At The Hunt Shop we’re always evolving. That’s the life of any business, and any every fashion forward individual. Since the moment we came up with THS, we’ve been throwing ideas on the wall to see what sticks which is also how I put together outfits. I’m not really into ‘go to’ outfits for myself. I feel like there’s always some new and different outfit I can assemble. This result is usually A) a very messy closet, and B) something unique.
Anywho, after 3 years of experimentation, we’ve learned a lot about running a business. Actually, a more accurate statement would be we’ve learned a lot about how not to run a business. We’ve made tons of mistakes, but that’s ok. Each one has brought us closer and closer to our goal. Our main struggle has always been getting our product to our customer…which is sort of important.
We’ve experimented with pop up events where we set up a boutique for one day. It’s like one giant dress up party (with wine!), but they are extremely labor intense for us. We have to find and rent a space. Purchase an item we like, clean it, possibly repair, tag, and transport it, all in hopes of the right person walking through the door to purchase it. Times that by 200 which is about the number of items we display at a pop up event. Not to mention that this inventory has to live somewhere. Despite all this, we love it. What we don’t love, is that we don’t get to spend as much one on one time with our clients. It all happens so fast, and before we know it, it’s time to pack up and go.
Another aspect of our business is Tradesy, our online selling platform. While we have a steady stream of sales, we are selling singular items when what we really love is creating unique head to toe looks for specific people. We rarely meet or get to know our customers beyond their name and shipping address, and that is not why we started this business. Tradesy is also luxury brand focused. While this is great for selling our Louis Vuitton bags, it’s not so great for our non luxury brand items. And if you know us, you know that we love quality items, but we’re not brand whores.
So, we decided that a THS makeover was in order, but this time, the makeover was on us (in the immortal words of Cher from Clueless). Women do not need another traditional store to purchase clothing. There are tons of places and ways to buy pieces of clothing. What they do need, at least in our experience, is help selecting and assembling the right items based on their preferences and lifestyle. They need help building a wardrobe that allows them to easily get dressed and make them feel great. Turns out this is also what we love to do!
After a lot of brainstorming with the aid of many bottles of wine and quite a lot of take out, we designed a a new approach to selling THS threads: Let’s focus on our individual clients wants and needs – there is no such thing as one size fits all. Let’s stay true to our sustainable clothing ethos and source from the great clothing already out in the world – suck it fast fashion. Let’s structure it by season – who wouldn’t want to start each season with great set of new to you threads?
To test out this new approach and work out the kinks, we ran a pilot with some of our favorite clients for the Spring / Summer 2016 season. The feedback was a resounding…
We are VERY excited to roll this out to a wider audience for the Fall / Winter season. Interested? Send us your deets via our contact page, and we’ll take it from there. For more information and FAQs, visit our shop! page.
