For this episode, I’m in Calgary meeting indie women’s fashion retailer Emma May, Founder of SophieGrace.ca, featuring elevated mix and match separates that make getting ready in the morning incredibly simple. We talk about Emma’s rich and diverse background and her journey to becoming a retailer in the midst of a pandemic and discovering the excitement and challenge of the retail industry
Welcome to the The Voice of Retail , I’m your host Michael LeBlanc, and this podcast is brought to you in conjunction with Retail Council of Canada.
For this episode I’m in Calgary meeting indie women’s fashion retailer Emma May, Founder of SophieGrace.ca, featuring elevated mix and match separates that make getting ready in the morning incredibly simple. We talk about Emma’s rich and diverse background and her journey to becoming a retailer in the midst of a pandemic and discovering the excitement and challenge of the retail industry
Let’s listen in
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I’m your host Michael LeBlanc, President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company, and if you’re looking for more content, or want to chat follow me on LinkedIn, or visit my website meleblanc.co!
Until next time, stay safe and have a great week!
Michael LeBlanc
Welcome to The Voice of Retail. I'm your host Michael LeBlanc. This podcast is brought to you in conjunction with the Retail Council of Canada. For this episode, I'm live from Calgary meeting indie women's fashion retailer, Emma May, Founder of SophieGrace.ca, featuring elevated mix and match separates that make getting ready in the morning incredibly simple. We talk about Emma's rich and diverse background and her journey to becoming a retailer in the midst of a pandemic and discovering the excitement and challenge of the retail industry,
Emma May
Like my customers are kick ass women doing kickout shit, right. Like, they're out there running anti-racism committees for like the province. They are rock stars. Like I've got, you know, customers of mine running for mayor of Calgary, right now. I've got a customer who literally was the former DIP, you know, we've got our clothes on the ambassador to Finland. So, our customers don't,
Michael LeBlanc
Impressive, accomplished people who just like, I'd like to look a little more put together without spending a million hours doing it.
Emma May
Yeah. And I don't have the time to do it. And so what I really wanted to do was create something that was very simple and streamlined and elegant, that also spoke to women and was about dressing women and women's bodies.
Michael LeBlanc
Let's listen in now.
Emma, welcome to The Voice of Retail podcast. How are you doing?
Emma May
Good, thank you. I'm doing good.
Michael LeBlanc
Well, fantastic. Well, welcome, welcome aboard. Welcome to the podcast. I wanted to jump right in. And let's jump right in and talk about, talk about you. Tell us a little bit about yourself, your personal professional journey. You've got quite an interesting background you, I interviewed, a great book by a gentleman named Ron Thurston called, 'Retail Pride'. He talks about the accidental careers in retail. It feels like you weren't always headed towards the retail career and you've got such an interesting background. So, So walk us through it a little bit.
Emma May
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, my background is definitely, didn't start Well, I guess I you know what, to be honest, maybe it did start in retail because I do remember working at Benetton when I was like 15 years old, in the mall. So, so, it had, it had a grounding there originally.
Michael LeBlanc
The genesis of Sophie Grace right there.
Emma May
Yeah, exactly, right. So, that was, that was the gem No, yeah, my background is actually law. So, I am, English Lit degree. And then I went on to law school. And I practiced entertainment law actually for a little bit. And I was a lawyer for about 10 years and had my kids and then I ended up leaving law because the billable hour was a grind. And my husband was a lawyer and I went into real estate. So, I got my real estate license. And then I founded a brokerage. So, I founded an independent brokerage here in Calgary called Charles Real Estate. And that's still going well.
Michael LeBlanc
Now, why did, what, let me ask you that, why did, why was that the next step? It's interesting, because you've got it. You got literature, you got law. What was it about real estate? Is it that you love people? You love the art of the deal? You thought real estate's you know, suits your skill, obviously, attention to detail, what, what was it?
Emma May
I just needed a job. And, I needed to work. And, I was pretty active in my community and in my kid's school. And I wanted, and it was actually just very, it was a real practical thing. I wanted something that gave me a lot of flexibility around how I could be the mom that I wanted to be. And with real estate, you really set your own hours, right, or your hours are a little more flexible. And so, that was something that I, you know, I gravitated towards it. Don't even get me started about how my mother had a like a total heart attack when I quit, when I quit law. Like, 'I'm got into real estate', she's like, ahhhhh. Do not compute, does not compute do not understand. Anyway,
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah, yeah.
Emma May
So, so, I did that. And, that was why. And also, you know, like, contractually, I can do the deals so that there was nothing that the deals that were weird. And, I was really grounded in my, my neighborhood and understood what drove people to make a decision. And why I wanted to found the brokerage was I wanted to marry really great marketing and design, which I've always been really interested in with, you know, professional level service. And so, that's what we've really done with, with Charles Real Estate is, I think of it like, you know, you have private banking, you have, you know, really professional lawyers, you have your doctor, your real estate professional is someone who's helping you with one of the largest transaction.
Michael LeBlanc
Biggest purchase decisions of your life, right?
Emma May
We should be held to a higher standard, and that's what we're really trying to do with Charles. So, that was that was that evolution. And then, there was a giant flood in Calgary back in 2014, and I became a really big community activist. And, I founded something called the 'Calgary River Communities Action Group' and basically said, you know, every other major city in the world that's built around rivers has some kind of flood mitigation infrastructure in place. Why do we not have that here even though it's been recommended now for over 30 to 40 years? And, I went down a path of kind of government relations, digging back to my law, digging back into sort of activism. And, you know, really let it drive for some flood mitigation. And then, I ended up getting hired by Jim Prentice to be the Executive Director of the Premier's office here in Alberta when he was in office. So, that was a, that was a pretty cool job. And, that gave me a lot of sort of insight around, you know, what it is that keeps the world running, right. Like, you've got the integration of business and government and nonprofits, right, and how they all sort of fit together. And,
Michael LeBlanc
It's an interesting world, isn't it?
Emma May
Yeah, it's super interesting.
Michael LeBlanc
I spent a couple years Senior Vice President of Retail Council of Canada. More on the communications and advocacy side, but I did get an advocacy lobbying, and there, this podcast actually is, is in conjunction with them, I still do work for them. And, and we, as advocates would often find ourselves articulating the unintended consequences of decisions. And, and it was, I think, generally a very good working relationship with governments at every level, you know, municipal, provincial, and federal, but it was a lot of like, if you, if you do this, have you thought of the following three things that you might not have thought of? Because you know, we live in a retail world or whatever. Is that was that your experience on the on both sides of it as well?
Emma May
Yeah, it was, and also just things like framing conversations around, I mean, it may be that I have an element of cynicism in me as well, right, and so I'd be framing things around, how is it that I make this to your benefit?
Michael LeBlanc
Right,
Emma May
Right. I mean which is, which is,
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah, everybody, you know, hurting, no harm in everybody winning and getting reelected, right.
Emma May
Yeah, exactly, right. And so, that, I mean, that always ties in, that always ties into it. But yeah, it was like it, I mean, right now, there was a big part of it, where there was, you know, issues around flood mapping, and, you know, and then development policy, and then layer on top of that, you know, flood mitigation strategies. So, really, you shouldn't be doing the mapping and sort of some of the development policy until the mitigation is in place. Because otherwise, what's the point? So, just things like that, right. Like, figuring out exactly as you said, what are the unintended consequences if you bring in sort of a development policy and then go build a dam that negates everything that you've been trying to do with the development policy,
Michael LeBlanc
You clearly have a passion and a flair for it, I can see this intersection of both your, your technical skills as a lawyer, but you're also your passions around the community. So, let's talk about Alberta. Let's talk about Calgary. Let's talk about the great cities in Alberta. What, how are you feeling, how are you feeling around the prospects for the province?
It's, you know, it hasn't felt like it had a tailwind, you know, around something like cannabis, retail cannabis, you were leading in the in the country really, in terms of establishing that industry just to pick one out of out of the air. Just to move away from what had traditionally been the strength, how, you know, both cities, you know, all cities are very important, Calgary and Edmonton very important to retailers. Give us, give my listeners a sense of how you're feeling about the prospects, you know, post COVID at least anyway, of the province and from your lens. Right, right, in the center of it all.
Emma May
Yeah, um, you know, I think overall, I actually feel quite positive about the prospects for Alberta. That said, I'm incredibly critical of the current government. It, which is interesting, because I did work for the previous Conservative government before the NDP government. But, I feel like we've got a government right now that's really tied to the past. And yet, here in the province, we've actually got lots of people doing lots of really cool stuff. And yet, that's not the message that the rest of Canada hears about the province, namely, because our Premier has got really what I call just the biggest bully pulpit there is. And so, everybody else here who's sort of working in the tech sector, and who's building up the rest of, you know, really working heavily on diversification of our economy. And, and working really heavily on things like clean tech and clean energy, and you know, the technological innovation,
Michael LeBlanc
Pintec, you got some great, you get some great, great tech on that side.
Emma May
Things like, Benevity just sold to private a, Benevity is an amazing company here founded in Calgary, and they just sold to a private equity company for over a billion. So we got a couple of, Attabotics is here and they're doing really interesting, they're actually doing fulfillment center robotics. And so, any kind of sort of factory, not factory, but like, you know, district,
Michael LeBlanc
Pack warehousing.
Emma May
Yeah, warehousing.
Michael LeBlanc
Very hot right now. I mean,
Emma May
Super hot. They've been funded by like some big guys out of the US. So, there's actually lots of great innovation here happening. There's lots of great stuff happening. It's just the rest of Canada doesn't really hear about it, you know, and we've, we've still got access to the mountains really close. We've got incredible, like our housing prices compared to Toronto and Vancouver, just, you know,
Michael LeBlanc
yeah. Yeah, it's not comparable.
Emma May
We've actually we've got great culture, we've actually got some really good stuff happening. It's just, you don't hear about it on the, on the national stage, you just hear about whining to go back to, you know, the way things were in the 90s. And, guess what that is, that's not happening.
Michael LeBlanc
Well, I guess we're putting our own little dent in the universe today by having this discussion. So, thanks for sharing, because it's really, you know, the, that kind of, as I said, you're clearly integrated in the community. So, it's great to hear about that.
Alright, so let's talk about, let's talk about user retail. Talk about Sophie Grace. What propelled you to get into retail? What gap did you did you try to address? Whether it was personal or something you saw on the market. Tell us all about it.
Emma May
Yeah, um, well, I've always been obsessed with clothes. So, I mean, that was, I guess, that was sort of like the starting point. But, I think also, as I got older, I was obsessed with the perfect pieces that always made me feel really confident, especially when I was in a workplace environment, right. And so, what I found was that men, like my husband, will have his closet of suits that all go together, and then he has sort of his, you know, then he has his jeans and his t shirts. And I found that women, my, women don't dress in silos like that, right. And so, what I found was, I would have, you know, a great blouse, and then a great blazer, and I'd have like a pencil skirt, or I'd have some pants that are my favorite, and some sweaters and I do mix and match separate all the time, in order to put together outfits that I felt really comfortable in that, you know, in my work environment, or going out for dinner, or all of those things. And then I thought, well, why is it that nobody actually just sort of makes a really streamline baseline collection of those pieces that mix and match seamlessly?
Michael LeBlanc
Well, you use the two magic words I was going to play back to you which is an I've heard them from, from retailers as is being 'put together'. In other words, right that, that kind of things that go together without me having to work really hard to get there.
Emma May
Exactly, like I remember standing in my closet being like, 'Why the hell does nobody make like a pencil skirt and a matching blouse?' You know, they make the matching blazer but they don't make the blouse or the sweater that goes with it, right. And so, and then, and then, to do that consistently, right. So, to do that, so that my ivory that I'm working with this year is going to be the same ivory in the new blazer that I come out with next year, or the new sweater that, or cardigan that I come out with. So, it's going to go with the pieces that you already have. So, we're not reinventing the wheel all the time. And then you know, and then also making things really comfortable. Because I'm, I'm a very tactile person, and I can't stand the fabrics that don't feel amazing. Like I just can't, I can't have them anywhere near me,
Michael LeBlanc
Right, right.
Emma May
So, that was another big, big part of it for me too was how do we do something that's, that's mid-price point, you know, like higher but not too high, not luxury level, right. And still be really, really comfortable and feel amazing.
Michael LeBlanc
So, what would be your AUR? Like your, your like your average price point? Your average basket? Give us a sense a good, better best, you're kind of in the upper best.
Emma May
So, on average basket size is about like 385.
Michael LeBlanc
Okay,
Emma May
For basket size, and then our pieces, our most expensive piece right now is 299. And that's a vest that we're now making in Canada.
Michael LeBlanc
That's very approachable, very approachable.
Emma May
Yeah, yeah. And our blazers are about 275 kind of thing. And then our blouses are in the 180. And then pants 180ish. Yeah.
Michael LeBlanc
So, you went on a journey, you know, most people look at their closets and say, 'Why doesn't anybody do the following?' And then it ends there. It didn't end there for you, you decide to start a retail. So, tell me about the store and, the, what was it like getting started? And you've got to figure out merchandising and supply chain and tell me all about that.
Emma May
Yeah, well, I mean, I was very lucky, you know, so, I came up with sort of the concept and the idea. And then I was like, 'Wow, I really know nothing about this'.
Michael LeBlanc
It doesn't seem to have stopped you before.
Emma May
Yeah, true. But, but I was like, I better go find someone that does. And, I was, I reached out to some friends of mine in, in Vancouver and they're, and one of them had been at at Lulu for a long time and had been in a Aritzia. And she was like, you know what, I know this person who is a senior product manager at Lululemon. And, she's really great, but, she's taking some time off to do some consulting while she stays home with her kids. And so, I met Lisa McCarthy through that. And, she, I'd reached out to her and said, 'Hey, this is my idea. Could you help me with the product development side of it?' And, she said 'Yeah', and we got together and we designed some pieces. And, we you know, ordered in some fabric and we sampled some pieces. And, we went on to and we went on a journey. Indeed, it was a journey.
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah, what, what was your inspiration? I mean, when I talked to apparel retailers often they might say, 'Well I look, I look to Europe. I look elsewhere'. I was speaking with head of eCommerce at Draper James, which is Reese Witherspoon's,
Emma May
Yeah.
Michael LeBlanc
Retailer, and she, she is very specific, 'I want something from Nashville and south to go north'. Where did you look? Did you have a sense of 'I want it to feel from the west to east, or the east or west? Or tell me about that.
Emma May
You know, actually, I just looked at my customer, right. Because I was the customer. So, I, you know, I was,
Michael LeBlanc
You looked in the mirror.
Emma May
I looked in the mirror, but I was like, I'm, I'm, I'm that woman who that, you know, I was in a law firm for years, right. I was in, I was in meetings with CEOs across,
Michael LeBlanc
Sure
Emma May
You know, and, and, and I always found it was way easier for men to get themselves dressed for these jobs. And, and to, to look professional and put together. And I found that, you know, there's this assumption out there that all women are stylists, right. Or we can go to the mall, and like a 20-year-old is going to show us how we can put stuff together to look great for work. And, that's not the case, right. Like,
Michael LeBlanc
Hard, harder to find than you would think. It's there, but it's hard to find.
Emma May
And most my customers, like my customers are kick ass women doing kickout shit, right. Like, they're out there running anti-racism committees for like the province. They are rock stars. Like I've got, you know, customer mines running for Mayor of Calgary right now. I've got a customer who literally was the former DIP, you know, we've got our clothes on the Ambassador to Finland. So, our customers don't,
Michael LeBlanc
Impressive, accomplished people who just like, I'd like to look a little more put together without spending a million hours doing it.
Emma May
Yeah, and I don't have the time to do it. And so, what I really wanted to do was create something that was very simple and streamlined and elegant that also spoke to women and was about dressing women and women's bodies.
Now, I still have to move into to, be honest, I’d like to be frank, I need to actually increase my size range. And, that's something that we're working on. I'm a self-funded project. So, it's been,
Michael LeBlanc
One step at a time,
Emma May
Yes, but one step at a time. But, we, I really wanted just for women to feel really, really confident. And, by giving them things that were super simple. Nothing that was too fussy. So, I was looking to people, like you know, I find Victoria Beckham does a really good job of that, or Donna Karan, or The Row, right. But, actually things that were very, very simple and streamlined and didn't require a lot of thought, and were very utilitarian and yet elegant in their, in their approach. So, that's, so when I, when we design things I'm like, 'Is this a piece that a woman will reach to in her closet without thinking about it over and over and over again? Is this piece that's going to go with all the other', with, Well, I mean, everything won't go with you everything else, you know as we grow the collection. But is this a piece that will go with most other pieces in the collection? Is this a piece that if she wears repeatedly, people aren't going to go, "Oh, yeah, there's that puffy sweater, sweater blouse, that she wearing again' right. These are pieces that really integrate well into every day. And that's, that, you know, so and does it feel amazing? Is it easy to care for? These were the checklists that we were going through. And it was really founded in always that principle of giving women style choices that were very simple for them to make.
Michael LeBlanc
Alright, so you're an operator, you're a retailer. Now tell me about you know, one thing that if there's probably not more that, that kind of surprised you about the, the journey or just being an operator, as we would say, you know, you're a retailer now welcome. What happened or what things would go on that you were like, I had no idea to expect that. An, anything come to mind?
Emma May
Yes, zippers. Oh, my God. The zipper monopoly, like totally crazy,
Michael LeBlanc
Crazy right
Emma May
It totally blew my mind.
Michael LeBlanc
Right.
Emma May
What do you mean, I have to wait like three months for these zippers? Like, can't we,
Michael LeBlanc
I'm going to go find a new vendor, wait,
Emma May
Can't we get them somewhere else? It's like no. That was, that was actually a funny, that was a funny one. I was like, 'Really'. And then we actually, I found zippers from someone who had another line and blah, blah. But, we, we ended up finding them but not from the, you know, still the same zipper. So, that was, that was a surprise. And, and for me also just getting used to sort of the cash flow mechanism of the entire business, right. Because, it's so, you know, I need the money, you know, six months in advance of when my products get planned in many ways, right. So, so just sort of the ongoing management of of that, I think was surprising.
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah, it there's no question particularly in apparel. Right, you've got a long lead times.
Emma May
Yeah,
Michael LeBlanc
Cash flow becomes a very important issue. And then you've got, you know, depending on how fashion forward it is, you've got, you can consider your apparel like fresh fruit, like you can't have it around that long if it doesn't sell one season. I see you've got capsules and other approaches.
Emma May
It's funny, because we're actually really bucking that trend, Mike, like really trying to be like, you know what, these are pieces actually that,
Michael LeBlanc
Every day, like,
Emma May
Yeah, and they're not so on trend. Right.
Michael LeBlanc
Oh, Good. Yeah, that's a decision you make as a merchant, right.
Emma May
Yeah,
Michael LeBlanc
I mean, yes. You either want to be trendy.
Emma May
Yeah. or trying to do like, not fast fashion, right.
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Emma May
You know, like our Ashley dress is our best-selling dress. And quite frankly, you know, in many ways, it's stuck,
Michael LeBlanc
It could be five years from now,
Emma May
It could be five years from now. And, when I look at things, like when I look at sort of, you know, a Donna Karan collection from 1997, there are pieces in that collection that would stand the test of time today.
Michael LeBlanc
Sure, yeah,
Emma May
Right. So, that's really what we're aiming for, is to be more like, you know, what, these pieces like work on women, they work on women's bodies, and they like them. And, why would we get rid of them?
Michael LeBlanc
We used to say it, I was at Levi's for a while we used to say timeless and timely, both of the same. That square that circle, right. That there's, whatever, whenever we want to say but that timeless and timely.
Alright, so, so congratulations, you become a retailer and then, 'Hello COVID'. COVID,
Emma May
Yeah, I know.
Michael LeBlanc
So, you know, for one way it is the test of all tests. How you, we don't need to dwell on COVID and the lock downs and all that, all that stuff that's happening, but how are you, and in what ways, if you have any thoughts on the way consumers will change? Like your clients, or have you put any thought into that? I mean, the COVID era is going to be about 18 months, two years, who knows. It will all, it will come to an end and consumers, I think will be shopping differently. I mean, two years of this is going to change behaviors. Any insight, any thoughts on that? What have you been observing?
Emma May
Um, I think you know, a lot of my customers is an older customer, not older, older, but I mean, sort of my age, I'm 49. And, I think for her, there was a bit of a hurdle in terms of shopping online and getting comfortable with that. And sizing, figuring out how that works, right. But, I think the customers getting there, and they're learning that this isn't actually that difficult, right. For us, it was hard, because a huge part of our marketing strategy, rolling out the door was really connecting with women in the places that they were at, as opposed to like, in the mall or online. Right, it was about being at conferences for women. It was about being in the spaces and doing pop ups, like in downtown cores where women were working those kinds of things. So, we did a bit of that, but we couldn't obviously continue to do that. So, our first, it's funny, because our first you know, here I am selling primarily sort of dressier clothes to women in an environment where no one can go out.
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah, yeah.
Emma May
And to be honest, we've actually done really well, our first year we broke even, which is insane.
Michael LeBlanc
Congratulations, congratulations.
Emma May
Thanks. But, you know, I think that what was interesting about it was, I had framed it initially, as you know, oh, this is our office wear collection. But, in reality, Michael, what I done from day one was actually create a collection that wasn't siloed to the office, right. So, it was pants that you could wear, I mean, our pants feel like sweatpants, they don't look like them, but they feel like, right. Or just the blouse that you can wear on a Zoom call, or the sweater that you just wear every day to the you know, the store.
So, it turned out that our collection actually had a lot of flexibility for women. And that's what we're digging into going forward is what we learned from women was that what they appreciated about what we were putting out there was that was the multi-purpose of the elegance of it, right. That it could be dressed up, it could be dressed down, it could be any of those things and so we're really, that's, that's where we're going with that.
Michael LeBlanc
So, have you considered any of the,
Emma May
I'm not making sweatpants, though, like,
Michael LeBlanc
Okay, there's a limit.
Emma May
There's a limit, yeah, you know, people like 'You should make sweatpants. It's COVID.'
Michael LeBlanc
Lots of people lots of people do a good job of that. So,
Emma May
Yeah, I'm just like, that's not our thing. That's just,
Michael LeBlanc
Now, have you considered you know, it's, it's huge in, in places like China, it's starting to catch on here and they're the kind of associate to customer via the phone, via live chat, via here's, here's some pieces, but to kind of, you know, amplify the eCommerce, is that something you might do at one point?
Emma May
Yeah, and we do actually, we do virtual styling appointments. So, I've got a stylist Carl, who's amazing at helping women you know, just figure out how to measure themselves. What, you know, how to integrate the collection into their wardrobe already. What pieces are going to look good on them and what pieces maybe won't, right. So we do virtual styling appointments with him, he loves it. We're definitely going to be doing more sort of the Instagram live.
Michael LeBlanc
Customers are liking it do you find?
Emma May
The Zoom sessions they love. I think that at first, they're a little weirded out, I think, because, but we started to see a lot more pick up on it. And, the feedback is just incredible. Like, they, you know, because what he does is he'll walk them through the website, and walk them through, 'This is how you measure your hip'. So, and then he'll look at them and say, you know, what, why don't, your shoulders are broad, this fits it a little bit this way, let's size you up in this shirt.
So, we've had, so we had a thing where we were selling our bundles. So, we were doing like a big bundle package where you could buy the whole collection for, instead of 2,600, it was 1,900. And, what we did with that was people were buying them, and then what we'd connect them with Carl after and just be like, 'Look, let's just double check that you've ordered the right size in everything so you don't get this and it doesn't work'. And then, and I would say 95% of our customers took us up on that. And,
Michael LeBlanc
Oh, that's great.
Emma May
And what that was, it really minimized. exchanges and returns, right, because people were able to sort of get it right out of the gate. And, I'd like to move more into, I'd like to do more of that, move into some more of the body scan technology. I think sizing and fit is the biggest hurdle that, that we're going to face, that we face. And, obviously when COVID lifts, we can move into sort of a showroom environment, more where people can see and touch and feel the product and try it on.
Michael LeBlanc
It's hard. I mean, listen at you know, even back to my days in the late 90s. Trying to figure that out for Levi's, right. That whole, there's technology, of course is advanced, but it's, it's still, it's still a gnarly one, trying to get that remote size and fit. That's why you get companies like Indochino, who open up showrooms, right. Because they, people just are not great at measuring themselves. It's just, you know, and then that causes a fair bit of grief as you say, and
Emma May
Yeah,
Michael LeBlanc
Returns or whatever, just dissatisfaction and you know, there's a role for, so you see a last, kind of last question for you, you see an ongoing role for physical retail in your, in your life? You're not going to go virtual, you see that as adding value, whether it's pop-ups or a permanent store you will continue with that.
Emma May
Yeah, I see both. I mean, I don't think we do, I'm not sure I do a store front in terms of like, the full retail experience of the old days. I think I do something more like that was integrated into our brand and what we're trying to do in terms of helping women win at work, right. So, I think it would be something where it was more of a co-working space, or a coffee shop, where you can have meetings, but also then we have our product there, it's on display, you can touch and feel it and you can get a sense of your size, but you wouldn't be leaving the store with the product. We would be placing an order and then we'd have it fulfilled to you quickly, right. So, I see, I see our showrooms as being more or less about that shopping experience and more about an experience of you know, how do we connect and create community for our customers?
Michael LeBlanc
All right, well, listen, where, where can people go learn more? See your product, and what's your website?
Emma May
sophiegrace.ca.
Michael LeBlanc
Perfect, perfect. And if they want and that's the way to transact. Do you have a store? I thought you did. Or,
Emma May
No, we, we've been, ‘Shop The Upside’ is a luxury retailer here. They do the, they do consignment retail, and they've got a storefront and we've been really, actually she was texting me while we're doing this. We've been really lucky to, to share some space with her. We'll probably get our own showroom space here in Calgary. And we'll probably be doing pop-ups around the country later this year. But not until it's cool to do so.
Michael LeBlanc
That could be, that could be a ways away. So, a bit of shop-in-shop and a bit of pop-up and all kinds of very, very modern and very savvy. So, congratulations. Listen, congratulations, everything you've, you've accomplished. It's great to get to know you and hear about your journey and welcome, welcome you to retail so to speak.
Emma May
Thank you. Thanks for hosting.
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah, well, this is great to have you on the podcast. I wish you, I wish you continued success and keep in touch and we'll be watching you. Sounds like great things are happening.
Emma May
Thanks, Michael.
Michael LeBlanc
Thanks for tuning into today's episode of The Voice of Retail. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss out on the latest episodes, industry news and insights. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a rating and review as it really helps us grow so that we continue to get amazing guests onto the show. I'm your host Michael LeBlanc, President of M.E. LeBlanc Company Inc. And if you're looking for more content or want to chat, follow me on LinkedIn. Visit my website at meleblanc.co. Until next time, stay safe and have a great week.