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

Hannah , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your business sooner or later

From experience I think most people follow societal norms. Graduate, move, go to school and get a job. This is a great path for most people but for some of us we have different dreams and in turn we create our own path.

In saying that, a common thing people decide to do is move to a big city, sometimes for school and other times thinking there will be more opportunity. But working at something and creating something that hasn’t been done in an area that people are really craving it, I think makes the biggest difference. I am of course happy with the progress of the company and our timing. But have you ever met a business owner that doesn’t wish they could go back and start earlier to be further ahead than they are now? I think if you are driven you always see ways you could have gotten to where you are faster. But at the end of the day my advice to anyone would be to never go with societal norms and start as early as you can. People are more forgiving and give you the time to create something when you are younger. The older you get the less grace you are given. So I would say take advantage of that in anyway you can as early as you can.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Hannah Downton and I am a 25 year old business owner. I started my business when I was 19 years old. I had already been in the industry starting at 16. My parents had 5 daughters and they told us they would either pay for 4 years of schooling for each of us or they would give us money to invest in a company.

I took my school money at 16 (grade10) and with the help of my mom we flipped our first house and sold it, then in grade 11 we did our second house and sold it, and then grade 12 we did our third.

After high school I went to Calgary and started working under a design firm, using the portfolio I had of flipping houses as a resume. It was a great experience and I got to learn a lot from them.

The business has evolved to a brick and mortar home decor storefront with an attached cafe that people come and spend hours browsing and enjoying. We also have a full design team that does interior decorating, interior design and graphic design in house. With each of our employees having their own niche they can offer our clients. Finally, we have our home building division. where our main contractor builds and renovates our houses from the ground up and our team designs and furnishes them.

We serve not only our local community but at any time we have been working on builds, renovation and home furniture packages all over western Canada. Our latest project is currently in Palm Springs California.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

We have been able to build our reputation within our market by focusing on the quality of the products we provide. In our industry, there are many wholesalers that we are able to wholesale through, but quality control is always difficult. There has been times where we order products from new suppliers, and when the product shows up, we decide to not put the product on the showroom floor because it does not meet our quality standards. This, at times, can be a hard pill to swallow, now having inventory that we can not sell, but, the quality of the products we offer is our main priority. We believe this has helped us build our reputation within our market and with our clients. Being diligent with our sourcing and putting quality first is what will continue to help us build our reputation.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

Our new clients mainly come from Instagram, our storefront and referrals. This is something that is always changing, especially over the last few years. As we continue to meet new clients, we work hard to find new ways to get our name and our brand out to potential clients. When we first started out, the majority of our clients came from our instagram, being that our storefront is outside of the city in a smaller town, we didn’t have a whole lot of walk in traffic. However, over the last couple years, our walk in traffic has increased significantly, especially since our expansion that we completed in November 2022. Further to this, we have invested a lot of resources into revamping our online store and website. We are now finding that the majority of our new clients are either walk in clients or clients that have come across our website while looking for home decor online.
Although the walk in traffic has increased significantly, a large portion of our new clients comes from referrals. We find these referrals are a combination of people who have come into the store and told their friends/family, or referrals from clients that we have worked with on a design or construction project in the past.
This is a part of our business that we are always monitoring and trying to pin point the best way for us to market ourselves to future clients. There are so many ways to market your business in todays world, and we believe, although difficult at times, focusing our resources on reaching our target audience through multiple channels is a strategy that will prove beneficial long term.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://downtonandcompany.com/
• Instagram: @downtonandcompany
• Facebook: Downton & Company
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@downtonco8935