Recently a major Instagram (IG) influencer featured one of our pieces on her page. Prior to posting, we talked about availability of the dress and the best time to post. After working out the details, I ordered the dresses and was ready to go! The feature brought an influx of sales and new followers. Oh how exciting it was to hear the cha-Ching from each sale and all the new follower notifications from IG. I was elated. I thought, let me check the order to make sure everything is good. To my complete and utter Mortification, I realized that it wasn’t the same dress that was being featured. I was devastated. It was a “holiday looks” feature, a sequin dress, so it was being bought to be worn for the holidays. I began hyperventilating. What am I going to do? How am I going to fix this? I began to pray and ask God to help me. I immediately began contacting all of the customers. All of them thanked me for being up front about the ordeal. I issued refunds to some and others were gracious enough to wait for the reshipment. To those who waited, I provided a perpetual discount and a small refund. This dress was the single highest seller in the history of my store. This was the absolute worse ordeal in my 6 years of being in business. It was a lesson learned and I will be better prepared next time.
Tanya, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I’ve always loved fashion. Around 2014. I purchased a dress from a young lady that had an online boutique. I shopped brick and mortar boutiques often, and loved the unique pieces they offered. I thought, I would like to own an online boutique. In 2015, my children invested for me to attend a webinar on How to Start an Online Boutique. The webinar, provided information on how to get started from building a website, start up costs (minimal) and networking. What the presenters did not share is all the research it would take to find decent vendors. Neither did they tell you that other boutique owners won’t help you. I had to pray and ask God to show me vendors and how to do things. Between prayer and Google I made it. During this time, Instagram was fairly new so a lot of e-commerce businesses were becoming established and building their businesses via Instagram. After a little more research, I obtained my domain name and website and at age 54 launched Boutique Life by tJane in February, 2016. The main focus was to reach woman of all sizes, but to give a little more attention to plus size woman because I’m plus size. I’ve always been tech savvy so I wasn’t fearful of being online or afraid of the camera. The launch was very successful. I have customers from all over the country. People get caught up on local and family support, I had bigger fish to fry. Today the market is completely saturated with online boutiques. Businesses have to keep up with demands of a changing world and changing social media. My email customers are my saving Grace. If you’re a business owner, make sure you build your email list. My greatest success and claim to fame, if you will, is my customer service. I get many emails and text messages from customers thanking me for my customer service. Excellent customer service is crucial in business, especially today. I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished being a wife, mother, grandmother and still and employee with a 9-5. Being a business owner, no matter what type of business it is takes dedication, time and commitment. It has been extremely hard work, but it is very rewarding.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
In the course of owning and running the boutique, I launched a social media management and virtual assistance company. I launched the Facebook and Instagram pages for my church and noticed the following was growing for both. I was already managing the Boutique pages as well so thought, “ I’m good at this, let me start a social media management company.” I’m 2017, Unified Management Group was born. It was a great idea that proved to be very lucrative. My Clients were from various genres from the beauty industry to churches to Event space owners. It was great. until it wasn’t. I hired two employees that were not consistent with posting. I let them go. SMM is a lot for one person, but I wasn’t interested in expanding any further. Social media is a useful tool, but can become all consuming if you don’t take a break from it. Too much social media is not good for mental health. I burned out.
One of my clients had a seasonal product and was looking to build their IG and FB pages. What he failed to realize is that Social Media is not the end all be all. With his type of product, it was going to take a. marketing plan and networking. Business owners need to know, while Social media is a great marketing tool, depending on your product or service, it’s only a small piece of it. Build a network. build an email list, have a marketing plan.
I decided to dissolve that piece of the business officially earlier this year. It was also taking my focus away from the Boutique. I may reinstate the virtual assistant piece in the future. All options are open.
We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.
I keep in touch with my clients via Social media and email. I also have a chat feature via my website so I’m able to respond quickly from my phone. I am a firm believer that email is one of the reasons for my success. I’m 60 years old now and honestly when Instagram switched to reels, I was a little intimidated. I got on board after giving myself a pep talk about not being intimated by inanimate objects. But it was a struggle because the introvert in me wants to rule, but I won’t let it. I’m still learning. But I’m not intimidated. Meanwhile I’m grateful for my email list because I can keep in touch with my Customers and keep them abreast of sales and new arrivals. It’s still growing too.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.bytjane.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/byt.jane
- Facebook: Facebook.com/byt.jane