It’s true, the resale trend is here to stay - but it doesn’t look like the resale retail spaces we might be thinking of. Departing from dusty consignment-style stores, the resale space has a new look and feel. The founder of Mine & Yours, Courtney Watkins, talks about riding the rising wave of luxury fashion resale.
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.
It’s true, the resale trend is here to stay - but it doesn’t look like the resale retail spaces we might be thinking of.
Departing from dusty consignment-style stores, the resale space has a new look and feel. The founder of Mine & Yours, Courtney Watkins, talks about riding the rising wave of luxury fashion resale.
In this episode, Courtney and I talk about her unique origin story and she carved a space for herself in the fashion industry she loves. She shares her insights on navigating e-commerce with such fluid and unique stock, engaging with buyers and sellers, and building a strong online and in-person community.
]********
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 can continue getting amazing guests on the show.
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!
Courtney Watkins
From her earliest memories of playing dress-up in her mother’s closet, Courtney has always loved fashion and finding creative ways to showcase her style for less. Courtney got her start in fashion at only 17- pursuing a degree in Merchandise Marketing in Los Angeles. From working as a celebrity stylist to a trend forecaster, she got her entrepreneurial start running a Saw Mill. Watkins then went on to create a company that values sustainability, interpersonal relationships and luxury fashion. Courtney thought what better way to give second hand fashion a second home and enable women to feel confident in their clothing- for a fraction of retail price! Today, she gets to combine her love of luxury, business, and styling though revolutionizing resale at Canada's fastest growing retail + ecommerce store, Mine & Yours.
Michael LeBlanc is the Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc and a Senior Advisor to Retail Council of Canada as part of his advisory and consulting practice. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience, and has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career. Michael is the producer and host of a network of leading podcasts including Canada’s top retail industry podcast, The Voice of Retail, plus Global E-Commerce Tech Talks and The Food Professor with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois. You can learn more about Michael here or on LinkedIn.
Until next time, stay safe and have a great week!
Michael LeBlanc 00:04
Welcome to The Voice of Retail. I'm your host, Michael LeBlanc and this podcast is brought to you in conjunction with Retail Council of Canada.
Michael LeBlanc 00:10
It's true the resale trend is here to stay. But it doesn't look like the resale retail spaces we might be thinking of.
Michael LeBlanc 00:16
Departing from dusty consignment style stores, the resale space now has a new look and feel. The founder of Mine & Yours, Courtney Watkins, talks about riding the rising wave of luxury fashion resale.
Michael LeBlanc 00:28
In this episode, Courtney and I talk about her unique origin story, as she carved out a space for herself in the fashion industry she loves. She shares her insights on navigating e-commerce with such fluid and unique stock, engaging with buyers and sellers, and building a strong online and in-person community.
Courtney Watkins 00:44
Yeah, I think it's real, it's growing and it's here to stay is my opinion. And we've Yeah, we've seen that in our customer. When we started I our average customer was, was more in that kind of 25 to 35 age bracket, where now, I mean, we have moms, grandmas and they're all kind of families shopping together because we have so many different varieties of, of brands and products.
Michael LeBlanc 01:13
Let's listen in now. Courtney, welcome to The Voice of Retail podcast. How are you doing this morning?
Courtney Watkins 01:18
I'm very good. Thanks for having me.
Michael LeBlanc 01:21
Well, thanks for joining me and I say good morning. You're on the west coast. I'm on the East-ish Coast, you're based in I think, in or around Vancouver is that right?
Courtney Watkins 01:31
Yeah, right in Vancouver, but it's 10:30 on a Monday, that definitely feels like a morning still.
Michael LeBlanc 01:36
Yeah, yeah, no kidding. No kidding. Well, listen, thanks so much for joining me. I mean, you know, I talked to a lot of retailers, and oftentimes, but not entirely, there's this intersection between the personal and the professional in your case, that really seems to jump out at me. So, why don't we start at the beginning? Tell me about yourself, your personal professional journey, and, and you know what, what brought you into retail?
Courtney Watkins 01:59
I, so yeah, my name's Courtney. I'm the owner and CEO of Mine & Yours, and I always love fashion. I found my grade seven yearbook actually, a few years ago, and it was like, I'm gonna own a clothing store. And I did it.
Michael LeBlanc 02:13
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Courtney Watkins 02:14
So I moved down to LA, right after school and went to FIDM. So the Fashion Institute down there, and then had worked in many different aspects of the fashion industry trend forecasting. I was a celebrity stylist for a while. Wholesale, retail, really.
Michael LeBlanc 02:30
Hold on, hold on. Talk, talk about that a bit, a celebrity stylist.
Courtney Watkins 02:33
Yeah.
Michael LeBlanc 02:34
What did that involve? Like? I actually know FIDM. I know of them because one of my podcasts interviews with a great guy, Ron Thurston, who's written a fantastic book on retail. He's out of FIDM as well. So, great institution.
Courtney Watkins 02:41
Oh I loved it.
Michael LeBlanc 02:41
Right, right, right.
Courtney Watkins 02:41
I had so much fun down there.
Michael LeBlanc 02:52
And, and how did you wind up as a celebrity stylist? Tell me about that.
Courtney Watkins 02:55
Yeah, I took an internship. That's where I did tons of interning while I was at school. So, I took an internship, right when I graduated for, I can't remember what it was, it was a commercial or, and then from that, he started working with that, it was Paula Abdul and then, you know, someone got fired. And next thing, you know, there was an opening and, and I was kind of in.
Michael LeBlanc 03:21
Welcome to LA.
Courtney Watkins 03:22
Yeah.
Michael LeBlanc 03:22
And what was that like, what was that like? I mean, is it, is it, is it a rigorous plan? Is it kind of adhoc? Do you, you know, how do you approach something like that, figuring out the personality and where you want to go and tell me a bit about that.
Courtney Watkins 03:34
Yeah, I would say, it's definitely not as glamorous as one might think, you know, a lot of like, schlepping around, um, I would, I would compare as a stylist, but I, it was a short-lived styling and ended up I ended up becoming a personal assistant. So the clothing was just a very small, small portion of it, you know, shopping, finding outfits for different events, talking to designers. You know, we had some award shows, but a lot of it, you get very wrapped up in a, in a celebrity personality, I find, when you're, when you're working for them, and I yeah, I had no, no experience assisting. I actually think I'm kind of unorganized. So, the fact that I organized someone’s life. I don't know how I did it. But yeah, it was a it was a really, you know, it was it was a fun experience. It was definitely like high-stress long hours, but,
Michael LeBlanc 04:28
Sure.
Courtney Watkins 04:29
but I learned a lot and it was definitely a pretty cool experience.
Michael LeBlanc 04:33
Oh, that's cool. I did a fair bit of work with celebrities myself because I was at the Shopping Channel here in Canada for a bunch of years. And we had a lot of people come through the Kim Kardashians of the world and other kind of celebrities and you get, you know, one one thing that struck me is how hard they work. Like, you know, on the outside and it's like, hey, how hard can it be to be who you and it's actually pretty hard. They work really, really hard, right?
Courtney Watkins 04:57
Yeah, we actually had a, I quit on In a limo ride on the way to the Home Shopping Network, she had a can't remember what it was it was a jewelry line or a clothing line or we were going to launch something.
Michael LeBlanc 05:10
Yeah.
Courtney Watkins 05:11
And yeah, I just, I, kind of, had it at that point and never got out of the limo.
Michael LeBlanc 05:16
Yeah, they just any way, we digress. But it's kind of interesting because it all circles around your passion around fashion and integrating fashion. Okay, so take, take us from where you,
Courtney Watkins 05:26
Okay.
Michael LeBlanc 05:26
you didn't get out of the limo I guess.
Courtney Watkins 05:28
Yeah, I didn't get out of the limo then I was back and forth between Vancouver and LA for a few years, kind of trying to figure out where my place was. I loved LA but I grew up outside of Vancouver and, and never lived in the city. So I thought I would give it a chance. Love it now but didn't like it my first time back. And then I, so I ended up going back to LA. And then, so I've always worked in fashion until I took over my family business. So, I moved back to Vancouver full time about 10 years ago and I took over my family’s sawmill, so S&W Forest Products.
Michael LeBlanc 06:03
Yeah, spooges and shakes, right?
Courtney Watkins 06:06
Yes, yeah, yeah, shakes and shingles. Exactly.
Michael LeBlanc 06:08
Shakes and shingles, all right.
Courtney Watkins 06:08
So, that was very, obviously a little different than selling clothes.
Michael LeBlanc 06:15
Yeah. Yeah.
Courtney Watkins 06:15
but a real good learning experience on how to run a company and I ran that for two and a half years with my brother and then just realized, you know, I kind of I stopped wearing makeup I was wearing Uggs every day, I just, I turned into a sawmill owner essentially, I think I gave myself a look in the mirror one day and I'm like, this is not what I want to do, you know, wood is not my passion I need to get back to the fashion industry.
Michael LeBlanc 06:41
Yeah, right.
Courtney Watkins 06:41
So, I had put it out there I wanted to get back into fashion. I didn't know what I was going to do. I was still kind of needed at the family business. But I was shortly after introduced to a girl who had also lived down in LA and we both realized you know there was a lot of these curated buy/sell/trade stores that you know made it really easy to sell your clothes. They had a cool experience and we both shopped at those but there was nothing like it in Vancouver. So, about six months after we, we met. We did a trip down to LA together realized we got along well and we opened our first Mine & Yours location, which was a live-work townhouse. About thi-, our store was about 300 square feet.
Michael LeBlanc 07:23
Well. Alright, tell me about Mine & Yours. Tell me about the concept. I guess you've just introduced a bit of the origin story. But you know, tell us about it. How do you go to market? What's your merchandising customer strategy? Give us, give us,
Courtney Watkins 07:34
Okay, yeah, so Mine & Yours is a luxury resale store. So, we buy sell trade and consign a, you know curated collection of mostly luxury goods. But we also do some more mid-level price point, as well. We've started off with all women's but we just started with some children's and men's in the last couple months. So yeah, our, our average our price points really vary. You know, we have some dresses and outfits in our store from, from kind of that $55 to $75 price point. But then we also have you know, quite a few 5, 6 thousand dollar Chanel bags as well.
Michael LeBlanc 08:11
And I see your model is as a customer who wants to engage with you, you've got kind of a three-tier approach, right? You say, Well, if you want just cash, if you want to trade or you want, you know, on consignment, you have different levels, right? So it's a pretty interesting approach, you've got a choice as a consumer about how to do business with you, right?
Courtney Watkins 08:29
Yeah. And we, we started by mostly offering cash and store credit because that kind of differentiated us from our, from our competitors, no one else was really doing that. But as we go more, as we get more and more high-end product, we are we're finding that we're doing more consignment because at that, with consignment, we have the ability to offer a customer more because we're not paying for it upfront.
Michael LeBlanc 08:54
Right, right.
Courtney Watkins 08:54
So, personally, if I were to sell a Chanel bag at $5,000 I'd rather wait, whether it's a couple of weeks or even a couple months, and see when it sells and be able to get that higher payout
Michael LeBlanc 09:06
Right on, right on, and so I guess a lot of that work behind the scenes is validating the authenticity I mean that's a big role for luxury resellers right is to for your customers is to validate that what you have in the store is, is,
Courtney Watkins 09:23
Authentic.
Michael LeBlanc 09:23
is real is really authentic, right, and tell me about that. How do you walk through that? I guess your, you’re, obviously, you’re experienced in the industry you've been doing this what seven years right you've been, you've been at this for at least seven years plus your fashion background, How do you approach that? Do you know the tricks of the trade behind them?
Courtney Watkins 09:37
Yeah, they're definitely there. There definitely is some and that is a big part of our business because we, you know, we have 100% authenticity guarantee, so if anything if we were ever to sell something fake we, you know, full money-back guarantee and luckily it doesn't happen often. But you know
Michael LeBlanc 09:55
It can happen, right? I mean, happened to Sellabees, it's gonna happen every now and then, right?
Courtney Watkins 09:58
Yeah, yeah. And we had a, I had a Goyard coat that someone had bought from us five years ago. And somehow it got missed in our authentication. And four years later, she questioned it. And we, you know, we apologized and figured out what happened and gave her, her money back. But now we, you know, we make sure every, every item that comes in goes through a couple checks. So, we do an in-house, in-house authentication. And we have, you know, just trained on what different brand labels look like stitching look like. And we have really good relationships with a lot of our customers, or a lot of our suppliers. So, that, that helps to just knowing you know, knowing who you're getting the product for. But then for handbags, we use a third-party authentication company called Entropy, as well as our in-house. So first, it passes the in-house, and then we send it into Entropy, which is a kind of a machine hooked up to your iPhone, and it takes photos of the bag in certain spots and then uploads it. And they have taken those photos of the bags themselves. So, he runs it through some type of algorithm and tells it, tells you whether it can verify its authenticity or not.
Michael LeBlanc 11:09
Wow, that's pretty cool. All right. So obviously, a big part of your brand is that authenticity. I love the guarantee approach that seems to cover all, all the bases.
Michael LeBlanc 11:18
Let's talk about your typical customer who walks in the store. And what's been your experience over the past seven years, I was, I was recently asked by a reporter if, if the trend of resale is real, if it's growing, if it's here to stay, what, you, so tell me about your customer?
Courtney Watkins 11:35
Yeah, I think it's real, it's growing. And it's here to stay is my opinion. And we've, yeah, we've seen that in our customer. When we started I our average customer was, was more in that kind of 25 to 35 age bracket where now I mean, we have moms grandmas, and they're all kind of family shopping together because we have so many different varieties of brands and products. But our typical, we have a, we have a customer, we have a supplier and then we have a customer end supplier.
Courtney Watkins 12:09
So we have kind of three different target demographics. Our key suppliers are, you know, probably 35 to 55, maybe even slightly older, pretty higher-income dem-, bracket. And they're, they're the category that I've seen increase a lot more in the last few years where, you know, maybe it was a little bit younger and people that were just trying to save money shopping secondhand and now it's people that don't need to save money but know they can, you know, get something at half the price from Mine & Yours, whether they're buying it at Holts or are shopping and selling at Mine & Yours.
Michael LeBlanc 12:48
It's interesting, because as you said, perhaps earlier on and of course the younger you are it's more aspirational and you want a, an original, but you may not have the funds but it, I think a bit of boredom comes into play. Would you agree that people are saying listen, I have this handbag have had it for a bunch of years. I loved it. I love it a bit less now I’d love something else.
Courtney Watkins 13:07
Yeah, like I've got a photo on Instagram of me wearing it. You know, it's done. It's time for something new
Michael LeBlanc 13:15
Instagrammable moments. I'm out there. I've done it. Now I want to do something different. So, so
Courtney Watkins 13:22
Yeah. You can do it with dresses too, you know, like a dress you're wearing to an event and you've seen all your friends are and been photographed in it like, yeah, you could definitely wear it again. But a lot of times people enjoy that hunt for the new dress for the new occasion.
Michael LeBlanc 13:34
Sure, sure. I can see two kinds of segments, one who goes to a lot of events and doesn't want to wea-, wear or bring the same thing to the same events and someone who doesn't go to a lot of events and really doesn't want to spend an entirely, that much money but still wants to show well. Is that, you see some of that in your store as well?
Courtney Watkins 13:53
Yeah, and if you're let's say you're going to an event and the dress would have been $500 at a regular store. You get it at Mine & Yours for $150. And then you trade it back to us. You know, a month later you get $75 to use in the store. Well, you know that dress cost you $75 instead of $500.
Michael LeBlanc 14:10
So, that, you know some of that I've talked to other people in the industry, the reuse industry and the forecasts are pretty ambitious, that you know, reuse can be bigger than fast fashion someday. Are you seeing momentum on the street from fast fashion moving in the way, in the direction of resale? I mean, right now fast fashion dwarfs resell by dollars. But you know, in 510 years, what do you, what do you think is it, is it that strong of trajectory?
Courtney Watkins 14:37
I think, I think it is but a lot of it is due to sustainability. Like are really people are caring a lot more about fast fashion and what that does for the environment. Being able to spend a similar amount of money on an outfit that you use instead of fast fashion and is repurposed or recycled. Instead of, instead of at, you know, fast fashion brand, I think that is, that's what's really kind of kicking off the trend.
Michael LeBlanc 15:07
We're early days into what I've called the post COVID era. Let's hope it stays the post COVID era.
Courtney Watkins 15:13
I know I sure hope so.
Michael LeBlanc 15:14
Yeah, fingers, fingers crossed. But you know, the trajectory is pretty good in Canada, right? Our vaccination, you'd like it as two shots open up the market, right? So,
Courtney Watkins 15:22
Yes, yes.
Michael LeBlanc 15:22
Things are, things are good so far. Did you notice any difference in the way people shopped or how they shopped? I've heard some retailers say that more and more consumers are more concerned about things like sustainability because they had 18 months to think about it.
Courtney Watkins 15:37
Yeah.
Michael LeBlanc 15:37
Any observations from your customer base in terms of how they've changed and how they might change in the future?
Courtney Watkins 15:42
Um, yeah, we've been seeing, I've always heard of my customers caring about sustainability, because that's something we talk about as well. So, maybe that's that's increased a little bit, but also people just caring about how they spend their money, even though, you know, even though actually a lot of our customers, in COVID, because they weren't traveling, and they weren't, you know, spending it on entertainment as much have have even gotten more money to spend. I just, I think people are seeming to be a little more cautious about where they spend it, and how they spend.
Michael LeBlanc 16:18
Is it cautious or conscience? Do you think?
Courtney Watkins 16:20
Yeah.
Michael LeBlanc 16:21
like, not conscience? But, like, caught more, more awareness of what their doing, is that it?
Courtney Watkins 16:25
Yeah, exactly. Maybe, 18 months at home, able to think of, you know, what they were spending their money on, and just, just being a little more, being a little more mindful of it.
Michael LeBlanc 16:37
You know, I'm sure for your business like other apparel businesses, the return to normal life will be more than helpful, whether that's return to work or, you know, return to going out and actually doing the things we all enjoyed to do in the before time.
Courtney Watkins 16:51
Yeah.
Michael LeBlanc 16:51
And what about online? So, what do you do in terms of online? You have a site I saw for sure, yeah, you mostly, it looks like you can send the product in. But tell me about your online strategy.
Courtney Watkins 17:01
Yeah, we, before online was only about 20% of our business. And I always thought it would be more. And as we grew, our online or in-store, business just always grew quicker, until COVID hit, then we close down the store for a couple months. And that's when we got a better system to get everything up online. So, we turned our whole store into a photo studio. And we just shot everything that we had. And now it's on, you know, 80/90% of our inventory is online. But still, we still do more in-store than that on our e-commerce. On our online site, though. A lot of people see the product. Even our online customers, a lot of them live locally. So they'll see the product and then come in the store with the photograph on their phone. And they're looking for that specific product. So,
Michael LeBlanc 17:49
Right, so they'll shop you on-, they'll shop you online and do the purchase in-store, maybe they'll have a second look at it, or just whatever they want to do, right?
Courtney Watkins 17:56
Yes, yeah, exactly. And then we also, yeah, we also do buying online tools, you can go to our website and submit, upload, submit photos and the description of your items. And then we will email you back a quote, If you accept it, we'll send you a shipping label and you can bring your product in. You can ship your product in and we'll just transfer you the money or send you the store credit.
Michael LeBlanc 18:19
You know, we, Canada's seen one of the world's biggest leaps in e-commerce 75%. year over year last year, I think only Argentina had a bigger growth by percentage.
Courtney Watkins 18:27
Oh, wow, I'm surprised it was that big.
Michael LeBlanc 18:29
Yeah, it was huge. Actually, you know, all categories, including grocery, apparel, a little less than apparel, just because the demand wasn't there as much but the percentage, of course, you know, in here in Ontario, where I am, you know, stores are closed for 155 days. So,
Courtney Watkins 18:44
Yeah, wow.
Michael LeBlanc 18:45
You know, if you can imagine.
Courtney Watkins 18:48
Yeah, I can't.
Michael LeBlanc 18:49
Yeah, very tough. Very tough.
Courtney Watkins 18:51
Yeah. I feel really lucky even though it was still two months of closed.
Michael LeBlanc 18:54
Yeah. Yeah.
Courtney Watkins 18:54
and a weird year at least I was able to be somewhat open through a lot of it.
Michael LeBlanc 18:59
Yeah, you made it through. Do you think there's enough momentum to carry online shopping, that one day, can you see one day more transacted online? Not, not even just shot but transacted online with you or do you think they'll always be a healthy. Like, if you had, if you had $1 left in your budget, would you open a new store or would you put that dollar into your website?
Courtney Watkins 19:18
Well, I'm about to open a new store, so I guess I would do that.
Michael LeBlanc 19:24
All right.
Courtney Watkins 19:25
But I do see my online, my online business has grown a lot, a lot more than my retail business over the last year. And I think that you know, I right now I'm at 40/60 flipped 40% is online. And I think, I think by the next year, even with a new store, the next two years, it'll go the other way. So, 60 online, 40 in-store
Michael LeBlanc 19:47
and let's talk about what you've learned doing this, this journey of yours that you've been on for what seven-plus years any, any piece of advice for someone who's looking to get into retail, or get into their own independent type of retail environment. What, what jumps out at you, saying, you know, "Do these things and you will have a better chance of being successful"?
Courtney Watkins 20:09
Um, yeah, okay. One would be just really like, get involved with your community. So, we started Mine & Yours before we really started, we had reverse shopping parties, and we went out there and talk to everyone that we knew and told them all to tell their friends. But just really getting involved with your community, especially as a female entrepreneur, there's, there's a lot of support out there. I'm a member of FWE, which is the Forum for Women of Entrepreneurs. There's the Women's Enterprise Center, which helps with like funding and loans. There's even just Facebook groups and WhatsApp chats. And just as the, especially at the beginning phase, a lot of people are really willing to help. So, asking those questions, asking for support, and joining whatever groups in your industry, you can has been a was a really big help even now. But especially at the beginning.
Michael LeBlanc 21:05
What, what are your more successful marketing tactics on an ongoing basis? You talked about, you know, getting engaged with the community, but beside the business-to-business community? How do, you how do people find you? What, what have you found most successful?
Courtney Watkins 21:20
Yeah. One is our events. So, one: I love, I love a good party. So, it comes natural to me. But when we, hopefully, we'll be able to get to do them again soon. But over the last couple of years, or when we, when we were growing, a lot of it was just having fun events at the store, inviting other businesses in whether it's like get your hair done, get your makeup done, but you know, serving some champagne, getting a DJ and just make it a really fun experience. Those were often good sales days, people were posting about them, people were bringing their friends and just making it kind of a, you know, fun experiential event, rather than just shopping. And really, Instagram has been great for us. And that's especially our Instagram stories. We do a lot of, a lot of business through there. And a lot of people find out about us for, the, from their first time by seeing us on Instagram.
Michael LeBlanc 22:16
And so I guess I could ask you the same question about store versus online in terms of your marketing budget, you know, your last dollar of marketing budget, where would you put it towards?
Courtney Watkins 22:26
Instagram ads.
Michael LeBlanc 22:27
Right on. So, that's a very powerf-, What about TikTok or Snapchat? Is it, is it, have you tried them all and Instagram outperformed or is it just you can only do so many things at one time?
Michael LeBlanc 22:37
It's tricky, right. Yeah.
Courtney Watkins 22:37
Yeah, we did. I still haven't gotten TikTok down. We, during the pandemic, we started a TikTok account and we're playing around with it. But it didn't, it didn't get a lot of traction, we are going to revisit it but we didn't we just didn't see too many eyes on it. But it's probably like
Courtney Watkins 22:38
Instagram, you know, like we didn't see that many eyes on it when we started either. It's just been eight years of it. So, we've gotten the, gotten the traction.
Michael LeBlanc 23:05
So, it's kind of a muscle memory get used to it. There's no question there's the people are there. It's just it, TikToks a tricky one though, trying to figure it out, what's going to, what's going to hit right?
Courtney Watkins 23:14
Yes, yeah.
Michael LeBlanc 23:16
It's, it's aging well, so to speak, like the age demographics going up nicely as all social media tends to do. But anyway, I hear a lot about, I talk to a lot of retailers and a lot of them say exactly what you reflected, right, Instagram, particularly during the lockdown for those retailers who you know, they just didn't see customers come in and browse and shop that's like a consumer behavior that went away for 18 months, even if it for many retailers, even if they were open, the consumer wasn't going to linger around too much. So, they found that
Courtney Watkins 23:47
Let them in and out.
Michael LeBlanc 23:48
Yeah.
Courtney Watkins 23:48
And we, that's what we focused on, right? When we closed down was we put most of our efforts to creating content, posting more regularly,
Michael LeBlanc 23:59
Right on.
Courtney Watkins 23:59
engaging on social so that was a big, so you know, some of our sales staff essentially turned into social staff.
Michael LeBlanc 24:06
Oh, interesting, interesting. All right. So, what, what would you have done differently, looking back, knowing what you now know, anything jump out at you say, "you know, we would have done this a bit different if I knew then what I know now".
Courtney Watkins 24:18
That's, that's a tough one. We, I had a lot of fun on this journey. And I definitely made a lot of mistakes, but there's nothing you know, there's not that, there's nothing that really stands out from me. Even though you know, there were a lot of mistakes made. It's just learning from them.
Michael LeBlanc 24:35
Sure. Yeah.
Courtney Watkins 24:36
Yeah, like just kind of getting started and you,
Michael LeBlanc 24:41
Jumping in, get it, yeah
Courtney Watkins 24:42
Yeah, and learning along the way.
Michael LeBlanc 24:43
Yeah, jumping right in. All right, so, whats, you've already mentioned, I was gonna say what's next for Mine & Yours sounds like you're opening another store. Tell me about that and what you see down the road.
Courtney Watkins 24:51
Yeah, so, we are I'm so excited. It's supposed to launch the end of September. So, a store almost double the size of our current location. And it will be, we're going to separate out a little bit more our luxury and mid-level contemporary price points. So, the new store will just be more high end designers and, and then we'll be keeping the, keeping the new st-, or the current location as more of our mid-level price point. So that'll be happening in September and then looking to open a location in Toronto in 2022.
Michael LeBlanc 25:27
Well, that's exciting. Now, where's the new store gonna be located, in Vancouver?
Courtney Watkins 25:30
Yes. It's in Vancouver in Yaletown.
Michael LeBlanc 25:33
Very good, very good. Well, listen, this is the longest time in my life, I guess since I was a kid that I have not been to Vancouver. So I was in Vancouver and 2019 like nine times so I look forward to popping in the store and experiencing myself.
Courtney Watkins 25:47
Yeah, I would love to, I would love to have you in and when we open in, when we open in Toronto, you'll have to come check out that one as well.
Michael LeBlanc 25:54
Amazing. Look forward to doing that. That's, that's exciting. Well, listen. Thanks for joining me on The Voice of Retail podcast. I wish you much-continued success. I look forward to popping in both in your store and both coasts, shortly and once again, thanks for sharing your journey and congratulations and best of luck for whatever comes next.
Courtney Watkins 26:13
Thank you. I appreciate that.
Michael LeBlanc 26:15
Thanks for tuning in to today's episode of The Voice of Retail. Be sure to follow the podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you enjoy podcasts 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.
Michael LeBlanc 26:34
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 or visit my website at meleblanc.co
Michael LeBlanc 26:43
Until next time, stay safe and have a great week!
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
store, customer, shopping, fashion, Vancouver, retail, people, talk, business, Instagram, online, bit, years, celebrity, product, podcast, big, sell, months