Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kendra Patterson. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Kendra, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How did you find your key vendor or vendors? Maybe you can share the backstory and share some context and the relevant details to help us understand why you chose them, why they chose you, etc.
Hi, I am Kendra Patterson. My husband Trevor and I own Michigan Barn Wood & Salvage in downtown Mason! Our store is made up of over 100 vendors from Michigan. We sell reclaimed barn wood, live edge lumber, furniture, home goods & more. When we started our business we sold just lumber, so when we purchased our 27,000 square foot building back in 2015 we had room to add new products. We had invited a few friends that built items using our lumber to sell items on consignment in the store. Soon people reached out about being a vendor with a wide range of products such as candles, mugs, signs etc.. There were some trial and errors on selecting vendors that were a good fit for the store. Not every product that came in was a hot seller. We had to learn what our customers were looking for, good price points and of course quality. The key things we look for in a new vendor are of course their product. It is something unique, something we don’t currently carry, is this product something I would use/purchase/love/refer. I have to stand by the products we carry. One of the key things is personally loving a product, then the better I can sell that product to our customers.
Another key factor in selecting a vendor is solid foundation of trust. We have to build a partnership & friendship so there is a level of respect and trust between us. We offer a fair price structure that allows good profit margins to our vendors. I act as an employee to them as a sales representative. Getting to know your vendors and more about their life and business helps guide me on how to grow their business and know how to best support them.
Another key factor is choosing a vendor is social media. It is my job to promote our business, products, services and as well as our vendors. I have learned its very important to have vendors who know how to use social media for marketing. If each vendor has a social media page, and advertises and tags our business etc, you now have over 100 vendors who are all working on marketing our brand and business. When customers see a post on a vendors social media page and mine it helps gets customers engaged and help get them into the store. So posting good pictures, product descriptions, customer service and over all being engaged with customers on social media is important.
Communication is so important! With having to represent so many businesses, I found it helpful to create a Facebook group page for communication with vendors. I send out several message throughout the week of reminders for events that are coming up, to bouncing around ideas for marketing. I also make sure everyone has my personal contact information so I can answer questions on inventory/sales or help with anything they may need. Letting vendors know feedback from customers is a huge way you can help with sales. I love hearing from customers what they love about a product or what are some areas we can make something even better. Allowing vendors a safe space to discuss anything from personal things to business, we want to keep communication open and productive.
So with a good product, good partnership, good social media, and good communication I have found these key things makes a huge impact on overall sales! But it has Its so important for me to meet my goals for my vendors. Are their sales slower for the month? If so, why? Have I done a good job with advertising? Do I need to move that product to a better area in the showroom? Do I need to do a better description of that product? Are vendors keeping up with our themes and bringing in new products? Its my job to pay attention to sales and track monthly and yearly sales to best keep them and us on track for our goals. I work hard for them! I am always willing to do more to create those sales and to help them grow their business. Working for them instead of acting like a boss is a huge reason why our vendors have been so hard working and go the extra mile to create new and unique products for the store. They feel heard, valued and appreciated. We all work together as a team and by creating that environment allows for more productivity and creativity which ultimately equals more sales.
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?
My name is Kendra Patterson. I own Michigan Barn Wood & Salvage along with my husband Trevor. We started our business accidentally. I wanted my husband to make me some projects I found on Pinterest for our house using reclaimed wood. A friend had told me about a house that was being demoed and maybe we could ask them to purchase some wood from them. So we stopped by and got to talking with them and they told us about how they mostly tear down barns. We went to visit their salvage yard and got to purchasing a load at a time to bring home and make projects using the reclaimed wood. Soon people wanted to know how they could get wood for their projects. We started bringing bigger loads of wood to our pole barns and opened the barns to store and sell lumber. We built a partnership with our demo crew so they could continue to tear down and process while we handled the retail end. It quickly grew too big for our pole barn space so purchased our building we now own and operate here in Mason.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
We built our business out of our home. The first real decision we made was what do we call it. Deciding on the name was fairly simple, we sold barn wood. We wanted to keep it simple for people searching in Michigan for barn wood…hence the name Michigan Barn Wood & Salvage. Creating a simple business name that described what we sold made it much easier for customers to find us. So when we decided on that, we sent the name to our cousin who did the logo design and then created our Facebook page. We didn’t have a huge inventory of lumber at first so making unique posts to get attention was super important. The DIY crowds were obsessed with using reclaimed materials and since shows like Fixer Upper were trending it was fairly easy to start getting likes and followers. We showed examples we had built, customers had built or ideas from Pinterest on what you could make using barn wood! Since we had a unique product that was trending and had good prices, people showed up! We started building relationships with customers who helped spread the word of our new business, shared our page and helped us gain more followers on social media. By the time we grew out of our home space and bought our building in Mason, we already had a good Facebook following. We constantly kept sharing pictures, promoted our business on Facebook groups that were relevant and being involved in our community helped grow our audience. I have learned several helpful things over the years on using social media. Time of the day you post things will help get more views. I notice first thing in the morning, lunchtime and bedtime posts get the best views because more people are on their social media pages at those times. Keeping your customers engaged by creating polls, posting trends, and also responding to customers will help you with gaining more of an audience. I like to do several post a day that tag each vendor and post a description to help keep our followers engaged and also show them the new products in or favorite items that have been restocked. Our monthly themed events are unlike most other businesses. By creating a different themed event every month allows new products to come in and gets more customers excited and engaged! For example, when I host an event like The Michigan Petoskey Stone Day. Each vendor who makes a product that would be a good fit for that category will send in a new product for that specific theme. It could be a mug, towel, candle, sign, jewelry, puzzle, bag etc that is unique to our store. In making things more exclusive which helps customers share and tag events that they want to attend. Creating something unique to your store, for your customers and to your area will help drive customers to your social media pages and help gets customers to your store.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
In 2020, most businesses had to pivot. We had to think outside the box of what we could do to keep open and also follow the guidelines for retail. I had decided since I couldn’t open our doors for sales, I could use my social media page to help make sales by creating a unique virtual shopping experience. Once or twice a week I would do a Facebook live video to help promote products and help generate sales. The videos would get thousands of viewers and I was able to take take orders for shipping and curbside pick up! Customers loved the videos, so I did more and more! Even after we reopened and things went more back to normal I have continued to do the videos to help promote new inventory, talk about events and share restocks! So for us the pivot was a blessing. It taught us to use our resources and social media to help keep sales and engagement up while we also followed the guidelines.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.michiganbarnwoodandsalvage.com
- Instagram: michigan.barnwood
- Facebook: @michiganbarnwood