“There’s a lot of stores that are closing. It’s really a hard time for retailers. But we started in 2008 – which was not a good time for any industry. And we started online first.” Nicole Whitesell, owner of Shop Adorn, goes on “We had a little 200 square-foot store-front that was inside a non-profit. So we were able to help each other.” That pretty much sums up the ethos of Nicole and her “alternative to Portland’s main stream mall culture” boutique. With no hesitation, Nicole will offer up her formula for success: stay true to who you are, stay hands-on with your customers and help out other local businesses. We sat down in her shop recently for a talk:

Tell me about yourself and how you came about opening Shop Adorn. My background is actually in retail – I had 8 years working at Nordstroms from age 15 through college. And I graduated with a business degree and sort of fell into building houses as a licensed general contractor. My husband runs most of that and we’re trying to phase out of that because we just want to do the store full-time. But, basically in the winter we were noticing that it was slow with the building company and I’ve always wanted to open an apparel shop. I would always get frustrated working at Nordstroms because you are really limited – if a customer wanted a different color in something or if they wanted/really liked a certain brand we could say “oh yeah we’ll recommend it to our buyer”, but you can’t really do anything beyond that. Also I’m a little bit curvier and I couldn’t find things that fit me right and I always felt kind of limited – it was hard to feel good and fashionable. And so, a couple of positive experiences I’ve had were with smaller boutiques – just being able to go in and they would know what would look good on me. I would come out of the fitting room not crying, happy and feeling confident about what I was purchasing. All of that really led me to wanting my own store where I could get to know all of my customers and clients  – know what fits them, know what looked good on them. Also I could pick out the product. Not all of it would necessarily look good on me, but I could feel good about the brands I’m selling. A lot of our stuff is made in the US – good fibers, good fabrics.

Tell me about how you made the decision to expand from online to brick and mortar. The thing that made a difference for us was that we started focusing hard on website sales. If I went on and blogged and emailed forums and let people know about certain things we would have a jump in sales. It was so much work – I literally had to go in and do something huge to make these sales happen. So I finally spent the money to get an SEO company to basically go through every single product and optimize all of our categories, every single SKU that we had – 1500 items. We switched to a different shopping cart that was more SEO-friendly and we started blogging, Tweeting, using Facebook and got connected with Forkfly. Really just started to look for any “free” marketing that was out there and available to us and allowed us to interact with our customers. Immediately – like in 3 months – we saw a 600% increase in sales. And since we implemented all that in October we’re still holding steady at a 600% increase year-over-year. So it just totally changed our entire business. So we felt comfortable about 3 months ago that the sales increase had stayed steady long enough to open a larger store.

What’s your approach to social media marketing? I love doing Twitter and I love using different social media properties. I do all of that myself. That’s the one thing I do and isn’t done by employees. So I’m finally in a place where I can do all the things that I love doing. So it’s really an exciting time for us.

Why do you do all the social media? Is it because you feel you’ve got the brand down, you’ve got the voice? Or it keeps you in-tune with your customer-base? Because we’re a new company I really want to be – I really want to make sure that what people are hearing from our company is really who we are. My husband hasn’t got on the social media train yet. He’s like “I don’t even know what to say.” I enjoy reading what’s going on with other people. It’s amazing how interactions will lead to followers. I want people to get to know me first and what we’re about. I have great employees, but this isn’t their baby – it’s my baby.

What kinds of conversations are you having? What are you finding? All over the board. I break the rule – I go personal on my Twitter stream. I don’t have a personal Twitter page and you read different things about etiquette. A lot of places say you shouldn’t be too personal with your business Twitter account, but I post pictures of my kids doing silly things and a lot of customers or friends will reply to that. And I reply to stuff that they post.

I also like to help. There’s a lot of businesses that helped me. And I like to put on Twitter and Facebook that I just bought this or this place was really great. I think it all just goes around. The more that I promote other businesses, the more that they reciprocate and support us. I think that’s what it’s about.

Take us deeper into the business – how do you bring a unique selection to your customers? We have kind of had a little bit of a re-branding. We started out as streetwear retailer and one of the things that I learned really quick is that street wear is not me. Streetwear is not my husband. And there’s conservative streetwear and there’s really deep and dark streetwear. As I got into it, I didn’t realize how deep and dark it got. It’s not us. So, you know, you walk into a streetwear shop and here’s me in my conservative clothing and I just didn’t feel I was being true to who we were. And if you’re going to devote this much time and energy and effort into something – you need to love it. So while I still think there’s a need for great streetwear in Portland, We were not the ones to fulfill that. So along with our move we’ve also been bringing in new brands. I have a buyer that I work with and we go to Las Vegas twice a year and go to the different markets. We go and see our regular brands and we look at all of the other up and coming lines.

What are you looking for? The things that we are looking for is availability – is the brand already in Portland? Is there brand saturation? Fluxus is a big brand we carry, not a lot of folks are carrying the brand. All of their clothing is made really well, very flattering. Looks good on a lot of sizes. Other stuff includes eco-fibers and organic cotton. Sustainable materials. We try to be eco-friendly as possible, really support local business and sell stuff that’s made in the US – but that’s not all of who we are.

Are the conversations you’re having with customers impacting the product line? Defintely – yes. A lot of our vendors are great. They’ll let us bring stuff in and try and if it doesn’t work out they’ll let us send it back. That really helps. We have 6 or 7 different brands coming in for fall – all of those decisions have been taking into account the type of people coming in but also the type of people who are buying online. Before we moved, 90% of our business was online. Since the move, 50% is online – we’ve had this great growth since the store opened. A lot of our online customers are in Japan and UK so we want to make sure we are carrying lines that aren’t readily available everywhere else – because that’s what makes sure they stay in demand.

Anything else you’d like to share about your business? I’ve really become passionate about helping other local businesses. Getting involved in the community and networking. It all comes around.