We were lucky to catch up with Holly Melissa recently and have shared our conversation below.

Holly, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

As photographers ourselves, clients were constantly asking us: “what should we wear?”. It was a stress for clients to find and coordinate outfits for their session, yet we also struggled finding the time to style our clients ourselves. We knew the importance that outfits had on the overall success of a session, but the time it took to scour internet retailers, send links and photos of outfit combinations to our clients, and go back and forth with e-mail correspondence drastically cut into our productivity.

We saw this complaint from other photographers all across the US in different forums and Facebook groups. We knew there had to be an easier way! There were already PDF style guides and Pinterest boards with inspiration, but clients didn’t have the time to read long style guides and it still didn’t show them what to wear for their exact family needs. Pinterest links went to really old items or broken links. There was no service that actually showed real time results that you could visualize next to each other. This is when the idea of Style & Select was born in 2017. The service began where photographers could sign up for a subscription and had to style their clients with solely 15 dresses and/or shirts as options.

Now, this service has expanded and provides up to 40 options in dresses, shirts, pants, shoes, and accessories. It can be used by the photographer who wants full control on styling their clients, by the client whose photographer is a member and gives them access, or a client can sign up on their own if their photographer doesn’t offer it!

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

We are Holly and Melissa, the co-founders of Style & Select. We met through a random photography facebook group and quickly became close friends and eventually started a wedding photography/videography business. Through that business, we were able to take our profits and dump them into the first Style & Select website.

Style & Select is the only interactive styling resource in the photography industry that not only offers styling tips, but also shows clients photo worthy outfit items that they can coordinate from. Sizes that are offered range from infant to plus size, with maternity and teen options as well.

Photographers and their clients don’t have the time to spend hours online or in the store to find outfits for upcoming sessions. This is where Style & Select comes in. With this service, you can find, coordinate, and purchase outfits within minutes, all from the comfort of your own home.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

The photography industry as a whole is a fairly small and tight knit community. Developing relationships with trusted photographers in the community played a huge roll in building a reputable company and service. When Style & Select was first developed, we reached out to several well known and trusted photographers in the industry, and asked them to try out and promote Style & Select on their social media accounts. This led to more and more photographers signing up for the service, sharing about us in their stories, and tagging us in their images where their clients used Style & Select to find their outfits.

From the start of developing Style & Select, we also made it a priority to offer exceptional customer service and quick response time to questions and/or issues from members or potential members. Along with focusing on customer service, we also listened to our members and their suggestions on how we could grow the site and make it even more user friendly. With adding new features on a yearly basis, we showed our members that we were dedicated to always growing with them and making this service something that would take the stress of finding photo worthy outfits off of them and their clients.

Have you ever had to pivot?

The initial idea of Style & Select was for photographers to sign up for a subscription to the site, style their clients themselves, and e-mail the style boards with the retailer links to their clients for purchasing. Although styling clients through Style & Select is a fairly quick and easy process, some photographers found that it was one more thing on their long to do list that they would like to pass off. This led to Style & Select pivoting to a more client centered service.

Style & Select has morphed into a service that can be used in several different ways. Photographers can choose to style their clients themselves or give complete styling control to their clients. When the client has control over styling themselves, photographers will still receive an e-mail with the outfits their clients have chose, which allows the photographer to still be included in the styling process.
We also have clients who reach out to us directly for styling assistance because their photographer does not offer Style & Select. These clients are able to sign up for either a 15 day trial for $15, or they can opt for us to personally style them for $100.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.styleandselect.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/style_and_select
• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/styleandselect11

Image Credits
*Image credits are on the image*