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

Alright, Lindsay thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to start by getting your thoughts on what you are seeing as some the biggest trends emerging in your industry

I own an athleisure boutique, specializing in active and cozy leisure wear. My store opened in 2018 and the then blossoming athleisure pocket of retail was mostly active apparel focused; think, leggings and workout tops for a range of activities with a few supplemental lifestyle pieces. The hot phrase back then was “studio to street,” suggesting that your day didn’t have to end after your workout; that with fashionable and functional workout wear and a stylish layering piece you could not only not only carry-on throughout your day post-workout, but that you could do so fashionably and not like you just walked out of a middle school P.E. class. Then came the pandemic and people found themselves confined to their couches and in search of more, well, stay at home clothes. Everyone was working and working out at home, tie-dye was all the rage and I felt lucky to already have curated an assortment of product that people wanted more than any other kind of apparel. Now in the post-pandemic world it feels like athleisure is evolving once again. While most people are back in the office to some capacity, many are working from home 1-2 days a week or at least have the option should they need it. They still want to look polished and put together however they aren’t willing to sacrifice comfort. Thus I am seeing my active brands adjust their collections away from an active focus and into elevated casual pieces, including stylish sweatshirts, sweaters, joggers, skirts, shorts and dresses. Of the over 15 apparel brands I carry in my store none have done it better than Varley, a womens brand with headquarters in London and LA that has leveraged their base of luxuriously soft fabrics to evolve what it looks like to look good and feel good at the same time. I am excited about this shift in the industry, it seems like a natural direction to grow, however I will continue to keep my shop grounded in truly active wear because I think fitness and being active has become an integral part of how we move through our day, week, life and looking good helps you feel good too.

Lindsay, 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?

Hi my name is Lindsay O’Connor (now Lindsay Galardy… I just got married 3 months ago!) and I have owned my boutique Irene Leigh for 5 and half years. I knew I wanted to own my own store from the time I was 10 years old. My first foray into business was a typical lemonade stand at the end of my driveway, and then I started making crafts and jewelry that I would also sell to any passersby. I was always interested in fashion and would pour over magazines like Elle, Vogue and Harpers Bazaar. Growing up, back-to-school shopping was my favorite time of the year and I loved putting together cute outfits I could wear all year. Fashion felt like a superpower and a great outfit was a suit of armor; if I felt confident in what I was wearing I could take on any challenge. I took a few fashion classes at college but ultimately ended up graduating with a degree in history. Looking back I didn’t feel like I knew enough about the kinds of jobs that existed in the fashion industry, I thought the only opportunity was to be a designer for a big fancy runway show and that felt too intimidating. Less than three months into my first job out of college I quit and began working for a women’s fashion boutique in Charlotte, NC. Then, without a plan but a lot of faith in adventure I packed up everything I could fit in my Ford Focus and drove to Denver Colorado without a job, an apartment or a clue what I was doing. I slept on my friends couches for a few months and ultimately landed a job managing a boutique in the Cherry Creek district. I loved it, and learned so much, but after 2.5 years I needed a new challenge. I was re-focused on opening my own store someday and now I had a few years of experience running small businesses, but I felt there were some valuable lessons to be learned from corporate retail as well. So this time I packed up everything I owned in a U-Haul and drove to San Francisco, CA, still without a job but at least this time with an apartment. I sent resume after resume into the Gap Inc corporate offices but no bites. Ultimately I took a job as an assistant store manager at the Old Navy Flagship store downtown and from there looked for opportunities to jump ship (pun kind of intended) and move to corporate. Long story short, but after a failed attempt to get into Gap Inc’s well known RMP program (I made it to the final round and then bombed…) I got word that there was a pilot inventory management training program starting at Old Navy and I was invited to apply. I got accepted and that job changed my world. For starters, I could finally afford a flat screen TV and cable, but more importantly I learned skills and met people that would stay with me forever. I spent the next two years working as an Inventory Analyst for Old Navy and then two more years as the Assistant Buyer for the Banana Republic Europe Online team. There was one more box I wanted to check in my corporate retail career before I felt ready to begin my own business and that was the role of a Merchant which was offered to me by Talbots in Hingham, MA. I moved back East in the spring of 2015 and worked as the Merchant of Woven Tops for about 2.5 years while I got things together behind the scenes to open Irene Leigh. The reason I wanted to be a corporate retail Merchant is because they are at the heart of everything. Merchants partner with design to develop the line, tracking trends in the marketplace and working to translate those trends for the target customer. Then Merchants work along side the planning team to develop financial forecasts for as well as land unit buys and flow strategy for future seasons while also managing sales and inventory for current collections in store now. Merchants also work closely with production teams as well as Marketing and Digital teams. As a business owner you have to have your hand in every cookie jar and the role of merchant felt like the final step in preparation for going it on my own.

Irene Leigh opened as an Athlesiure focused boutique in February 2018 in a tiny store front in the back corner of an indoor shopping center off Broadway in Saratoga Springs, NY. Athleisure was always going to be a focus of my store but not necessarily the entire concept, however the landlord of the shopping center wanted each store to have their own identity and there was already a womens fashion boutique anchoring the front, street facing space. While living in Boston I became a 200-hr certified yoga instructor so I felt passionate about yoga and boutique fitness and so I felt ok narrowing my focus and diving in. Additionally, the space I took over the lease from had that summer been a pop-up shop for Lululemon and I counted on being able to take advantage of those customers that might return looking for them after they’d left. Without any other shop offering stylish activewear and capturing the rights to sell the best brands in the industry we quickly became a go-to destination for locals and visitors alike. Many of our summertime tourists come up from New York City and recognized many of our brands and loved what we had assorted from each brand and the way we merchandise it making color stories and outfits come to life. In the fall of 2019 we moved in to a larger storefront in the same shopping center (more than double the space) and were able to grow not only our womens and accessories offerings but introduce menswear into the shop too!

I am proud of the community we have built in Saratoga Springs. Customers have become friends and it is a pure joy for myself and my team to come to work and socialize with repeat customers and introduce ourselves to new ones. Being a pushy salesperson has never been my style, I have worked to create an open and relaxed space to shop at your own pace, with assistance when wanted. I learned early in my career as a small business owner that local economies support small businesses and therefore small businesses have a responsibility to support locals as well. We are passionate about partnering with and promoting other local small business as well as finding ways to give back to our local community participating multiple fundraising efforts throughout the year to support our hometown organizations as well as national and global causes; every little bit counts.

Has your business ever had a near-death moment? Would you mind sharing the story?

My first year in business was a daily challenge of faith, perseverance, and fortitude. Before I opened my doors I created what thought would be a realistic sales forecast for the year, and then bought inventory to support that assumed sales forecast. Boy. Was. I. Off. I knew August would be our busiest month of sales because of the increase of tourist traffic with people flooding to town for the Saratoga Race Course, and so I planned to receive a lot of inventory. In retail you place orders for product between 7-9 months ahead of time, and when you give a vendor an order you can’t make changes later. So there I was, basically my store’s only employee, working busy 8 hour shifts, and staying another 4 hours after close to check in, tag and steam the piles of new clothes arriving daily. However, because I was receiving way more inventory than I was selling I was getting dangerously close to my credit limit and unclear if there would be much or any reprieve in the months ahead. So I cashed in more of my 401K and asked my very supportive parents to loan me a little bit more money with nothing but faith and the promise of hard work as collateral. The relief I felt on the 1 year anniversary of my business was different and more profound than I expected. I wasn’t just proud that I had survived that first year, barely paying my personal rent and eating a lot of peanut butter and jelly and soup to keep my own costs low, but the anniversary provided me with one full year of sales history that I could use to make more realistic sales forecasts and inventory plans. That history became a launching pad for responsible and sustainable growth for the 4+ years that have followed. My advice to people looking to start their own business is always to keep a roll-up your sleeves attitude, position yourself to start small and learn and grow as you go, listen to your customers, and find time in your day, week, month to pause, reflect and just take a breath. As a business owner you have to be the one to pat yourself on the back give yourself some recognition for all of the hard work you are putting in and all the ways you are learning and growing as a person.

Any advice for managing a team?

My advice for building a team is to hire people you can trust, train them, and then actually trust them to do the job. Meaningful incentives can be motivational but micromanaging serves no one. In my business I have full-time staff and hourly employees. In the fall of 2020 I hired a full-time store manager because changes in my personal life led me to move to California. I promoted one of my part-time workers to the full time management position, trained her on the day to day operation of the business, and then left. When I thought about managing, motivating, and most importantly respecting my first full-time employee I thought back on what I appreciated most when I was a full-time store manager, as well as what kept me motivated and working hard in corporate retail. Right away I knew we would need a consistent time to connect and talk through the needs of the business and so we instituted a Tuesday morning phone call for an hour before the shop opened up for the day. I have found that the most valuable reward for good business and/or hard work is cash, so I created a quarterly bonus structure based on making and then outperforming our sales goal. In addition to trusting my manager to run the business well while she was at the store, I felt that it was just as important to respect her time that she wasn’t working too. I only ever had PTO when I worked at the corporate level but I felt it was important to offer that to my store manager, so I created a system of accruing hours or paid time off assuming a rate of 3 weeks or 15 days over the course of year. Lastly, we maintain an annual review process where we revisit the goals we set for the year and measure how we performed. I give my manager feedback and I ask for feedback from her as well. Then we create new goals for our next year and find times to check in with each other and our goals throughout the year.

As a small business owner you are thinking about that business every minute, hour, day, week, etc. It can be consuming but also you feel like you have control over things. To walk away from the day to day operations of my store was really scary, but I knew in that moment that for this relationship to really work, and create the opportunity for me to grow and be able to focus my efforts on the business in new and different ways that I had to completely trust this person to do the job and have the space to create their own processes to get to the same result. The worst thing you can do as a manager is assume that you know everything and that your way is the only way to get something done. I have learned something new and my business is better because of every single employee we’ve had and the perspective they have brought to the shop and their job.

Contact Info:

• Website: ireneleigh.com
• Instagram: @ireneleighny
• Facebook: @ireneleighny

Image Credits
most photos (the one of me and the ones of the store) are by The Content Agency @thecontentagencyinc