The idea of Growing Footprints began after I had my child where I found myself buying everything on the internet from groceries to clothing and very quickly realised when it came to clothing for my little one I was shopped abroad.
This led me to find a loop in the industry and knew it needed filling. Easier said than done. So began the task of building my vision into a actual business, having very little funds to put into the growth of the business (being a newly married couple with a new born and having used the last of our savings to build a home) I was in a position where I didn't know where to begin. But knew I HAD to begin. After numerous hours and nights infront of the computer, I finally had a list of labels I wanted to stock so began the emailing and phone calls to try and stock their label.
Being shut down a lot was discouraging but at the same time I was able to secure most of the brands I had on my list, so the next phase was using social media to build our brand and gain awareness. Which we used to then begin our sales process.
How did you earn your first sales? Which channels are now generating the most traffic and sales for you?
Our first sales were via facebook where customers would comment 'sold' with email contact in which I would then invoice them manually for their purchase. Our main channel still is facebook, but they are diverted to shop on our site
Tell us about the back-end of your business. What tools and apps do you use to run your store? How do you handle shipping and fulfillment?
We are currently using Modify Lightbox, Yahoo Web Insights, Shopify Order print amongst a few others. With the shipping and fulfillment, our is very straight forward where we have a flat rate fee and just notify customers when their order has been shipped via Shopify