Intro
Broadcasting live from the Business Radio X studios in Dayton, Ohio. It's time for Dayton Business Radio. Now, here's your host.
The Mag
Welcome to Dayton Business Radio Stone Payton here with you this afternoon and you are in for a real treat. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Style Encore Centerville, Miss Lissa Cupp. Good afternoon, Lissa.
Lissa Cupp
Hi, Stone. Thank you. Thanks for having me.
The Mag
Well, we are delighted to have you on the show. Tell us a little bit about Style Encore's mission purpose, what are you out there trying to do for folks?
Lissa Cupp
Sure, Style Encore. It's actually a franchise, and it is a resale clothing store. For women. It is part of the wind mark family of brands. So others may know it as once upon a child of Plato's Closet. Those have been around for some time. And then Style Encore started about five years ago. And it's the women's brand. So this is for women to look great. Find an outfit, not pay full retail mall pricing, but find a great look at an affordable price.
The Mag
So I have to tell you here in the Atlanta market, I have two daughters and a loving wife and all three are very familiar with Plato's closet. No stranger to that brand at all. So but why franchise? Why did you decide to go the franchise route as opposed to launching a different way?
Lissa Cupp
Sure. So I am a marketer? And it's a great question because generally, marketers don't necessarily want to do a franchise because they, you know, you think, you don't have creative control. Here's what how we got into Style Encore. It wasn't that I wanted to own a clothing store. It wasn't that I went out looking for a franchise. My husband and I went on a trip with his aunt and uncle down to Florida one weekend of four years ago. And the guys went golfing that day. And she might his aunt said, “Come on, let's go, we'll shop for the day and go to a few of her favorite shops when they're in town”. And we went down there and we go into a couple of little consignment boutiques which you would normally see, you know, winding small rooms, often an older house that has been turned into a boutique. The third one we went into was this big, bright, organized store that had a ton of material, a ton of inventory brands that I love. And it was just great. And we literally had one of those moments where we turned to each other and said, Dayton, Ohio doesn't have one of these, and we need to put one in. And now I own a Style Encore franchise in Dayton, Ohio.
The Mag
Boom. So I can't imagine the car ride or the plane ride back home like you guys, you must have been really fired up and talking about this all the way back?
Lissa Cupp
Well, we were in actually. So we met up with the guys that night, you know, and of course, we're just chatting. And we said, Oh, guess what, you know, here we have this idea. And actually, they were both really supportive. And they said, you know, when you think about once upon a child for kids and Plato's closet for teens, you age out of those brands, and Style Encore for women. And our target market is 25, aged 25 to 55. But we have some regular customers that are almost 70 that come in, you know, just depends on what you're looking for. And so it's a broader market, it's a better opportunity. It's quote, unquote, recession-proof, which sounds funny saying it in 2020. Because, you know, we'll get into the impacts of that as we're actually in it. But you know, when people are, when they have money there, they still have a bargain. And when they are really watching their budget, resale is a great way to shop and look great for a lot less. So we just thought it was a great business opportunity.
The Mag
Well, you bring up an interesting topic, because you mentioned some of those folks around you. Maybe I think maybe you meant the guys that he was golfing with him or maybe it was the aunt, but that they were very supportive. You know, that's not always the case. Sometimes when we talk to our friends and family about any type of entrepreneurial venture, why do you suppose that is that sometimes they're not all that supportive?
Lissa Cupp
Well, you know, I think and I, I'm a bit of a serial entrepreneur. So I've owned a few businesses and I have another one now and a lot of them you know, a lot of businesses fail. Let's be honest. A lot of people have great ideas and for whatever reason, you know, market conditions can shift or it was undercapitalized. Whatever there are a number of reasons. And usually, people have rose-colored glasses. Now I will say that my husband who has been right in their lockstep with me, he's more conservative, I call him my steady Eddy. And that's in a good way. And so for him to get on board, actually, that's where the franchise really helped, because he thought you'd because it's a significant investment to get into any franchise really sure. And especially one with a physical presence, like this store is, you know, nearly 5000 square feet, and you buy all this inventory because we pay cash on the spot. And he was on board because it was a franchise because we didn't have to reinvent the wheel. You know you get the playbook from them, you have training there behind you, you get the technology, etc. So that actually really helped us gain the support that we needed to move forward with it.
The Mag
Alright, so you have a physical store? Do you have an online presence as well? Or is it strictly brick and mortar?
Lissa Cupp
We do with an asterisk? So we have a Facebook shop, the brand, to be honest, was a little bit slow on creating an online presence, they've really, and I say they the franchise company really believed in the physical foot traffic. And that actually, you know, e-commerce might actually take away from that. My corporate career prior to this was heavily into E-commerce, which is ironic to that I would own a retail store. Of course, I'm pushing, you know, the very first day we met, okay, so when are you going online? Right? When is that going to happen? And then, of course, 2020 hit, and stores closed, including ours, and then you didn't have an online presence. So guess what now, you know, they're really hurrying to play, catch up and get an online presence available? And honestly, people are more consumers are more willing to buy online now, especially even resale items. Where before they thought, Oh, I'd have to try it on. I don't know about that. But now they're much more comfortable.
The Mag
So what is the business model? Is it similar to some of those other brands that we talked about earlier in the conversation? Is there a consignment aspect to it? Or how does that piece of it work?
Lissa Cupp
Yeah, so we are different than consignments in that we pay cash on the spot. So a lot of people use the term consignment synonymously with a resale shop, you know, is this new? Or is this used clothes, right. And these are gently used clothes in great condition. But it's not consignment in that when you bring items in that you want to sell to us. We pay cash and I mean, physical cash, which is interesting, by the way, right now with the corn coin shortage that was new, you know, thank you. 2020. What new challenge can you bring to business owners, now we have a coin shortage? But we physically pay cash to you, if we buy your items, and it's $23.52, we're handing you dollars and coins. And back in the day before this model existed, you would bring your wonderful items to a consignment shop and say I would like to sell these right. And the consignment shop would say I love them. We're going to take them, put them on our floor. And if they sell, you know, call us back in a couple of weeks. And if it sells, we've got some money for you. And by the way, we might discount it and you might get less for it. And so we take on that silo or we take on that risk, we pay you what we believe it's worth from a cost standpoint. And if we end up clearancing it and we guessed wrong, that's on us not on the person that sold it to us.
The Mag
So tell us a little bit about the Ramp up because it sounds like these folks. And Style Encore really have had their stuff together. I mean, that sounds like there's a lot of rigor, a lot of discipline, a lot of best practices, probably some scar tissue that reduced the friction and shrunk the timeline for you guys. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about that ramp-up.
Lissa Cupp
Yeah. So you know, the, as an owner, like, it's great for the person that sells to us, as the owner of a franchise of a business like that, you're taking a lot of risk because you have to buy the right stuff. And let's be honest, you're not going to always buy the right stuff. And so, you know, there are four days a year that are my worst days in that business. And that's the end of the clearance cycle, where we donate what we didn't sell so we didn't even get you know, the pennies on the dollar. And we're bagging it up and it's going to you know, be donated, and then, of course, yes you get the tax write off but each item you think, oh we decided to buy this and paid for it. So you do need a lot of rigor to try to, to understand your market, right. So I think it's very helpful to have people who are in tune with our market and what people wear and the styles here and what which brands are in demand, and then watch for them make the right decision, you know, don't pass also don't pass up anything that's good that we might be able to sell. So what to buy and what not to buy is, is both a challenge. But yeah, we handle it through training. And we have style guides, and we stay as current as we can with, you know, the finicky person changes in what people are looking for in terms of style.
The Mag
So has what we call it down south of the recent unpleasantness, kind of like we refer to the Civil War, has the recent craziness with COVID-19 and some other challenges. Has that had an impact on your business? Or it? Can you speak to that a little bit? If it has?
Lissa Cupp
Absolutely, I mean, so many businesses have, right, so it's not even news anymore. You cannot be a business owner in 2020 and not feel the impact. I mean, it's affecting everybody. But in our case, you know, we ended up closing the store for seven weeks, because the state closed, all stores closed. Everything, right, like we all did, we were all sheltering in place and all that. And even before that, and it kind of came up suddenly, right, because we were going around our merry way. And you'd hear rumblings. But nobody really kind of went into to panic mode until that mid-March, when it really started to happen. And I'm telling you, within a week or two, we were closed our entire team was basically furloughed, you know, said we don't know if we'll be able to reopen. I mean, you just never knew what was happening. We locked up the doors, we put a sign, you know, a sign on the door, and all of our inventory sat. And, you know, that's what we did. And then, of course, spent all of our days trying to navigate all of the government, you know, PPP loans, and all these other things. So, yeah, that's what we spent a lot of time doing. And so it definitely had an effect on us. But we've come through it. And I believe we've come through stronger, we're not back up to where we were before. No one is, I don't think, but we are, people were happy to see us reopen. And we're, we're doing okay, we're climbing out of it.
The Mag
So I sort of have thought you're gonna tell me what, you know, seven weeks out of the shop, I started to buy a different franchise and I'm also like, your personality a little bit?
Lissa Cupp
Yeah, well, I think I spent my time figuring out, you know, will it reopen? And we felt this responsibility with the team. You know, we employed some people now, they were not full-time, people. They didn't count on us for benefits. But still, I mean, we had people that worked 30, 35 hours a week, they were our, you know, our regulars. And they, we were their source of income. And so we took that very responsibility, you know, greatly and felt terrible when it happened. And we could not wait to have them come back. And they were so great. We have a great team. Many of them said we'll come back. You don't even have to pay us. And we said, No, we're thank you for that. But you know, we're closing, and we're preparing for reopening. Which was kind of a funny story. Actually, when we did reopen. Everyone in Ohio, as you probably know, we wind with dewine at two o'clock became a thing.
Every day he was doing his updates. And if you're a business owner, you're literally watching that so that you can figure out what's going to happen with your livelihood, right. One day, we kept waiting for the date when we were going to reopen, when was it going to happen. And then one day, he announced that if you were a retail store, and you could see customers by appointment and used an example of a jewelry store, you know, for example, if you could have somebody come in as an appointment, and you show them around that you could do and I was sitting there, and I jumped into overdrive and went well that's it. We're opening tomorrow and we're doing appointments, What time would you like to come in and shop for your clothes tomorrow? And we ended up having 12 appointments the next day and a refund.
The Mag
Congratulations on that night. That's an inspiring story that had to be incredibly rewarding to see the folks come and to get some of your employee's engagement that had to feel good.
Lissa Cupp
It was great. And then you know the customers are coming in and they were so happy to see us and It was a little bit of a reunion, and we brought a few of the staff members back. And everyone. I mean, those were some good days actually. And then we did that for about 10 or 12 days. And then of course, the word came out that we could just everybody just reopened. And, you know, it was sort of back to normal. But yeah, that was, you know, as a business owner, you need to constantly have your ear to the ground, you know, for good and bad. And you need to be nimble to be able to react. And we pulled it together. I mean, that day, we were open the very next morning, you know, at 10 o'clock, we were out on our social media channels saying, guess what, we're open, call us make an appointment, come see us. We're here.
The Mag
And isn't that almost invariably, in one of the early pages in the entrepreneur handbook, right, take some action, throw your hat over the fence, and maybe you don't have all the research and the data, go do something, get the data back in tweak. I mean, you jumped on that the moment you saw just the least little bit of light coming through the window, didn't you?
Lissa Cupp
Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, that was, a great move for us. And it signaled to our customers that we were still in the fight, you know, and we were open and then, by the way, we sent and we've always recognized our loyal customers, but we sent a handwritten note to all of our customers that shopped with us in those 12 days. And, and it didn't have an offer wasn't a coupon or anything, it was just hey, thank you, handwritten by the team, they went out in the mail every day. And we just thank them for coming in and supporting us and for coming back and, and all that. And we had so many customers tell us that they really appreciated that as well.
The Mag
Well, I mentioned it because some of our listeners are aspiring entrepreneurs, they may not have pulled the trigger just yet they're thinking about it. And I'm not suggesting that there's not plenty of reason to exercise some reasonable amount of due diligence, particularly before you make a financial investment or life decision. But I gotta tell you, for those of you who fall into that category, and you're listening to this, you're getting a masterclass here on entrepreneurship, the just some of these pearls that Lissa Cupp is dropping, there's tremendous value in them.
And already just in the last couple of moments, you know, taking decisive action, and looking for ways to surprise and delight and serve. So thank you for helping us communicate. Well, you know, when I say the aspiring entrepreneur, look, I'm old and gray and very long in the tooth. I've been at it a long time. It's very inspiring for me, Lissa, to hear you talk about I can get reinvigorating when, when you talk this way. I teased you a few moments ago about, you know, if you had seven weeks, you're subject to jump on another franchise. But all kidding aside, you do have some other irons in the fire. You are the founder, for example of an organization called big rocks of life. Would you talk a little bit about that work?
Lissa Cupp
Sure, absolutely. Big rocks of life is and so going back to being a marketer, I always wanted to create my own brand and my own company. And being a marketer by trade, and then being an entrepreneur put those two things together. And yes, you really want to create your own thing. And the big rocks of life is about that story. It's an age-old story. Maybe you know it about this professor that starts filling this jar with rocks, and puts some rocks in there, and asks the group, is the jar full? And they say yes. And he says, Okay, well, you take some pebbles, and he puts it in and guess what it's it filters down and fills the jar asks them again, is it full? And they're thinking, I don't know, maybe up to something I'm not sure it is take some sand, fills it in in the sand packs in now it really looks full. And then takes water. There's another version of this with beer. You take water and you pour it in.
And then so you fill this jar, this big jar right with these rocks. And then and then the proposer says what's the moral of the story. And the moral a lot of times people will say, Oh, it's about productivity. And if I fit things just a certain way I can get more done and all that well, okay, a little bit. However, the real moral of the story is you must put the big rocks in first, or they won't fit. If you feel that jar that I just described, and then you take another big rock and you try to put it in the jar, there's no way it will fit. And what are the big rocks then? Well, in each of our lives, we have things that are our own personal big rocks, it could be family, it could be friends, it could be our career. It could be our businesses, whatever it is our Health, whatever those things are, we have to do those first. And we have to allocate, we all have just limited time. And we have to allocate a significant amount of time towards those big rocks to really have the life that we want to lead.
The Mag
What a marvelous piece of imagery that that illustration really that that brings it home. Now, you mentioned being someone who knows a thing or two about marketing. I mean, you were very modest in the way that you shared it. But I happen to know because I did a little pre-show research that you do have some marketing chops. How does the whole sales and marketing thing work for a business like that? Because it just seems like a very crowded arena, and to kind of breakthrough the noise and get clients for a firm that offers those kinds of coaching and consulting services? How does the whole sales and marketing thing work in a case like that?
Lissa Cupp
Well, it's a great point. And as a marketer, you do you think, Alright, so there's this opportunity. But is it a crowded space? I mean, I said earlier that a lot of businesses fail. So you really need to check the viability. Here's the yes, the bad news, if you will, it's a crowded space. A lot of people out there are either coaches or a various types or talking about inspiration, motivation of different types, right. But at the same time, it is a field, it's an age-old field, I think that is timeless, and that people are always searching for. And it's one of the most significant things. I think, in each of our lives. We all want to lead the best life we can. And so I think there's a never-ending supply of people trying to solve for this. And so then it becomes a question of, Do I Lissa Cupp have something unique to bring to the market that differentiates me and can help solve problems in a unique way. And yes, the big rocks of life, this, this jar of rocks has been around for a long time. But I think my approach to it is a bit unique. I've created a group called goal-driven women that meets monthly.
And that has been called WeightWatchers for goal planning. Because we get together we used to get together live in Dayton. But now it's via zoom. And that brings people together to say what how we do last month, we said we had these goals? You know, we have straight talk about them? What if we didn't accomplish them? Why not? Do we need help from one another? So there's this kind of support this empowering one another, which is really important, I think, for women who were, you know, really relying on a support network. And then we talked about the coming month and say, What are we going to go through next month? And how are we going to help each other? And so that's been a differentiator. For me, it also has a b2b application. So there are businesses that I'm speaking to, for example, very soon at KeyBank. And with their women's group, and I'm working with some other corporate clients to where I've spoken at sales conferences about goal planning, and about women in leadership. So it has a number of avenues.
The Mag
So obviously, I wouldn't ask you to share any names or specific companies or anything like that. But does something come to mind where they were just, I don't even know what the right words are a little out of whack. And what they really did have some big rocks that they didn't put in early, where you were able to kind of help them work through that and, and real realign their job or something. Can you share, like an example or maybe a brief stories of an experience like that, where you got to, to watch all of that unfold, and they really did take advantage of your expert, insight, and counsel?
Lissa Cupp
Sure. So I wouldn't go as far as saying that I helped someone sort of re-align their rocks, because it's a very personal individual thing. And it doesn't go so far as you know, things like counseling like boy, this shouldn't be the rock, you should focus on this rock. What I work on is helping people understand what their rocks are and what they really want out of life. So we have all kinds of workshops and tools about dream big, and how to understand what you really want in this life. And then help them identify what their rocks are. Acknowledge them. And we talked about having constant reminders, even if it's a jar of rocks, sitting on your desk. And so that when they're working on something and then you say to yourself, Okay, another day got away from me or another week got away, well, is it because I'm filling my day with pebbles and sand. And I'm not working on those meaningful things. And so I have helped people identify what those things are, and then prioritize and then also stay on track through accountability through these groups and workshops that we do, because it's life gets in the way, right? It's a constant.
The Mag
Okay, so let's leave our listeners with, with a couple of tips or some insight from the other side of the desk, there's no doubt in my mind if I wanted to, like try to get into the coaching business or, or the, or in the marketing field, you're like my first phone call, right? Like, I bet you could really help me with that. But if I'm on the other side of the desk, and I am who I am the number two guy in this little media company, what are some things that I could do or should do or not do? To take full advantage of, of working with a mentor of working with a coach or a consultant, I gotta believe you've, you've seen some patterns of some people who really get the most out of those relationships? And, and these are some, you know, some things that they do or don't do you any counsel on that front for us?
Lissa Cupp
Sure, um, I think the place that I start is figuring out what you really want to do. And a lot of people say, Boy, you should just you know, do you know, work, a job that your passion? Well, they call it to work, right, because you need to make money at it. But if you can align, if you can overlap, those circles, as much as possible, are things that you like to do that you can also make a vocation of and get paid for. Find those things because careers are long. And you hate to spend, you know, too long at something that just you didn't find fulfilling. But the other thing that I talk about a lot is that time is so short, and we know this, but I don't think we really realize it. And I have some tools where you actually look at your life in a number of months on a page, and it is not very long, it is surprisingly short. And so when you think a month goes by, and you say what did I do last month, it was really getting me the life I want. If not, you need to change some things. And so I help people figure that part out, figure out what they want to do, and help them change it.
The Mag
And I suspect that it's really important to try to be as my dad, my dad was a high school basketball coach. The only word I can come up with is coachable. Like at least open-minded to a different perspective or to considering a different set of questions when it comes to these topics are they really are about your life, aren't they?
Lissa Cupp
Absolutely. And they're very personal. And that's why I create the tools to help them figure it out. But it's really very personal, they need to say these are the things that are important to me, and therefore I want to make time for them repeatedly in my life. And I need to make those decisions on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.
The Mag
Okay, this conversation right here, it's too much fun and too inspiring to try to keep captive within this one interview, we're gonna, we're gonna have a whole interview sometime if you're up for it. I really want to learn more about this work and trying to help our listeners on that. For now though, if someone did want to reach out and learn more about big rocks of life or goal-driven women, or have a conversation with you or someone on your team about that, what's the best way for them to do that? Whatever is appropriate LinkedIn, email, whatever you think is appropriate on that front.
Lissa Cupp
Sure. So the website I would point everybody to is bigrocksoflife.com. So all one word, big rocks with an S of life.com. And you can also check me out on LinkedIn. It's Lissa Cupp with two s's LI SS A CU PP find me on LinkedIn. And I can talk about I love to connect with people and talk about all things. Marketing, e-commerce, entrepreneurship, goal planning, you name it, I stay a little bit busy, but I would love to connect. So find me on out there in the interwebs
The Mag
In your store, Style Encore Centerville, where's the store located?
Lissa Cupp
We are if you're in the Dayton market, please come see us. We are at CrossPoint center in Centerville. And we're near Marshalls and Learning Express a little plug to our neighbors. But yeah, we have the physical store and then you can also find us at styleencorecenterville.com.
The Mag
Well, Lissa Cupp has been an absolute delight having you on the show. Thank you so much for sharing your story and I'm quite sincere. I'd love to have you back on this show or another within the Business Radio X network and really dive into some of these other topics that we talked about. But thank you for sharing your story and being so giving with what you've learned from your work.
Lissa Cupp
Well, thank you so much, Stone for having me. It's been a real pleasure and you have a great day and I appreciate it.
The Mag
Alright, until next time this was Stone Payton for our guest today Lissa Cupp and everyone here at the Business Radio X family, saying we'll see you next time on Dayton Business Radio
Image source: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lissacupp/
