FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) – Not business as usual.
Since the stay at home order, store owners and companies have been scrambling to find ways to generate revenue and stay afloat.
Becky Glaser is the owner of Mainstream Boutique located in Jefferson Pointe Shopping Center, with the recent restrictions on non-essential businesses she started to produce online videos to maintain her clientele.
“Basically I pull like maybe five or ten different outfits and every video has a themed,” said Glaser.
Those themes include last chance hot items and clearance videos. Mainstream Boutique offers curbside pick up, shipping and Glaser also deliveries to her customer’s homes.
“It has helped me get through the weeks knowing that I still have bills to pay,” said Glaser. “You know they still exist.”
Like many small business owners she was challenged with the recent pandemic causing her to close the doors to her store. After a week of the stay at home order, she got a little creative and brought her store to her customer’s living room.
“When I describe the clothes, I describe how the clothes fit, whether they are bigger fit, smaller fit whether they should go down a size or up a size,” said Glaser.
Her boutique doesn’t have a traditional e-commerce store, so she decided to use the social media platform Facebook to reach her audience.
“It gives me some kind of normalcy to go to my store and talk into the camera like it’s my best friend because in all reality it’s like customer-friends,” said Glaser. “You are showing your love plus your product.”
Going on nearly a month with her new format, Glaser said not only has her sales increased but creating her online videos has helped her find the silver lining to the dark cloud caused by the pandemic.
“I have never seen such a response from my customers. Not only did they purchase things, it is much more than that,” said Glaser. “I had customers tell me that I brought sunshine to their living room during this crisis.”
Glaser said she believes that this way is the future and after everything goes back to normal she will continue to do her facebook videos.
