speaker-1: Gotta just go with it. Gotta trust that you know what you’re doing and that even if you don’t know what you’re gonna do and you’re gonna figure it out.

speaker-0: Honesty Commerce is a weekly podcast where we interview direct-to-consumer brand founders and leaders to find out what it takes to start, grow, and scale an online business today. Honesty Commerce is proudly produced by Electric Eye, a Shopify Plus partner helping e-commerce brands sell more with strategic design and development. Visit electriqueye.io for more information. Hey everybody. Welcome back. To another episode of Honest Ecommerce. Today I’m welcoming to the show the COO of the Snooky Shop, Gina Sakala. She spent the last seven years turning a single boutique into a growing multi-location retail business with loyal customers, an amazing community, and a national e-commerce presence. Gina, welcome to the show.

speaker-1: Thank you for having me, I’m excited to be here.

speaker-0: ⁓ I’m excited to chat. ⁓ we kind of talked a little bit before this. This is such an interesting and unique business because it’s not necessarily like a flagship product or products or line. A lot of this is is built into the celebrity of kind of the the face of the company and the namesake of the of the business. ⁓ so I I I’m super excited to talk with you. But first and foremost, I guess just like Take me back in time. Where where does this story start? How do you become the COO of a of a company that is basically the brand of another person?

speaker-1: Yeah, so that position never existed, honestly. there was just like a bunch of chatter going around our local little town in Madison, New Jersey about this store opening up ⁓ run by Snooky herself. She lives locally, and she was just looking for sales associates and I was just looking for something extra to do. I said I would never go back to retail. I actually quit retail. At the time I was very bad taste in my mouth, but I was like, Everyone kept sending it to me and I’m like, you know what? Might as well. It’s too I can walk there. It’s part-time. Let’s see what happens. I walked in. ⁓ I actually got denied for my interview three times before I even got my interview. She kept being like, Sorry, it’s not working out. ⁓ sorry, it’s not and then finally I got my interview and she’s like, Do you want to be a manager? I was like, Sure. And then after like a couple weeks, I just started like sitting there being like, We could do more. And then like every time I kind of got like a little bit more out of her. And I got involved a little bit more, it just started growing our relationship. And the next thing you know, here we are, almost eight years later. And chief operating officer a small version of it. Sorry.

speaker-0: That’s amazing. ⁓ yeah, I’m gonna I’m gonna force you to break down a few of these things. Now, let’s go back to ⁓ how you helped kind of foster growing that relationship with her. what were some of the things you were asking to do or some of the opportunities that you saw? Like we could be doing this, we could be doing that. Do you remember any of those from the beginning?

speaker-1: Sure. Well, first off, simple stuff. Just like she did everything herself. Everything. I mean, she was tagging the clothes. She was, you know, taking the inventory into her house and then bringing it to us. She was doing the scheduling, like literally everything. And I’m like, girl, you have way too much going on in your life. Like, let me take off some of the load of that. So it was slowly getting that started. But I think one of the biggest things that I implemented and went to her with was that we didn’t have a connection between our online store and our physical stores. So the e-commerce was being run by somebody in a whole nother state, ⁓ a whole nother they had their own little warehouse that they were using. It was different items. We didn’t even have the same clothes ⁓ because the warehouse and the online store were around s probably since like 2010 and we opened up in 2018. So they were two different entities essentially. They were run by different platforms. ⁓ and I just was like, we have to figure this out. There’s a way to streamline it. And I did a lot a lot of research on my own and just looked into it and I looked at what the website was being run by, what we were using in store, what’s more user-friendly, how can we combine the two? And also like the overhead of it all. Like, why do we have a warehouse and someone else running all of this when we have a store where the clothes are coming from? We should be just shipping from in-store because we’re not that we weren’t that big. and that would be s I would say kind of like the biggest thing I went to her with, probably like a year into being there, maybe a little bit less. And was like, this I think would be a major change and like game changer for you. So that is kind of where things really started to flip in our relationship and become I still wasn’t this title yet, but it was like a slow burn where we started to really be like, ⁓ I think it was like she was like, ⁓ she knows kind of what she’s talking about. and yeah, I think that would be like one of the biggest ones.

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speaker-1: It sounds like a big project, but it wasn’t that crazy. I think the hardest part for her was just making the move because the people who were running that were people really dear to her. They were people who had been with her since the beginning with other projects she was doing. And ⁓ she hates to let people go. So it and she still hasn’t. They’re still involved in other ways ⁓ in her, you know, career. But ⁓ that what I would say was like the biggest part was just getting her to make the move. Once we started getting the ball rolling, you know, it was just Get on the phone with Shopify, figure out what to do, what do I need? It was all the research that I just did already leading up to it. So that once she said yes, it was the bulk of it was pretty much done. The warehouse itself, ⁓ it was just getting things that they still had sent to us or donating things ⁓ to different, you know, shel women shelters and such that maybe we were like, ⁓ we don’t want that anymore. Let’s move on to new products. So was just kind of that move. We didn’t need any type of storage. We had a really we were moving locations anyways from a smaller location in Madison to a bigger location. So we had the space for it. ⁓ but it was just kind of getting the knowledge behind it and knowing exactly I didn’t know anything about e-commerce, to be honest. So it was really learning that aspect. That was the biggest, toughest part of it all for me.

speaker-0: We will absolutely get into that. But I do have a what you just mentioned now is I I feel like this is probably a common th theme, is that people with a lot of notoriety probably have a lot of people in their life who are offering services or expertise to them beyond the normal entrepreneur.

speaker-1: Yeah, we get people who reach out to us constantly, right? They want to help her with stuff. And people were always like, you know, I know Nicole or I know her family. I I can help you with this or I can help you with that. ⁓ I even get people like that who reach out to us. Like the guy who helps helped us with our website was somebody I had met years ago. And as soon as he found out I was working for Nicole, he was like, How can I get in there? And it ended up benefiting us. I mean, he was awesome and I still he still helps me with stuff every day. But I think yeah, since she’s such a loyal person, she really has her people and she does she likes to just keep them and reuse them wherever is possible. If something is no longer working for for them in that field that they’re doing, she kind of likes to keep them along and see what else can I help you with?

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speaker-1: Honestly, and the whole aspect of Shopify. I’m like, my friend says it to me all the time. He’s like, You’re kind of a you could be a Shopify specialist. So I’m like, okay, let’s not get crazy. But it’s just learning how to not navigate all that stuff. Even emails, like with attentive is what we use. But like even with email blasts or ⁓ just inventory and j I mean, just the whole honestly, such a simple question. Answer everything. I would have never expected myself. To know the things that I know related to e-commerce and retail ⁓ in general. And I just I find it very interesting. ⁓ and I keep researching it because it changes so quickly. So just like every day I feel like I’m learning something new. Plus, Shopify does update like every other day. So I do have to learn a new way to do things like every other day. ⁓ but yeah, it’s really just the whole aspect of Shopify in general and an e-commerce platform.

speaker-0: How did you learn it? Like was there any secret sauce you hire a coach, take a lesson, or was it just a YouTube university?

speaker-1: Not even, honestly. I think it was more researching it, just like on ⁓ I don’t even think I even use YouTube, honestly. I think it was just, hey, what is Shopify? And like reading all their facts and abouts and all that. And then also my friend, ⁓ Jay, he’s the one that he works ⁓ with e-commerce brands. He’s a director of e-commerce for a company. So he really kind of every he walks me through every little step if I have a question, but he also challenges me and is like, I want you to try to figure it out and let me know if you figure it out. And if you can’t come back to me, and a lot of the times it’s like, ⁓ it’s just sometimes it’s just clicking around and then remembering what you did. And like I write everything down after I’ve done it so that I can remember, okay, this is how I got to that place. ⁓ but even with like the loyalty programs, like he helped me find which ones would work for me. But then it’s like then I have to do the work myself once I’m in there and figure out how to make those apps work ⁓ for our business. And I’m still still learning.

speaker-0: Absolutely. I think that’s ⁓ something that we at the agency often are telling clients and, you know, young entrepreneurs where you there’s such a weird thing where there you you definitely want to delegate and you want to get things off your plate. But it’s also if you’re delegating something that you don’t know what good looks like and that you don’t understand, how do you know what you’re like what you’re getting back is good or not?

speaker-1: One hundred percent. I struggle with that a a lot. I’m not a good delegator, so and we’re we’re working on that. The more responsibility needs I need more delegating. ⁓ but it’s definitely you need to know what you’re giving out to people. ⁓ I I’m really big on over communicating too. So I like to really break it down. I’ll send videos like to my staff to be like, Okay, this is what I need you to do. Like recently I ⁓ thumbs up. Recently I ⁓ just decided to like start having them help me with some inventory stuff that they don’t normally do with like discrepancies and such ⁓ that I normally handle myself. And I it’s such a simple task, but it’s something that I’m like so nervous about having someone do. So I’m like, Okay, here’s a video of exactly what you need to do. And they’re like, It’s pretty like pretty simple. I’m like, doesn’t matter, watch the video.

speaker-0: I mean, even on our end, it’s and and to honestly, I can almost mimic your frustration with Shopify updating all the time. So all of our SOPs, ⁓ you know, they ⁓ constantly have to get updated. And so part of onboarding and joining our company is learning how to read these standard operating procedures. And then like the second thing you learn is if it’s wrong and while you’re doing it, You your now your next thing to do, whatever you’re doing is now on the back burner. It’s update the SOP yeah and then go back to what you were doing. So we’re trying to build this ⁓ constant iteration machine that keeps all of those things up to date so people know how to do everything internally. And ⁓ my gosh, it’s the the most unsexy part of a business is building a process.

speaker-1: Hundred percent get that.

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speaker-1: ⁓ honestly, and and no aga most of the answers you’re gonna get are like on a whim, because it’s it truly is kind of that way with her. ⁓ she’ll you know, she has a vision. She had a vision from the beginning, but wasn’t really sure how it was gonna get executed again. There’s no big team behind us. It’s her and me. ⁓ you know, she had people she would refer to for certain stuff, but nobody’s ever done this with her before. ⁓ so to kind of backtrack to an original question you asked, it was kind of like starting from scratch. For her f with when I got the job because she didn’t again really have a big team. So there was never really anyone to refer to and be like, How do you do this? We had to figure out how to use square. I had no idea what I was doing, neither did she. To be honest, she didn’t know what she was doing either. So she was like, We’re gonna figure it out together. ⁓ and that was the original system we had. So it was kind of nice because you’re going from a blank slate and I could be like, Hey, we have so mere we have so much room to grow. So ⁓ With that, I remember it was like I had an idea and I didn’t go to her with it yet, but it was written down. It was 2019, going into 2020. And I was like, we should do pop-ups. We should just everybody writes on us to Instagram being like, come here, come here, come here. I was like, how fun would it be if we could do like mini pop-ups all across the country? And she was like, interesting you say that. I actually was looking into getting a mini van, like a a boutique van to do to take around and do pop-ups with. I was like, great, let’s do it. Van didn’t end up working out the way that it was supposed to, but at that same time, we were moving locations to just a bigger store because the store we had was just so tiny at the time. And then the pandemic hit, so everything kind of like halted. ⁓ so we didn’t really get to do the van the way we wanted. And then when we started doing the van, it just didn’t didn’t work out that well. So with that, she was like, Let’s open up a second location. I wanna open up a location where I live. And it just so happened her friend was looking to switch careers at the time as well, like her best friend. So she was like, it would be perfect. She can run the store. It’ll be up where I grew up, whatever. And that’s how that started. Then when that happened, we kept talking about why are we not in Seaside where it all began? Makes no sense. Like we need to be where it all began. Seaside Heights, New Jersey. So then that’s when the third location opened. And it just kind of now we’re in Nashville also. And then we moved that upstate New York location to Huntington, New York. ⁓ so we’d be more on like Long Island, more city centric. ⁓ but yeah, it just it’s kind of how she works. She’s just like once it it’s in her head, she has to do it. And we’re we’re not gonna wait to do it. It’s happening now. ⁓ and it’s worked out really well. I mean, I physically go to every location and open it and I was in Nashville for three months opening that store.

speaker-0: Absolutely. Now there’s two things in there that I wanna point out. And it’s one, and I’ve had I’ve heard this a couple of times and I’m gonna try to ask this in a c in a way that isn’t a leading question, but I don’t think I can get I don’t think I can do that. But it’s it’s like ⁓ knowing what you know now about how hard some of these decisions you made were, like, do you think you would have made them?

speaker-1: Yeah. And I almost like that we didn’t put too much I as again, I don’t necessarily suggest this to other people, but I almost like not having all the knowledge going into some of it because I feel like almost yeah, you’re right. If you knew too much and you knew how hard it was gonna be, would you keep doing it? I don’t know. But I do keep doing it.

speaker-0: I knew the answer before I asked it because I’ve done this hundreds of times. But it it is like some people are like, Yeah, it’s like it is the ignorance of a young entrepreneur. You have so much, you know, just drive and ambition and the not knowing how hard it is, you just start tackling hard problems, and then you get so far into it and there’s the sunk cost fallacy in your brain, and you’re like, Well, I have to see this through now. ⁓ you know, knowing that, you know, is It might be a strength of of like a a budding entrepreneur is that, you know, ignorance of like how hard is this problem to solve. ⁓ and it’s something that’s come up on the show multiple times.

speaker-1: No, and that’s what I was gonna say right before you said it. I was thinking that in my head. I’m like, because once you start, you’re like, ⁓ I can’t stop now. I gotta keep going. Like we just gotta get through this and figure out how to do it. ⁓ and now obviously we have, you know, I have my systems in place that make things a little bit easier, but there’s still growing pains every single day. ⁓ but I I I know it’s like I’ve said it before to somebody that asked me for advice to people who are, you know, starting up a business. And I’m like, just do it. Just do it. Just start wherever you can. Don’t wait. Just go for it because if you wait, it’s never gonna happen. There’s never gonna be a right time. It’s like they say with having babies. It’s the same thing. There’s never gonna be a right time. You just gotta do it. And it’ll hopefully all work out.

speaker-0: You got to kind of the second point that I wanted to highlight there too, which which was that with every decision you’re making, it kind of doesn’t matter what decision you make. It’s make a decision. And it sounds like that is one of Nicole’s strengths is she makes a decision and you work towards it. And then when stuff comes up, a decision gets made. I think analysis, paralysis, and waiting for perfection is like a death kneel for a lot of ⁓ of businesses.

speaker-1: ⁓ totally. Yeah. I’ve actually never really thought about it in that way. But she’s really good at making decisions. Like she’s just like, yes, no, yes, no. Like we’re doing this, we’re not doing this. I’m a little not as good. I’m not as good as that, but I’m learning through her. It’s like just trust your gut. She’s huge on trusting her gut. And if she feels like something is gonna work out, and of course, listen, she does have, you know, a little bit of the cushion in the back that if something doesn’t work out, she knows that she has the money there with her career. You know, she’s always gonna continue to make money in different aspects. But ⁓ and not everybody has that luxury. So I can understand like starting at something from scratch, especially if you don’t have that in the background to help you out, is gonna be really scary. But gotta just go with it. Gotta trust that you know what you’re doing and that even if you don’t know what you’re gonna do and you’re gonna figure it out.

speaker-0: Hey everybody, just a quick reminder. Please like this video and subscribe if you haven’t. We’re releasing interviews like this every week. So don’t miss out. Now back to the interview. She obviously has her celebrity and she has her career outside of ⁓ these boutiques. How you know, celebrity, it can bring attention to the business, but like how do you sustain that? How do you make a business that isn’t just a flash in the pan? Like, I mean, obviously you guys have figured it out. So, like, what Are you doing to succeed outside of relying on her clout? So that

speaker-1: Actually, one of my biggest things I’ve been saying to her forever that, like, pr pretty much from the beginning, I said we have to make this not related to like obviously snooky, you can’t take it, it’s out of it’s in the name, you can’t get rid of that. But I don’t want it to be only about you. And I’ve said that to her a million times, like we’ve talked about it. That like it’s a boutique, we want it to sell regular clothes to people, not just something that says where’s the beach on it, not just something that says snooky on it. Like it we have so many other options in there. We have cute clothes for everybody’s accessories, whatnot. ⁓ so how can we do that? That was a question I’d asked from like the first year. What can we do? And it’s really I I again I don’t know if there’s like a secret way of doing it, but it’s putting other people’s faces in front of the brand. I think and that’s I think that’s kind of part of the reason why I have me doing something like this. It’s getting other people out there and not just utilizing her because again, you see other celebrity brands, right? They always use the celebrity. The celebrities in every picture, they’re every promo, and that’s amazing. But no realistically, she can’t do that anyways. She doesn’t have time to do that with everything going on. So, how can we make it so people realize this isn’t just a jersey shore gimmicky kind of thing, that there’s other things for you? And it was just utilizing your staff really to be the face of the brand. ⁓ real normal people, just showing everyday people ⁓ wearing the clothes, coming to the stores, you know, interacting with the people, the customers and making them feel like normal people and not making them feel like, ⁓ when you come in here. You’re only coming in for Snooky. I don’t assume people coming into my store are coming in because they’re a fan. I assume they’re coming in or shopping online because they like the clothes. And that’s how I treat it every time, rather than the other way. ⁓ but just getting involved in different things too. I mean, again, it’s not really keeping you away from Snooky because the name is there. There’s nothing you can do about it, but getting involved in local things in the community with the brand that again, her face isn’t attached to. just making it about the clothing brand being bit involved in charities where again it’s not Snooki doing it, it’s the brand doing it. If that make if that makes sense. I don’t know again if that really translates the way I’m trying to say it, but it’s kind of just been the something we’re still trying to figure out, to be honest.

speaker-0: Yeah, no, no, no. It makes sense. It’s always a it’s always a work in progress, but I think identifying that is the first step. You know what I mean? It’s like, what is this without her? So it’s like, how do we build something that is a little bit more sustainable? And I, you know, like you said, it’s, you know, one percent better every day and it will start to figure itself out.

speaker-1: Yeah, for sure. Hopefully. It it is a little bit, but hopefully it’ll continue to. ‘Cause you know what it is? People we had a lot of backlash when we started with our brick and mortars. I don’t think the online website really ever had backlash because you only know it if you know it exists, right? So when we started with the brick and mortars, we got a lot of backlash. It was like the snooky of it all, right? Why how is she coming into our towns? Why is she doing this? Why why ⁓ I don’t I never liked the way she dressed, so why would I want to shop? It was a lot of negative like that. So it was trying to get that out of there rather than the opposite of people think like, ⁓ it’s snooky, so it’s easy. People probably just love to shop there. No, we had a lot of backlash. So trying to get that’s kind of why it’s like separating the two is important because even though the haters are gonna hate always, it’s letting them know that there’s so much more than that person from 2009 on a TV show. She’s more than that, but the brand’s also more than that.

speaker-0: Absolutely. And obviously now it it’s working out for you. You you’re serving tens of thousands of customers each month. You guys have a a crazy loyalty program that you’ve built, you know, and like you said, you’ve got like working in the community and stuff. ⁓ is there anything I didn’t ask you about today that you think would resonate with our audience?

speaker-1: No, I think something that ⁓ and when it comes to just to kind of go back to where it all began. and for entrepreneurs in general, like if they’re trying to do something, you don’t or even just somebody trying to switch careers. You don’t have to have you don’t have to have a college degree to work in e-commerce. You don’t have to have a college degree to work in retail. I mean, I I know people hate hearing that, but I I don’t have one. My life took a complete different turn. This was never the plan I was supposed to be doing makeup. That this was never where I was supposed to be. And I think that it’s just if you work hard enough and you try hard enough to do something you love and people see that in you, just need someone either you see it in yourself or someone sees it in you. One person takes a chance on you and real and you have I mean, obviously the hard work behind it and then one person takes a chance on you, you can be successful without all that in this business for sure.

speaker-0: ⁓ that’s a fantastic place to end it on. Gina, I can’t thank you enough for coming on the show and sharing all those insights.

speaker-1: Thank you, I appreciate you having me.