RICHMOND, Va. -- Erin Ackerman and Kristine Hubbard own and operate Scout & Molly's Boutique on River Road in Richmond. While the non-essential store is closed to shoppers coming into the building, the business owners told Eat It, Virginia! co-host Robey Martin about their plan to reopen and how they're using social media to stayed connected to customers.
CBS 6 created a We're Open to shine a light on small businesses in an effort to support business owners and their work forces. A lightly-edited version of their conversation is transcribed below:
Robey Martin
What are you all doing to overcome the situation that's happening, that no one was expecting?
Erin Ackerman
There's a lot of things that we went through thinking about this, how to strategize our business. The biggest component for us was we are non-essential, and we knew that early on. So we decided to try to figure out ways to remain relevant in our field. And so one of the biggest things that we've done is staying relevant with humor on Instagram.
Kristine Hubbard
People aren't shopping right now a whole lot and we don't want to push that, because I just think it gets upsetting for people. So we want to reach out and let people know that we're there and provide some levity when we can and keep people in our thoughts, really.
Robey Martin
Do you feel like people are responding to your humor on Instagram?
Erin Ackerman
Yes, very much. I'm the target because I'm willing to put myself out there and make fun of myself. So we've been doing a lot of different things with that and we've remained really consistent.
Our Instagram feed has always been this way.
And so one of the things that we talked about in our strategy was, we need to make sure whatever we're doing is sustainable and transparent.
Our clients are very engaged with us, so we didn't want to lose that, that's almost one of our most important aspects of our business. When they stay engaged with us, they come to our store. So we thought, right now is not the greatest time obviously to be shopping. So how can we participate with them? While we're all going through this crazy time?
Robey Martin
Do you think the connection during this tough time will be a future business connection later?
Erin Ackerman
Yes, absolutely. I'm seeing a lot of growth in our Instagram, our social media.
The interaction has been fantastic.
Our clients are reaching out to us. Before this all happened, our clients asked us, how they could help. They were even sending us ideas, calling, letting us know what other boutiques were doing around the country.
So they really outdid themselves. I mean, it was really cool. It's been a really amazing experience for us. And we've tried to find the positive obviously, just like everybody else.
And we set a goal of just having one win a day, for ourselves one win, and it didn't matter what that win was just a win something positive, and we have had that every day.
Robey Martin
That's awesome. Well, I can tell you I like levity on Instagram. I think it's one of the best ways to connect right now. So I think that the idea if people are looking to find you guys, what is your Instagram?
Erin Ackerman
So our Instagram account is Scout and Molly's Richmond, VA .
That's the best way to help us as a local business is to follow us on Instagram. We're actually getting ready to have our products online. We were in the middle of that during this time. And so we decided to take advantage of this time to make sure all of our background information was done.
So all of our organization. We're going to be live by probably mid next week.
Robey Martin
So can I expect some humorous try-on sessions at the old Scout & Molly's Instagram.
Erin Ackerman
Yeah, probably. And if you go you'll probably see some of our side hustles, which is our real life, going on on our Instagram feed and including Scout and Molly's in it.
So there might be things on a farm with really cool shoots. Perfect, We decided to have Great Shoe Adventure this week so that's what we've been doing all week is entertaining everybody with shoes and what we actually do when we're at home.
Robey Martin
can't it is to follow your hashtag farm fashion.