A woman who began managing online shops from maternity leave and has grown into a company with annual sales of 26 million yen

Mr. Alaina Banks who runs an online clothing shop " Fridays Off " in Canada started company management since midwifer and has grown into a company with annual sales of $ 240,000 (about 26 million yen) as of June 2018 It was. Mr. Banks himself talks about why such success could be achieved.

Bootstrapping An Online Fabric Shop and Growing to $ 20K / mo - Starter
https://www.starterstory.com/stories/fridays-off-fabric-shop

◆ The chance to start Fridays Off <br> Before Banks began Fridays Off, I was promoting a consumer product brand. After that, Mr. Banks gets pregnant and gets maternity leave, but after returning to the company, the thought of "I would like to do my own job" becomes stronger, "Working at this company is for me It seems that it seems to have become troubled with? "It is not becoming. After that, Mr. Banks decided to enter maternity leave for one year again in the second pregnancy.

Mr. Banks who got maternity leave again decided to conduct brainstorming to embody the e-commerce business idea using this period. And in December 2012, Mr. Banks said "I can do it for an online shop specialist" and I thought of the idea of ​​Fridays Off.

At that time, Mr. Banks already has a blog site named Fridays Off, domain name acquired. And because he often read sewing related blogs, he had knowledge about cloth. Also, because it belonged to the sewing community, when members of the community purchase fabrics, they often buy from the online shop specialty store in the United States and there are also many people who want to purchase in Canada where shipping costs become cheaper I knew. In addition, Mr. Banks seems to have felt "This can go!" Because there was the advantage of having marketing and PR know-how gained by working as a corporate public relations originally.

◆ How did you enlarge Fridays Off? Mr. Banks used shopify of the shopping site construction service during maternity leave, built a site on its own from 1 using the free template. After that, Mr. Banks announced the opening of an online shop on his blog and Facebook, and opened Fridays Off in March 2013.

Mr. Banks has purchased 20 anti-dough fabrics beforehand using his own savings, and at Fridays Off we will start with the sale of these fabrics. The first thing that I sold was that it will be three weeks after the opening and I will succeed in selling 5 items in the first month. And in the first few months we sold a total of 16 items and got sales of 700 dollars (about 77,000 yen), but of course it was a big deficit.

And half a year later, Mr. Banks will participate in the trade fair of crafts which is held once a year, in order to raise awareness of Fridays Off. At this fair, Mr. Banks will meet Editor at Style at Home , one of the Canadian interior design magazines.

Fridays Off will be introduced at "Style at Home" as a "Canadian Online Fabric Specialty Store" that grows fast, and in 2014 the sales will grow six times. This triggered Mr. Banks to quit the company and decide to go with Fidays Off one book.

However, Mr. Banks needed to keep stable earnings to convince his family that this judgment was correct. So, he decided to brainstorm again "start a stable profit?" And start a fixed rate membership service. When you start the service, 15 people join in the first month. As of June 2018, the number of members reached 100 or more, and Mr. Banks was able to obtain a minimum income by securing 15% of the monthly income on a monthly basis.

◆ Devices for acquiring customers <br> Banks is addressing "e-mail marketing" to get customers. Mr. Banks says that it is carrying out information delivery by e-mail and exchanging e-mails with customers quite often. Indeed, there are more than 11,000 people who have registered Fridays Off's newsletter, and they send information such as new arrivals, sales, pre-order information at least once a week. Mr. Bank says he wishes to enrich the content other than sales information in the newsletter, and he says he wants to mix information on advertisements and sewing successfully in the future.

As a matter of course, Mr. Banks has also taken measures against SEO , and by repeating trial and error, we adjusted that Fridays Off is displayed on the top in Google search.

And communication is what Mr. Banks calls the most important element. It is always conscious from the era when I worked at a company, and it is said that it emphasizes as of June 2018. In fact, Mr. Banks treats all customers using Fridays Off as a client, and even though it is an order confirmation email, he prepares a template tailored to the customer. In addition, it seems that we are trying to raise the image from customers by sending an email of thanks individually to customers who used it for the first time and second time.

According to Mr. Banks, he also sticks to the quality of products. "We are dealing with Fridays Off as a premium quality designer cotton and it is a lovely design that feels like a waste is a waste," he says that he is confident in his products. In addition, it seems that the product is changed every season, and it promotes the product by Facebook, Instagram, e-mail.

◆ What gained by running an online fabric specialty store Mr. Banks said he learned that "getting over from failure" is the most important. Actually, in doing business, it does not work from the beginning, Mr. Banks said that by repeating trial & error, it has come up to the present position yes. In June 2018, Mr. Banks himself does not earn income enough to make luxury, but he says, "I will continue to try and error again in the future".

◆ Future Perspective - Mr. Banks wants to increase regular membership and increase regular profit. Therefore, Fridays Off hires employees to cut dough, Mr. Banks takes time to devise new products and strengthen the contents of newsletters, and is doing efforts to acquire members. Besides this, Mr. Banks says that Fridays Off wants to enrich sewing-related items such as scissors, irons and ironing boards as well as fabrics.