We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Mika Requel Akins a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Mika Requel, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Do you think folks should manage their own social media or hire a professional? What do you do?

Currently, I’m managing our social media accounts. We think it’s extremely important to share who we are through storytelling, behind the scenes, sneak peeks, and/or snippets of our daily lives. We want to provide more insight than just wearing outfits. However, we are currently vetting a few prospects to help us out beginning Q1/2023. We are looking for someone who understands the significance of our content, that can also provide additional insight of how we can better serve our audience.

Mika Requel, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Our mission is to promote positivity and self-love through fun fashion! We help girls enjoy the innocence of childhood through our carefully curated wardrobe pairings. We thrive by inspiring, motivating, encouraging, and empowering young girls to be their best authentic selves.

Growing up poor, as an African-American girl in a small rural town, to a hard-working, single mother with tremendous determination and work ethics pushed me to dream of one day being able to set a positive example for little dreamers!

While married with two kids and working a corporate job, I started a part-time side hustle in 2016 to bring fun, fresh, flavor to little girls with creative imaginations. The side hustle began in 2017 and evolved into a full-time business in 2019. In a world that is heavily influenced by negative images on social media, we set out to bring a fun & positive alternative to bring smiles to little faces around the world.

We started out designing and making birthday party wear: tutu outfits, custom jackets, sneakers, and party headbands. This quickly led to ready to wear special occasion wear: resort wear, mom & me brunch, mom & me day out, celebratory dinners, or any event that was deemed special enough to get dressed up for.

Today, Prim and Saucy is ran by myself and my two girls: Tori (17) and Pai (7). We’re here to help mamas and minis create flavorful moments through tastefully chic and sophisticatedly fun fashion. We have a physical store location at The Painted Tree boutiques in Snellville, Ga as well as our online store.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

In April 2020, my position as an IT Business Consultant was eliminated due to an acquisition by another company. I took the opportunity to full time as a business owner. This was also during the onset of the pandemic. Many people changed the way they shopped and what they valued as priority. Travel ceased, going out to fancy restaurants and brunching with mom were just not going to happen! Going out altogether ceased; so buying kid’s special occasion clothes was not a priority for moms.

I had to strategize and reset my focus, which was imaginary play. Although families were not traveling, parents were still dreaming and so were their children. To keep my little one/model happy and simultaneously serve my audience, I recorded our pretend playtimes. We had tea parties, pretend vacations, and playhouse where all the dolls were in attendance!

This was a very pivotal moment and many moms could relate. So, the outfits that were worn were marketed to satisfy a yearning for normalcy.

Do you sell on your site, or do you use a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc?

We currently sell on both Etsy and Shopify.

We use Etsy for our custom birthday party wear and back to school gear. We use Shopify for both customs and ready to wear and integrate with Printful (an OnDemand printing & fulfilment company) from both platforms for tshirts and backpacks.

For Etsy, I love the ease and flexibility of being able offer several variations with different prices for a given product. Like color, size, and options. For instance, we offer custom backpacks with or without side pockets and the option to add custom text on the front or top or both. These features are limited in Shopify.

Etsy has an optional “FREE SHIPPING” option on items priced at $35+. They do make price increase suggestions to cover the cost of shipping, however if you elect not to offer it, customers are likely to shop around for similar products with shops that do offer FREE SHIPPING. While standard shipping prices have also increased. Within Shopify, you can set your minimum FREE SHIPPING order amount based on your average spend, which in our case greatly exceeds $35.

Etsy has built in ad campaigns that allow you to select the products that you’d like to advertise individually with your desired daily spend amount, which is great. You can monitor which products are performing the best and increase your daily ad spend or not advertise at all, it’s totally up to you.

With Shopify, of course your site is stand alone. You can select from free templates or pay a one-time fee for the one that suits your fancy. We’re on the basic $29 monthly plan and have several apps that range from $9.99 to $14.99 monthly. We’ve installed apps like Judge Me to manage customer reviews, Smile to manage rewards, and Unlimited Bundles and Discounts.

Shopify also has a variety of payment options including ShopPay, which allows customers to check out with a single click, pay in installments, and track orders and make returns in one place.

Both platforms have their pros and cons, if you’re a “maker” with lots of variations for one product, Etsy may be the better choice.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.primandsaucyboutique.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/primandsaucyboutique
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/primandsaucyboutique

Image Credits
Jayla White Creative Focus Photography