We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ahmad Alkhatib a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Ahmad, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

Success has been a misunderstood term for centuries. Whether it means happiness, Financial Freedom, health, family, or any other noun people consider, I disagree. There has been years of research showing individuals of all categories who “seem to be” successful but disagree that they are due to their mental health issues. I believe success is development and acknowledgement when we are in the right mental space. For example, anyone can be a success, regardless of their point of life. I see success as those who are content with themselves, believe in routine, willingness to learn, and being humble. As children, we are engraved with the idea that monetarily winnings equals success, but we continuously hear stories of individuals who achieve that are still unhappy, depressed, and struggle with their personal feelings. For that reason, I believe success is development in daily routines like journaling, mediation, working out, and being willing to learn more and ask questions.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am the Co-Founder and CEO of Hasco Outlet. Hasco Outlet specializes in reverse logistics with big-box outlet stores. We purchase customer returns, overstock, shelf pulls, and canceled orders from major department stores and resell them in our local outlet stores. I got into the industry thanks to my father. My father was a wholesaler who focused on reverse logistics, and I noticed the opportunity to bring the merchandise my father was dealing with directly back to the consumer anywhere from 30-70% off retail prices. Hasco Outlet currently fosters a powerful team of 35 individuals and receives a visit rate of around 500-1000 customers a day. The mission statement at Hasco Outlet is customer satisfaction and associate satisfaction. Every customer who walks in our doors will feel as if they are joining the Hasco Family, and we believe in the power of a strong team, for that reason, we stress associate satisfaction with all our team members. This translates to weekly team meetings and opportunities to speak up, advance, and feel at home when part of the Hasco Outlet Family. As a CEO, I believe marketing is one of the keys to success in any business, especially retail. For that reason, I advise all upcoming entrepreneurs to focus on brand development and marketing. Here at Hasco Outlet, our marketing strategy that has worked has been social media. We have amassed around 50 thousand followers across our social medias, which allows us to share our daily deals. In the next five years, we plan to expand Hasco Outlet from the current two locations to six locations across southern California.

How did you build your audience on social media?

Building an audience on social media can be extremely tedious, but also extremely possible. The current socials Hasco outlet advertises on are Instagram, Facebook, and Tiktok. The key to instagram and facebook in consistency and sponsor points. Here at Hasco, you first worked with our target audience within 10 miles of our location. This looks like reaching out to local businesses and doing collabs to present yourself to their audience, and also focus on finding events in the city and nearby businesses you can join that can market your socials. Doing this, you slowly develop your brand, which will result in clicks on your social pages. Tik Tok has been our saving grace since we founded Hasco Outlet. In order to succeed on tiktok, you must manipulate the algorithm and find your niche. First, to find your niche, you post as many videos as you can for 1-2 weeks, all with different content, and notice trends of what is getting views versus what is getting buried. Once you find your niche, you post two times a day, and the same exact time for at least 1 month straight, without skipping a day. Doing this, you show the algorithm that you are consistent by posting at the same time every day for a long period of time. With this consistency and your niche, a number of your videos will catch the algorithm and go viral. Once that is done, repeat the process with different trends and niches.

Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?

In the summer of 2022, we had three months of low sales, due to consumers traveling, saving, and not shopping. Because of this, I needed to quickly think of a marketing campaign that would lead to more shoppers and boost sales. The campaign I thought of was to host a parking lot carnival. I worked with the city chamber to reach local residents and business, ordered a habit food truck, carnival games, decorations, and hosted local business in booths. This was a risky move because I exceeded our regular marketing budget, but I needed to take the risk to boost the stores recognition and sales. Our event saw an outcome of around 2000 attendees, and we broke our daily sales record. The event was a success, but the lesson I learned is that even in rough times, there is always something more you can do to save you and the business. It does require risk, but if you try your best to do it right, you lower your chances of a negative outcome.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.hasco-outlet.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hasco.outlet/
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/Hasco-Outlet-296566445469262/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hasco-outlet/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/hasco-outlet-montclair-3