Tuesday December 17, 2013 at 7:00 am

Personalised Service With Style – Lets Chat With Beckie White from Miss Velvet – Encore

Beckie White is not new to retail. Thanks to her family’s business, she was, quite literally, born into it. Over the past 2 years, since opening Miss Velvet, White has gained a powerful reputation with the women on the Mornington Peninsula. Customers flock to Miss Velvet for impeccable, personalised service and an extraordinary shopping experience. After chatting with Beckie myself, I can see exactly what makes her and her shop so desirable.

Beckie White owner of Miss Velvet

Tell us a little about your background before opening Miss Velvet?

Well, I actually started as a beauty therapist and worked in a partnership with my husband who is a hair dresser. Moving into the nail industry, my first coo was winning the coveted prize of being one of two Australian representatives to train other nail professionals throughout the world. However, when I hit the age of 40, I couldn’t help but think that there must be more out there for me to do. So after a lot of careful thought and consideration, I decided to go back into fashion. After all, my family was one of the first to manufacture men’s shirts in Melbourne.

The rag trade was in my family’s blood with my father taking over the family business from my grandfather when I was 12. So opening Miss Velvet was like a natural progression

It started off as a shoe boutique, and the plan was to eventually include clothing. It has been a great evolution for the shop because we know our target market and we buy for them. From the very beginning, we had two small racks of clothing and they sold out weekly. We saw there was a demand for the clothing and overhauled our marketing campaign to let our clients know we were moving into full-body styling. That was in 2012 and we haven’t looked back! If our clients are so inclined, we offer the full package of head-to-toe. My husband owns the hair salon up the road and they can have hair, make up, nails and clothing. It’s the perfect set up.

A large range of beautiful accessories to choose from

Who is your ideal client?

Our ideal client is 30 to 50, the yummy mummies (without being cliché). Our client is the woman who has lost herself amongst having children or having a career or just reached the point where her body naturally starts to change. Women sometimes lose what their style is and we are in the business of confidence-building. We listen quite intently to our clients, hearing what they want and what they don’t want, so we’re buying specifically for each individual. For example, I might love something, but if it’s too short or too long, it’s not for our customer.

We also do special groups with the top 50 clients. We serve champagne and snacks and ask them questions to help build our brand and to get feedback. Our customers’ opinions are extremely important to the success of our business because they ARE our business.

So many ways to wear one piece of clothing.

In 3 words or less, how would you define the style of your boutique?

Personable. I’ve positioned myself as the head stylist. I may not be here every day, but they know that I’m accessible and authentic.

Honesty. I would rather lose a sale than mislead a customer. If we don’t think it’s flattering, it is important to be honest.

Empowerment. A client recently sent me a beautiful text which said, “Today I put together my travel wardrobe and the best thing that I found is the confidence to do it myself”. It was great that she was empowered. She would have never trusted herself to do such a task before.

We are confidence builders and we play. Many of us have rulebooks around shopping in the subconscious, so when you shop with us, we like to break the rules down and create a place of safe play that you need to build the relationship though.

Brighten up your winter with leopard.

What do you do to get your clients into your store?

This month we are on the front cover of the local magazine Mornington Life for our styling and clothing. I also write a column for them. So that gets women coming in when they see our clothes. We also work with a lot of friendship groups and if we know some of our clients are friends in the network, we let them know what’s been purchased.

Social media has been instrumental in building authenticity behind our brand.

We enjoy sharing our knowledge with our clients, like we might post that a new range just came in. This morning, VIPs came in and I let them know what was coming in the next few months. Because I buy the range, I can also inform my customers as to what’s coming in the range. It gets curiosity flowing so by the time that it gets here, there is already excitement. The most exciting part is that a lot of times the stock doesn’t even hit the floor before it is already sold out. We also have a preview night for our clients.

We also organize different events throughout the year. Women get together and we have a styling night for Penny; and then you would invite up to 12 friends and we would put it on for you as a private function. The other option is that we can set dates and everyone can come. We can have up to 12 women at a time and they get to play in a safe space and try things on that they possibly wouldn’t have before without the pressure to buy.

We do a lot of business awards with in the community and support local charities, and we also work closely with the local council. We are pretty excited because we are being interview and will be on ABC TV. We also have a strong relationship with Mornington Racing Club (MRC). We knew we could add value to their business because we did some blogs for them in the weeks leading up to a big local race meeting. In August will do a seminar with them and I’m giving of my time to build a profile within the local community.

What a great addition to your winter wardrobe.

I believe you have just finished a styling course. Could you tell me a little about it?

Yes! It was something we were already doing, but I wanted to have a formal qualification. In that one week of Style training I did with the Australian Style Institute, I knew I was in the right place at the right time. My 20 years in the beauty industry and working with women made sense in that seven-day training.

It’s also a great way to tap into information and make connections. My aim is to have the whole team do the course because I would like to be able to say that if you work for Miss Velvet, then you are a stylist.

Lets celebrate one another

Where do you go to get inspiration? Do you have a mentor?

I have a couple of mentors. One of them is Helen Treloar from Forward Momentum Coaching. I’m also part of a group called Cabinet, a mastermind of group ideas, inspiration, encourage one another and call to action. We meet once a month to connect and share ideas.

I am also a member of Little Black Dress, which is great, and the mentors are unlimited. Janine Gardner, the CEO Little Black Dress, is somebody that I can also look to when I need help or advice.

What is one lesson you have learnt that has stood out for you in retail?

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is to focus on your concept. There was a period of time when I was looking to what everybody else was doing, rather than focusing on myself and my brand. I quickly came to the realisation that I had to stop and come back to what we were about. I had to ask myself, where are we going and what are we supposed to be focusing on? How quickly the wheels turned to produce the results!

November and December is forecasting for our business, I used visualization.

I looked at where we were, where we wanted to be and what we needed to do to get to our goal. We knew we had our passion and authenticity and we focused on our financial goals. We set some high goals and we’re consistently achieving them. This year was about focusing on specific goals and building a profile within the community, looking at the nuts and bolts of the business.

Personally, the lesson I needed to learn was this: I had been in business for over 20 years and had built that business up quite substantial. I was at the top of my game; I was in the top 10% Australian-wide in professional nails. Opening Miss Velvet was like doing year 12 then deciding to jump out and go right back to prep level again. It was a bit daunting at first! I had to swallow my pride and come from the advisor role and back down to level of a learner; I had to really be okay with my vulnerability. I needed to find the courage to ask the right people the right questions because after all, what’s the worst it’s going to happen? That was an interesting learning curve at my age. You must was look at the big picture

miss-velvet-life

What is it you love about retail?

At the end of the day, I just love business. It doesn’t matter what it is, retail is about you. You are the product you; must sell yourself before you sell anything on the shelves. There is retail in everything! People who say they are not a salesman are only kidding themselves and they’re certainly not giving all of themselves.

Another thing I love about retail is getting women to be okay with spending money. Women that say, “I’ve put weight” or “When I lose it, I will purchase new clothes”. My response to that is always this: “’When’ may never come. When are you going to choose to validate yourself?”