We were lucky to catch up with Anne Morrow recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Anne thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Covid has brought about so many changes – has your business model changed?

Covid made me learn to pivot my business to the needs and wants of our customers. Luckily being a small business owner and 25+ years in retail I could recognize the changes that our small boutique needed to make in order to be successful. I always had a menagerie of goods – clothing, furniture paints and home decor. As Covid hit and more people stayed home, many turned to a new hobby: Furniture Painting. I saw the need to increase the variety of paints and tools for our clients to be successful. To say furniture paint was the best thing since sliced bread is an understatement. I sold more furniture paint the year Covid hit than I did in total my first year in business. Of course, I have been painting for about 20+ (my knowledge helped tremendously) and I also began live tutorials on our Facebook page – I reached an audience much larger than our local area. Once things started to open back up, people started going back to work I quickly recognized I needed a quick change of focus – I pivoted again, bringing our focus to ladies clothing. While I still have an extensive collection of paints and tools as it is one of my passions, I continued to enlarge our clothing area, extending our sizes small through 3X, and bringing in casual, comfortable clothing that can be worn at the office, church or even lounging at home. I feel being a small business I was able to pivot to the changes our customers demanded. I have launched an app for the clothing side of my business and go live twice per month to grow our client base as well as show how the garments fit in a relaxed setting. I am sure I will continue to pivot as I navigate the coming years ahead.

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 always joke that my entire career is in my store – and it is a vary varied path with one core element – retail. If you have never been in our boutique, it is much larger on the inside than it looks on the outside (I get this alot). But you will find a mix of clothing, gifts, home decor. furniture and paint! It is an eclectic mix. My path started right out of Texas A&M at Sherwin Williams Paints – I had already dabbled in paint before working for the paint giant, but gained vast knowledge and experience with house paint that translated and relates to furniture painting. I taught faux finishing, cabinet paint and the basic how to paint with many homeowners. It was only natural that I would bring my passion for transformation to my boutique. Paint can transform anything you can apply it to! We have even painted upholstery! I also have a passion for variety, so my career took me to Chico’s, a women’s clothing boutique, where I ended up in River Oaks as manager. I love clothes, shoes, accessories – you name it. I also love dressing women and finding pieces that suites their body type. Nothing feels more confident than a great outfit. I am always looking at trends and finding fashion forward pieces that I know my customers will love. We also serve a variety of body sizes, we bring styles in from size small to size 3X. It is important to me to find flattering pieces for ALL of my customers. After Chico’s I began a lengthy career in design at Baker Furniture retail store, where I met some of the most amazing designers in Houston. So much inspiration! I love procuring a beautiful piece of home decor, I often take a run to Round Top or estate sales for one of a kind unusual pieces. Pillows are one of my weaknesses and you will typically find them strewn about in baskets and chairs in the boutique! You can always catch me teaching a paint workshop in our boutique or find our video tutorials on our Facebook page or check out our clothing live videos to show the newest arrivals and how they fit. I love educating our customers about our products.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

I had a booth at the Antique Mall off 2920 while I was working a full time for a high end tile company. I had just sold my house, my mother, a widow had just sold her home and we decided to purchase a home together. I didn’t want my mom to be alone. This gave me the freedom to leave my full time job (trust me the booth was not making money) – read this: I TOOK A LEAP OF FAITH. I was living off the money from the sale of my home. I had looked for business property in Old Town Spring and nothing was available where I wanted to be. So I expanded my booths to 3, and the booths made money on their own (FINALLY) I wasn’t rolling in the dough by any means and also worked part time for the mall, which helped with reducing the cost of rent. It was still not where I wanted to be. It was about nine months since I had quit my full time job that paid well – I had said I have to find a store location or go back to corporate. I got a call…..a space was up for rent in Old Town Spring! I went to check it out – but I was not the first on the list. Let me tell you – I PRAYED HARD – I was facing having to go back to the corporate world and then I received another call, the original person on the list said she was going to pass – it wasn’t the right time for her and if I wanted the space!!!! YES!!! I drove over, never seeing the inside of the space and wrote checks to my now landlord. I will tell you every single day – just do it. While I loved the pay I was getting in the corporate world, the stress for me was worth leaving. I may work every single day, but it never feels like work. If it is your passion just do it. Life is too short to not go for it. I am so glad I did, it doesn’t mean that every day is easy breezy or without stresses – it’s just different. I don’t want to do corporate! That’s my push!

We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.

We typically email our customers to keep them updated on events or sales but posting on social media is so important as many will come in and tell me they saw something on my stories on IG or Facebook. We also have a loyalty club in our boutique. It started with just the paint side of things. So many points got you a free can of paint. But then we felt so many missed opportunities for our non-paint customers, this year we decided to make a big change to our loyalty membership – all of our customers can earn rewards on every purchase of $25 or more and can redeem rewards on any item in our boutique. And of course being an expert in our product. Being able to take a customer step by step on painting a piece of furniture to explaining how the jewelry in our boutique is crafted and how to take care of it. And knowing it is okay to honestly tell your customer you don’t know an answer but finding it for them.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.pierceandbelle.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/pierceandbelle
• Facebook: facebook.com/pierceandbelle
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/PierceandBelleAtHome
• Other: app: Pierce and Belle and I also created the Old Town Spring app for our shopping area.