We recently connected with Taudine Andrew and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Taudine thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?
When we knew that we wanted to open a thrift boutique specifically to serve plus-sized women, I started playing around with names. I was looking for something that conveyed the nature of what we sell, but without being too literal or boring. I also new I wanted it to feel rich and vibrant, but accessible. Nothing too cerebral or cutesy. I tried using AI to generate a list of possible names and I hated all of them. Some were actually offensive and it showed me that as a society, we still think it’s acceptable to fat-shame. I developed my own list of name candidates and presented them to my trusted focus group for feedback. Two or three emerged very clearly as front-runners and Curveture was my personal favorite and got the most positive feedback. I love that the sound of the word is familiar, but by spelling it with the word “curve” it suggests our clientele both visually and by sound. I was happy to have a one-word business name, too.
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’ve owned several small businesses over the last 20 years and entrepreneurship is always on my mind. I was living in a small, rural community in far northern California and although I had the vision of opening an exclusively plus-sized thrift store, my small community was not large enough to support it. I put it on the shelf and continued pursuing other things. While my oldest daughter was in college getting a degree in Public Relations, we discussed wanting to do something entrepreneurial together.
When I knew that my family would be moving to Provo, the timing was right and we were both ready to jump into a new business together. Having been a plus-sized woman for many years, I understand how challenging it can be to find beautiful, high-quality clothing that is affordable. Often as plus-size women, we buy things just because they fit, not because we are excited about them or because they let us express our personal style. Plus-size clothing selections are generally so limited that we end up putting our own style on the back burner and just have to be satisfied when something fits. A thrift boutique that focuses on plus-size women solves the problem of limited selection. We carry dozens of different brands and thousands of unique items. Creating a beautiful space where people can feel seen and valued and build community was also very important to us. We wanted it to be fun to shop here! It’s beautiful, it’s affordable, it’s pleasant and friendly and it’s sustainable!
Any advice for managing a team?
We are a very small business with only a couple of employees, but we had a clear vision from the start of how we want our teams to run. Our first priority is our customer experience, but we believe that happy staff make a happy environment for our shoppers. We greet our staff members cheerfully and we’re genuinely happy to see them. When we’re hiring, we make sure that we hire people who enjoy being around the public and who have a generally cheerful temperament. We incentivize our staff by offering them a significant employee discount, first looks at merchandise and flexible scheduling. We are working on an employee incentive program that will feature things like cash rewards for reaching sales and marketing goals. We believe that out employees are ambassadors for our brand and we listen to their ideas and feedback. There is no magic here- it’s treating people like people and valuing their contributions. Being grateful and expressing thanks to employees goes a long way to creating a happy, pleasant and open work environment.
How do you keep in touch with clients and foster brand loyalty?
We rely heavily on social media to stay connected to our clients. We are a brick and mortar store and once we get clients in the door, they keep coming back. We make sure that we greet every person who walks in the door. We post new arrivals several times per week on our social platforms and allow our customers to claim items via those platforms. We also incentive our customers to market for us by offering referral discounts if they share our social media by tagging friends on our posts. We talk about customer experience all the time and we ask for reviews often. We ask our clients what they’d like to see in the store and when we find things they’d be interested in, we reach out. We also make connections with peripheral businesses to ours. We often get inventory that we can’t sell in our store, but we know people who can. That’s been a delightful part of starting a local brick and mortar store- getting to know the local business scene and supporting other small local businesses.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://shopcurveture.com
- Instagram: shopcurveture
- Facebook: shopcurveture
