Hi there. You're listening to gift biz on rap episode 130 All along. I had really wanted to do something on my own. Hi, this is John Entrepreneur on fire, and you're listening to gift to biz unwrapped, and now it's time to light it up. Well, hello and thank you for joining me on the show
today. If you're eight gifter Baker, crafter or maker, and you own a brick and mortar shop sell online or are just getting started here is where you will find insight and advice to develop and grow your business. And if you want even more gift is motivation. I'd like to invite you to join our private Facebook group called gift screens, pursuing your dreams should be fun, exciting, rewarding, not stressful and scary.
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So I have several special opportunities happening there right now have to be part of the group to participate. I'm talking about three opportunities to affect your business this year. So don't delay to join the group, go over to gift biz, breeze.com. I look forward to seeing you over there, but for now, let's get onto the show today. I have the pleasure of introducing you to Bruce Erickson of summer classes in March of 2016, Bruce opened his summer classics home store in downtown Highland park,
Illinois. Bruce chose summer classics because he has known the owner for over 20 years and has always admired his vision for the company and the industry as a whole. Bruce has been in the furniture industry for over 35 years in both retail and wholesale sides of the business, but he wanted in with this retail chain, summer classics, outdoor furniture stands out it's timeless yet fashionable style.
Their designers are inspired to create sophisticated products by combining traditional craftsmanship, with innovative usage of diverse materials in a disposable culture. This makes summer classics furniture purchase the generation reus. Welcome to the show. Thank you, sir. You know, I started out in a little bit of a different way, and that is by having you share a little bit about who you are through your description of a motivational candle.
So if you were to create a candle that represents you, what color would it be and what would be the quote on your candle? So the candle color is going to be blue. It's always been my favorite color. I have a lot of blue things, blue cars, blue clothes and everything. So it's always been my favorite color. It also just happens to be one of our best selling here in summer classics and with Gabby. So it's a color that I've always grown up with wearing and driving as a car.
And then as far as quotes on that candle, when we opened the store, I had a good friend that gave me a plaque for my office, and it was a quote from Walt Disney and it says, all of your dreams can come true if you have the courage to pursue them. I really liked that. And I think that says a lot about entrepreneurs in general and about business people in general and trying to make them go after their dreams go after the things that they want to do. So that's what we're trying to do here.
The quote surprises me a little bit because you are such an altogether guy. I mean, I know you through the chamber, right? You're so professional. You're so poised. Have you ever had to call on courage yourself? Oh yeah, absolutely. And people show it and do it in different ways. And I think from opening the store back in my other jobs that I've done, I've been a sales rep for a company like summer classics and a couple other outdoor lines in the past and indoor
lines. And I think it's always things that you have to draw on and courage would definitely be one of them. Do you feel you get more courageous over time as you've been successful and start to rack up some things that have gone well, and clearly you got a little bit more confidence, but you think it gets easier to be courageous as you get more advanced in your career. Older is another word too. Yeah, definitely.
I think you learn from your mistakes and if you haven't failed, you're never going to succeed. So there's very few successful people in business or in life that haven't had a failure along the way. And so you got to realize that at some point something that you try something you do, it's just not going to work the way you want it to. And so you move on to different things. We're really interested in getting you on the show, Bruce, because you are running a successful retail shop and it's
new. And I think a lot of people right now I've had conversations like this with my listeners that they're shying away from retail, because it seems like it's too scary now with all the online shopping. So I'm going to be interested in talking a little bit about that in terms of what you're seeing, why you took that chance, et cetera. But before we do that, give us a little bit of your backstory and how you got into the furniture business in the first place.
Well, just coming out of high school, I started working in a retail store back in Des Moines, Iowa, and it was a ski store or ski shop. And then we had camping and so forth and I really kind of get the retail bug at that point so much so that when I first went into college, I wanted to be a dentist and went through that first year and was working for this guy in the ski shop. And like, I really would rather do this and spend seven years or eight years going through dental school.
So I took a year off college and worked for him and then went back to school and got my education in retail management. So I had totally switched gears. So I was with him for six years and a competitor in the town that I was in and DeWine ran an ad for a manager. And I was kind of looking to move on this other store, had multiple locations through Iowa and Wisconsin. I applied for their job and the guy called me back right away. And he said, I know you I've been in and I've shopped you.
I'd love to talk to you. And that store did ski business in the winter. And they did patio business in the summer. And that's how I got into the patio furniture business and started managing a couple of their stores and then became one of their buyers and was with them for about seven years. Then I had an opportunity with one of our reps that called on us to do repping through Wisconsin and Illinois for a company called Winston furniture, which at that time was a huge line.
It still is around and does very well still. But at that time it was the dominant force in patio furniture. And we also, at that time picked up a small little startup company called summer classics. And that's when I first met BW white from summer classics. And from that point on really enjoyed working with him and with that company. And then after about 10 years of repping kids were still small, a lot of time on the road, starting to look at different things.
And so I went back onto the retail side so that I didn't have to travel as much and could be home with my kids and see their baseball games and volleyball games and all that kind of stuff. And spent 17 years with a local retailer selling outdoor furniture. And they also did ski equipment and clothing. So that wasn't summer classics at the time then? No. Okay. So that was Williams here in Highland park. Oh, Williams. A very prestigious and well-known Store for sure.
Yeah. And they'd been around for a long, long time. And before that as a rep, I knew Mark Williams. And so when I started thinking about getting back onto the retail side, made a call to him and we had three or four meetings and met with his wife and everything, and ended up working with them for about 17 years and just all along.
I had really wanted to do something on my own and the time just came and saw the opportunity with summer classics went back and talked to Butte white again from summer classics and said, tell me about your retail stores. Tell me about your retail business. Cause summer classics over the last 10 years has opened now 14 retail locations. And some of those are corporate owned and some are what they call licensee stores, which is kind of like a franchise without all the hoops of a franchise.
So we had a nice conversation and it just kind of went from there. And few months after that, I left Williams and still had some reservations as far as the retail side, opening my own store and everything. But I had Talked to a couple of other people about maybe getting back Into repping and that was another option, but retail is what I want to do. And so about six months after leaving Williams opened summer classics.
So you talk about the fact that you wanted to leave Rapping and did you have a certain territory, a portion of the country don't tell me you had the whole country. We had Illinois and Wisconsin. And we did a few things into Minnesota, some accessory lines and a few things over into Missouri, again with some accessory lines. But the main lines that we had were Illinois and Wisconsin. So through the Midwest and through the snow and all of that, I've been there to bruise, you know, that story.
So it's really great that you had seen both sides of the business and you decided that you wanted to go back to retail because you could stay home, but let's face it. Retail hours are heavy too. I mean, why did you choose that route? Knowing retail has its own restrictions. I guess You're home every night. That's the big thing. When I was repping on the road, usually three, four nights a week, especially during the busy time of the year.
And in the winter months, it's still would be gone a night or two a week. So just felt like I was missing out on a lot. So I thought going back to retail where I could be close to home and be home at night and have some flexibility as far as being able to jump away and see a volleyball game or something like that was something that interested me at that time. So let's take this in a direction that our listeners are going to be able to relate to.
Let's take it as if you were talking to somebody who is considering opening up their own shop. So they might not have the experience that you do. They also might be creating something all by themselves, your taking summer classics and opening a store here. I'll be it. It's still yours. So you have all the responsibility, but there's the product and all of that.
What types of things did you do when you started, like when you were preparing to open the shop and what types of advice would you have for someone who's in a similar situation, but opening something for themselves? Sure. Well, initially I sat down with the principals of summer classics there, BW white, who owns the company and then their vice-president and their sales manager at the time. And just talk to them about the whole concept.
And then the week after I talked to him, I had already planned a vacation with my wife, or just a week off with my wife. We weren't really planning anything in particular. So I came back from that meeting and I said to her, I said, do you want to take a trip? And she goes, yeah, where are we going? I said, let's go and tour some of the summer classic stores. So we took a trip out to Columbus, Ohio, and Nashville and Louisville and St. Louis to see some of their stores.
So we just did a week long road trip. And so those four stores, it was interesting because there was two licensees stores and two corporate stores. So he got to see a mix there and also got to see a mix in size of stores. So I wanted to see what it would take to do it and what kind of locations it should be looking for and so forth. And also the people, how many people would need to run it and so forth. And it was a great week. We met some terrific people, got a really good feel of the company.
As a, I remember walking away from Nashville, which is an awesome little store. It's only about 3000 square feet with a little outside display, but they are right in this part of Nashville that has some great restaurants and coffee shops and things like that. And they get like 200 to 300 people through the store a day. So it's a rock and little store and to see them and talk to them and we walked away from there and I said, these people have definitely drank the Kool-Aid.
So we knew coming away from that, that this would be something that we could bring back to Chicago and work in Chicago. And then also we went to other stores and through my retail years, I've been on different boards and so forth with the outdoor industry. And so I kind of got to know a lot of the people.
We went to other stores here in the area, we went out to like Northwest metal craft and Viking ski shop and different places just to kind of see what they do and how they do it and talk to them. And then as we're going around, like in St. Louis went to some other stores that I knew down there, just to see again, what they do and how they do it. You Were doing that to really validate the idea exactly. To confirm to yourself that this is what you wanted to
do. And then capturing all the pieces of information. You just talked about, like how many people should be in the store. What should the size store be? Probably display ideas, Advertising everything I, everything. Okay. So within a brand like summer classics is every location throughout the country attracting the same type of a customer, or are they different by location too? Pretty much the same customer.
And it's one of the things that summer classics also tries to do as far as the look of the store is if you walk into our store or you walk into Louisville, Kentucky, you're going to get a similar feel. I mean, each store is different on their own, but in terms of a lot of the merchandising and things like that, it's the same kind of feel. And it definitely draws the same type of customer now.
And in our area where we are, we have a little higher end clientele than maybe what Nashville does, but still what we're selling is the same thing. Okay. And I just want to make the point there that in addition to the types of things that you are looking at and considering, which is what somebody should also be doing, if they're looking at opening their own place, go to a competitor and see what else is already out there, how things are working.
I like the overview that you gave us, Bruce, just all the different types of things you're looking at different for someone who's starting out by themselves versus you though, you also will need to define what is the style that you want to represent in your shop? Is it very clean and crisp? Is it more friendly and country? Like, what is the style sounds like you already had that all set as you entered into summer classes. We did.
Yeah. And one of the things that you see as you go around to different stores, whether it's the summer classics or other successful stores, is they make it an environment that you want to shop and you want it to be a friendly environment, welcoming environment, but just you walk in and you like, there's things that you want to look at when you come into the store.
And that's one of the things that we try to do on a daily basis is make it a little bit different every time a customer comes in the store. So it's not just the same old packaged store. So it's always a little bit different. So how often do you switch up the floor? Well, we do two major switches. We do one in February when we condense down our indoor furniture and bring out the outdoor furniture.
And then we do another one in September, mid September, first part of October, where we bring in the indoor furniture for the fall. Those are the two major switches. And then during the year we do at least two other, I won't say major, but rearranging and freshening up. But then on a weekly basis, we get different things in on a weekly basis that from accessories to even maybe some new styles that are out or things that maybe we're just waiting to come in that want to freshen up the store with.
So it's constantly changing. And how many square feet do you have? We have just under 7,000. Okay. So it's pretty big size store. Sure is. So one other thing, just while we're still talking about, as you're analyzing and you're looking at then other summer classic stores and then also stores that are in the same industry in the local area, I'm sure you didn't want to just repeat what was already out there because we wanted to make sure that your store looked unique and different.
Absolutely. What was your thinking along that end? Well, we spent some time with summer classics merchandising team and the people that buy all their accessories, buy all their things for their stores, just to, we sent them pictures of the location. They actually made a trip out, took a look at it to see what it looked like. And then we sat down with them and said, this is what we were thinking. What do you think?
And we all kind of got our ideas together and said, let's do this as far as colors, let's do this. As far as paint, floors, everything. And then we went to Atlanta with them in January before we opened to a gift show. And if you've never been to Atlanta, if any of your people, if you've never been to Atlanta, it's a crazy market Is nuts. I've exhibited there. It's huge. How many floors is it? Well, there's three buildings and they're all about 20 stories tall and it's all showrooms.
It's all showrooms. Yeah. And then there's temporary space and everything. So there are literally hundreds of people that you can look at, but it's nice going through with them because we could be a little more focused. So we could go into twenty-five showrooms instead of a hundred. So we kind of got an idea as far as the look that we wanted and everything and went through with them and just started bringing stuff in.
And then with the summer classic side, we kind of broke away from some of the things that they do to make it a little more specific for our market. So it was colors that were a little bit different. Some of the styles that we knew would, whereas the summer classics, corporate stores, you will see the same groupings pretty much in each individual store and colored the same in each individual store. But we wanted it to be a little bit different.
We wanted it to be specific for our location and what we knew could sell in our location. And how did you know, just from being in that business for 17 years, The industry knowledge, and then what about your customer? Were there any focus groups or something like that now you're also from the area.
So you have a better feel for it and probably what to look for, but if someone isn't really sure about their customer, any suggestions on how to find out that information before you purchase everything or design your whole store only to find that it's not a connection. Well, I think you can, again, go to local competitors, look and see what they're doing.
As far as customers go reach out to people, you know, reach out to friends, reach out to colleagues in the industry, as far as, especially ones that might be local just to see what kind of ideas they have and things that they like, places that they like to shop that I think would certainly help people to do that too. What I like about what you're just saying is it's, doesn't have to be really hard. You just have to go with the right mindset of what you're looking for.
Absolutely. You're looking to understand what the market likes and accepts, not what you like, which is a common error. Someone will, in my case, I would be painting my whole shop yellow because I love yellow. What if that's not the right thing for a market? So really, and this is directed at gift biz listeners. Make sure if you're in this situation, you're really looking at what is going to attract your customer, not necessarily what you love. All right.
So the shops all ready to go now, how do you start dealing with a grand opening and staffing up? What is your advice there for somebody new? Well, I was fortunate in that there were some people that I had worked with over the past 15 years that were also interested in coming with me and working with me. Then there were some other people that I knew just from designers and so forth, that wanted to be a part of it. So from a staffing standpoint, I was very fortunate.
I didn't have to run a bunch of ads and interview a bunch of people. I can, I knew who was going to be coming with me and who was not going to be coming with me from almost the very beginning. So the staffing part for me was really easy. And I was very fortunate to get a lot of experience to come along with me that worked out well. But as far as the grand opening side of it, again, I go back to the summer classics team and we had weekly meetings that are weekly phone calls.
That would take us all the way through things we had from signing the lease to the colors in the building and the paint and the floors and all that all laid out. And then we just put it on spreadsheets and went through on a weekly basis to check, to see where we were. And then it was like Brian computers and all that kind of stuff. Then the grand opening event, I have to credit my wife on that. She's a great party planner.
And she put a lot of the things together for the grand opening and from entertainment to well entertainment. We ended up changing kind of at the last minute, cause BW white from summer classics offered up one of their guys in Birmingham to fly up, to sing at our grand opening. The guy is awesome. He sat there for three hours and sang all through the night and he's got an amazing voice. In fact, we've told him he has to go on, America's got talent or something like that or the voice.
So he's really, really good, but she put together all the gift packages and stuff for everybody that showed up and it was a fun night. We probably had 200, 250 people that night throughout the evening. And it was a good party. It was a good party. You are right. And the other thing that I think was so great. So kudos to your wife. I didn't know who planned it.
I thought you had a professional planner, but you involved people from the community, which was wonderful in terms of the appetizers and all of that. But the thing that was so obvious to me, I mean, your store is very upscale and very nice and very polished. And the event was the same way. It was totally in line with your brand. So as a grand opening, this is the first opportunity. Give biz listeners again, to present yourself to the public.
So you want to make sure that the connection is clean in terms of what your messaging is, who you're representing, who your customer is and Bruce, you guys landed it. It was fabulous. And I have to say, I loved the candle that was in the goodie bags. And especially because they had your initials SC and my middle name is Christine. So SC was like, this is why I'm saying you named them for me. I'm just going with that. That's good that people say, it's Santa Claus. Oh, there you go.
But we'll go with Sue. Yeah. I can be second to him to Santa Claus. That works for me. That was fun. Yeah. It was great. Really, really great. Where did something go wrong there?
What cautionary tale or something with the grand opening in specific, would you caution people about, Well, I think there's just from the whole opening thing from the very beginning, the planning of it, there's different things along the way, that challenges, I think first of all, as a new business from a personal side, never had a problem. Getting it alone, never had a problem going to the bank and getting money I would need for a home or anything like that.
But as a new business, they look at you a lot different unless you put all your personal assets on the line, like everything, well, like if you want to mortgage your house or put another mortgage on your house or something like that, or do personal guarantees and things like that. And that got a little scary for a little while. I was like, wait a minute, hold on. I don't want that. I want as my business, this Is the difference between being an employee and an Owner.
It is, and I've never been one to carry a lot of credit cards. And one of the banks or my bank that I was dealing with at the time, they said, just go get a credit card. That's your line of credit right away. And I'm like, really? I said, you guys can't just do something unless you jumped through all kinds of hoops. And again, put a lot of personal things on the line. It's hard to get that money up front.
So like going to Atlanta and buying accessories, a lot of people don't want to give you credit right away because you haven't been in business. You don't have a store yet. So you're buying it on a credit card. So that was a little bit different nerve wracking. I'm sure they're wracking. Yeah, exactly. But that ended up being fine. And that was the way to do it, to get it open. And fortunately we were successful and those things all get paid off as you go. So that was one thing.
And then setting up for us, we do deliveries and we sell furniture. So it's got to get delivered to a home. That's been probably one of our biggest challenges and jumping into it. We thought it'd be easy. We didn't want to have our own delivery team just from a warehousing and delivery team expense and so forth. And some of the other summer classic stores use local what they call white glove delivery companies. And so that's what we checked into.
And we thought we found somebody that was really good. And they did a lot of deliveries for some of the big guys around town, the Creighton barrels and so forth. And so we thought, well, this guy could be good. Well, we found out that once you get rolling and then you start getting busy and may and June that they don't have the capacity to keep up. And then it was just scramble mode. And it was myself and Mark, who's my operations manager going and renting a truck and doing
deliveries. That's not something I planned for No wear every hat though, if it's your business, if you need to jump in, it's gotta be you Separate class access and award that they give out every month called whatever it takes. And that first summer was a lot of whatever it takes to get it done.
So finding the right delivery service to work with one that had the capacity and one that your customers were happy with, when that we were happy with, when that treated the product, like it should be treated when it's delivered, was a lot of searching and went through a lot of different avenues. But finally, we've settled in, on a couple of different ones that we use right now.
So finding those kinds of things that was tough at first, I mean outsourcing for all different types of services, some people who are listening do do deliveries. If there are florists or gift baskets or something like that, maybe not as big and bulky as yours are, but all different types of services that you outsource. I think your story brings to point that you might not get the right person at first and that's not a failure. I think it's kind of a process to get to who you are outside.
Suppliers are going to be who are in sync with your business, but then when you find them, boy, do you want to treat them well? Yes, absolutely. Right. You want them to be loyal and dedicated and stay because you don't want to have to replace that once you find it. Well, you want them to be part of your team. You want them to convey the type of message that you're delivering in the store to the outside part of the business as well. So you want them to be just like a regular team member for you.
Oh good. Because they're really An extension of your brand, for sure. They definitely are. So moving On to a little bit of a different area of business that is now you're open. How are you continuing to attract new customers into the store? So we do a lot of different types of advertising and we do some of your traditional newspaper and magazine and things like that. We've put a lot this last year into TV, which has been very good for us actually. And mostly cable.
And then we do a lot of direct mail and then we do email blasts, but then we also do Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and all the social media ones. So we have a pretty big presence on those sites. So you're everywhere. You're in everything we are. Yeah. Including traditional media. I was reading an article just the other day about social media is the bright and shiny new object that everyone's gravitating
to. It's not whether you're going to be on social media to which platforms are you going to use? It seems like it's just an obvious, which in some cases I would say yes, but you're pointing out that it's not necessarily to the exclusion of some of the other traditional types of media. Right. I mean, I'm still one of those guys that reads the paper every day. And so they have a newspaper ad once in a while. I don't think hurts. I don't think it's something that I want to do on a weekly basis.
But for me, it seems to have drawn in some of our business. We do usually a coupon or something like that with it that we can monitor that business. We do the same thing like on our Facebook and everything else that we do is we almost everything else that we do has some type of thing that they click on or they cut out or whatever, bring into the store and say, Hey, I saw your coupon for 20% off or whatever the price or whatever the thing is, How you can track it back.
So, you know, what's working and what's not exactly in terms of the messaging on your promotions. Are they always priced discounts or specials, or how do you approach that? So we do a fair amount of promotions, especially in the patio side of the business. We don't do quite as much on the indoor side, but on the patio side, we do a fair amount of promotions through the spring and into the summer. But at the same time with like we do some Chicago magazine and modern luxury.
And with those they're more image ads or not sales or anything like that. Sometimes we'll put a coupon on it just to, again, track to see if it's coming from Chicago magazine or modern luxury. But other than that, you get to have a little mix. I think of some of the sales side of it. And some of the image side of it, just to keep you out there in front of people. Do you say that? Because I think a lot of people think that to attract people, you always have to be discounting your product.
And if you do that, I actually just had a conversation about that with my assistant the other day, you train people not to shop with you, you have something on sale, right? So you have to be really careful not to set that kind of an idea in your customer's mind. I mean, if you have certain products or promotions, as you're talking about Bruce, then yeah. Maybe a discount or you're combining things together to reduce a price. Cause it makes sense.
But not just to, like I was saying, train a customer that yeah. They were going to have sales. So I'm just going to wait until next week. Maybe it'll be on sale. Okay. So you're doing TV direct mail, which is where I come from. That was my whole corporate life emailing. Let's talk a little bit about that.
Even though people hear all the time you email is like the one thing you absolutely own when you have your customers, emails, prospects, emails, you're always able to reach out to them, even social media.
You're not because if Facebook just hides to change the way they run their platform, yet again, you don't get to know who all your thousands of followers and people who like your page are the only way you're able to approach them is through that medium or Facebook ads, which is them, but emails are yours. So how are you attracting and growing your email list? We do it in a couple of ways.
One is if they are in the store, we have different things throughout the year that if they purchase something, we almost always get their email so that we can stay in contact as far as the delivery and things like that. We'll have giveaways. We just finished up one for the Gabby side of the business, where we are giving away my Gabby gift certificate worth $500. So you come in, you sign up and we capture your email. At that point, we do the same thing in the summer.
We do some kind of summer classics giveaway. We do a backyard makeover. That's a $10,000. Make-over Winning that next summer, by the way, I'm just letting you know right now. We'll keep that between us right now, nobody else. But that's another way that we capture them. And then we do have an email signup list here in the store. So if people want to be part of it, they can sign up for it.
In some of our catalogs are handouts that we give out has a website that you can go to and you click on that and you enter your information and we'll capture it there. If they go on our website, we have again, another place that you can log in and put in your email address. And so we capture it there. So we try to do it mostly through those means Everywhere you can, you try to do it. And how often do you communicate through your email list? Probably about once a week.
So sometimes it's once every two weeks, but depending on what's going on and so forth, it's usually about once a week. So I try not to do it any more than that. Sometimes we'll divide them out between our normal retail customer and our design business. So sometimes people might be on both lists and they get double blasted. But for the most part, it's just once a week or a little less. And so you are a single location, I'll be at you're part of a bigger entity.
Do you have somebody within your own individual team who works with all of your promotions? Not here at the store? No, I do that through summer classics and it's one of the things that actually kind of sold me on it was they have a great marketing team. So I pay them a very small amount of money per hour to work at promotions that are geared more towards our location, but they're a great team of people. And so I usually just tag onto what they're doing as a corporate store.
And then we add a few of ours along the way. Lucky you. Yeah. And that's a big time saver and a big money saver for me. So that again was one of the enticements of doing the summer classic story.
Sure. Plus you also then have the expertise and the experience of all the stores, anyone who's participating, then you're kind of edging your bets about what's going to work because people have already done these types of promotions before you have a little bit more intelligence of what's going to work and what's not. Yeah. In fact, now we're doing some IP targeting, which basically is big brother watching.
And so when you go into a certain area, a certain area around our store, there might be an ad that pops up on your phone. If you come into our store, there might be an ad that pops our coupon that pops up on your phone. And we're doing that now because two of the other stores tested that over the summer and had great success with it.
So there's some that I could have it set, not from the company that we're using, but some of the companies, you can have it designed so that if they walk into your competitor, one of your ads pops up no way. Yeah. Ours is not that way. So we're not quite that big brother-ish, but it's a whole new form of advertising. That's working really well for a lot of people. And it just kind of keeps you out there in front of you. Yeah. That is very cool.
Some people freak out a little bit about that type of thing. The messenger bots are now showing up to a lot. So it's interesting. It keeps changing. And along the lines of that, let's talk about change. What do you think of the whole retail world these days compared to 20 years ago? I think you have to find your niche. I mean, 20 years ago you could open a storefront and most people were pretty successful with it.
But now with internet, there are some products that will just be sold on the internet and be very hard to compete with there's other products, which I think we have in the furniture side of the business that are very difficult for a lot of people to pull the trigger on the internet. Most people like to sit in their furniture before they buy it. There's companies that are making it more easy on the internet to do that as far as their returns and things like that.
But I think a lot of our clientele still feels like they need to come in, sit on the furniture, pick the fabrics that they want and customize it to their tastes. You can't get that on the internet yet. But I think the other thing, and I mentioned it a little bit earlier. We want the place to be an experience to shop in. So when you walk in the front door, it's something that is different than other places that you've been even different than other furniture stores.
And if you keep that mind in front of you, I think you can be successful in retail as far as that environment, something that people want to keep coming back to and seeing what's new and different. Yeah. Yeah. The in store experience, I think that's where you win The book. I read just this last spring, it's called shops that pop and it's a great little resource book and it's an easy read and it focuses on a, probably about a half, a dozen businesses throughout the country.
And there is a pet store in the East coast someplace, and there's a bakery and different things that they focus on and what makes them successful. The main thing that it comes down to is making the experience enjoyable for the customer and also having a good team, good team of people. So that keeps them coming back. Yeah, because if your team, we talked about this on a show, a couple of episodes back that a very fine line with your team.
And I'm just talking about when a customer comes into the store because you can't ignore them, but you can't be on top of them every step of the way, either. Exactly. Right. You have to be intuitive. And how do you direct people on how to do that? Now you already had your team. So you probably knew already how they were going to work. But I think it's different with every guest.
Everybody has a little different personality and a different need, and even been through a bunch of seminars that talks about the millennials compared to the wide Gen-Z and everything like that and how they deal differently in a store. And I think he just got to have a feel for what the customer wants and how they want to be handled. And I think you can read that a good salesperson can read that pretty quickly.
So you're not the person that's going to hover over them if they don't want to be hovered, but you also have those people that do want to know everything about the product and every little thing. I think it's just, you have to have good people that can read the customer as they come through the door and decide how they need to be treated and how they need to be helped, but being friendly and being courteous to all is important to everybody. Yeah. I totally agree with you there.
So you've had a lot of experience in the field, obviously, but things keep changing. What do you do to stay current with the industry? Now, Our industry does have a really good social kind of interaction with different ones. They have different meetings around the country at different times of the year that you can go to.
And I think staying on top of that and being in tune to what's happening throughout the country, even though you want to localize it and bring it to your location, but find out trends, you find out what works advertising for different people, by going to some of those meetings. And we had both Mark my operations manager and I attended one out in Scottsdale last year. And there was just a lot to pull from that.
And there's a lot of meetings that talked about advertising and talked about ownerships of stores and how that transitions through the generations. And some things didn't play into what we were looking for, but the time away from it at lunches and dinners with other retailers really paid off, you learn what's happening out there and you learn what's hot. Yeah. And you build connections with peers in the industry who aren't direct competitors too.
Yeah. How about kind of a final topic as we start winding down here? What about community interaction? I think it's really important. We have a great chamber of commerce here, and I think that being involved with that has helped us not only just in meeting new people and seeing new ideas out there, getting new ideas out there, but from some of the things that I do, I've changed my, it people I've changed my bank just based on the relationship that I've found in the chamber.
So I think being tied into that and getting to know the people around the area is good. Downtown Highland park has its own little group of people and it's good to kind of walk up and down the street and see them and talk to them and know a little bit about what's going on in their business.
And I think involving yourself in the local businesses is good, but then reaching out to the local community, whether it's through charity events, things like that, I think is important as well, be active in the community, Even though you own your own location, you're still part of a bigger group. And I think it is really important to individualize your location, who you are, that you're the owner employees and be part of the community. And you certainly do that.
And you show up at the events too, Bruce, you know, you don't always send an employee. You're the one who's coming out, which is really cool. You set a wonderful example for everybody there. Thank you. All right. Advice for someone who's starting out, someone who maybe they are working out of their house right now, but they are a people person and they're thinking, yeah, you know, maybe I ought to look at this brick and mortar type
idea. What advice would you give them as they're thinking through the decision? Cause it isn't right for everybody. We know that. What would be your advice if you were sitting across the table from them, what would you say, Look at who your customer is and can you take that what you're doing right now and bring it into a store. And then as far as locations and things like that, what's going to make you successful. Do you need the walk by traffic or are people gonna come find you?
And so things like that. And like I mentioned before, go out and talk to other stores, shop other stores, see if you can take your concept and bring it out to your own retail location, don't be afraid to do it. I think, like I said before, a lot of people fail, but pick yourself back up and you start all over again.
So like I said, talk to people in the community, get ideas from them and look at other cities that might have things like you're currently offering and see if they have a brick and mortar and how it works for them. So just do as much research as you can do Great advice because I think a lot of people, when they start thinking the first thing they think of as, Oh, let me go look and see what locations are and how much it's going to cost versus doing more of that market analysis.
Like your describing. Yeah. So I think that is a key to success. I have a theory about retail. Tell me what you think about this. Bruce everyone's gravitating online. It's convenient. It's easy. Pretty soon the are going to be dropping our product probably right through the front door. Well, and I hear Amazon's looking at being able to open your door and place products right inside, which is a little crazy, but everything seems to be cyclical.
And I kind of have a feeling that although online is the bright and exciting thing right now that it's going to come back, it's going to circle back online will always be there obviously, but it's going to circle back to people, wanting to come back in and have that personal interaction right now. I think people are worried about it, but I don't think retail ever is going to be gone forever. I would totally agree.
I think some of the big box people are going to have some difficulties in less state change, what they do inside the stores. We've all been into different stores where it difficult to shop. They load it with stuff that close outs and clearance items, and you can hardly make your way through the Isles. And there's very few trained salespeople there and it's just not a fun place to shop until they change that. I think they're going to have some problems.
I think that's what plays into the smaller retail stores like us and other people that if you give that person that personal experience, you can compete against the internet people. I agree 100%. Okay. So Bruce, at this point, I would like to offer you a virtual gift. It's a magical box containing unlimited possibilities for your future. So this is your dream or your goal of almost unreachable Heights that you would wish to obtain.
Please accept this gift on behalf of me and my listeners and let us know what's inside your box In the box would be another location. Really. We're looking right now, pretty seriously at something Western suburbs. I don't know the timeframe on it yet, but we actually draw a lot of people in from some of the Western verbs and we've went out and checked to see what's available out there as far as locations.
So we have some feelers out there right now and just see if everything can come together to do it. But that's what we would love to do. So you can not respond to me, but I'm thinking Barrington, put it out there. I'm just putting it out there. I have no idea. I'll tell you, there is a guy. I know that he's the vice president of leasing down at the merchandise Mart and he and I have become very good friends and he lives in Barrington and commutes every day into the merchandise Mart.
And he said, you gotta have a store in Barrington. So it's funny. You had mentioned that. Yeah, I totally see it. I mean, that's a neat area. There's other ones like St. Charles and Hinsdale and Naperville and those areas that we're kind of looking for. It'll be exciting to know when it can be announced. We'll let you know. All right. So Bruce great information that you've given us if our listeners, because not all of them are obviously in the area.
In fact, the majority of our listeners aren't there worldwide. If they want to just take a peek at what you've got going on, what would the best place for them to go website Facebook page? Where would you send them There? One, the website shows everything that we do. so@summerclassics.com, you can see what summer classics as a whole is from product and everything. And then there's a link into the store locations there. And you can see our store on that as well.
So that gives you a kind of a peak into the store itself and then Facebook, Twitter, any of those work out real well. Wonderful. Well, I really, really appreciate you spending the time with us, your insight, because you've had so much experience both from the wholesale side and then retail, and then being in retail for a while and choosing to go back. It's really interesting.
I don't often meet people who do, but you have a great thing going and you, as I'd said before, are a perfect fit to be the owner of this very classy chain store. I'm not even sure what to call it in terms of summer classics, because it's just such a total fit. So I'm going to be interested and excited to see how things progress and your second location. Although I'm staying here, cause this is way closer to home for me. Just don't ever give up on those S see candles. That's all I have to say.
All right, well, much success to you. I obviously know I'll be seeing you around and may your candle always Today's show is sponsored by the ribbon print company, looking for a new income source for your gift business. Customization is more popular now than ever brand your products with your logo or print a happy birthday, Jessica Gribbon to add to a gift, right at checkout, it's all done right in your shop or across studio incentive. Check out the ribbon print company.com for more information.
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