Navigating the journey from a high street business to become a successful on line retailer, with Tegen Rowett of Tegen Accessories

Welcome to The Real Life Buyer.

In this episode I am extremely please to interview Tegen Rowett.
A business owner with strong retail and on line business sales experience.
Learn how sourcing, buying, logistics and retail combine for a successful on line SME.

ABOUT THE GUEST
Tegen Rowett started her retail business in Brighton, England in 2012 having been previously been made redundant from the business after it ceased to trade. Here she saw her opportunity to take the business she loved so much, forge a stronger relationship with the primary supplier and relaunch the business in her style. It was not much longer she added an on-line trading business as well and grew her business to further heights. Tegen has strong values, strives for perfection whilst managing a team with care and consideration that brings the best out in people. Hear how she has moved the business on, battled with Covid and is planning for Brexit.

ABOUT THE HOST
My name is David Barr.
I have been working as a Purchasing Manager for over 20 years and have had the joy of working in various manufacturing industries throughout this time.

I have signed contracts for many millions of pounds Sterling over these years across a range including, but not limited to Capital Equipment; Recruitment services; Finished, semi finished and raw products including castings, machined parts, fabricated parts, moulded parts, rolled and extruded products; PPE; Carriage and Logistics services; Printed books and boxes; Gaming materials; Contractor Services including building, plumbing, roofing, AC, maintenance etc.

I am passionate about saving money, buying quality goods and services, developing positive and effective working relationships with suppliers and colleagues and driving improvement through out the supply chain.

Now I wish to share this knowledge and that of highly skilled and competent people with you, the listener, in order that you may hopefully benefit from this information.

CONTACT DETAILS FOR TEGEN ACESSORIES
Website : www.tegenaccessories.co.uk
instagram : @tegenaccessories
Email : tegen@tegenaccessories.co.uk

CONTACT ME, The Real Life Buyer @
Website: www.thereallifebuyer.co.uk
Email: david@thereallifebuyer.co.uk
Find and Follow me @reallifebuyer on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter

Disclaimer
The views, information, or opinions expressed during this podcast are those solely of the host and guest(s) involved and do not reflect the views of any other individual or company. This podcast does not constitute professional advice or services. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, reliability and accuracy of this information. Any action you take upon the information is strictly at your own risk and we will not be liable for any we will not be liable for any losses or damages in connection with any information provided.

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Tegen Rowett, Dave Barr

 Tegen Rowett  00:06

Welcome to The Real Life buyer, whether you are buying for yourself or your business. Here you will find tips, techniques and knowledge to support your journey to buying smart, interviewing business owners and technical experts to give you information and guidance before parting with your money, save money time and get what you want when you want it. Now introducing The Real Life Buyer, Dave Barr.

Dave Barr  00:29

Hello, and welcome to the real life buyer. In this episode, I'm very pleased to introduce you to Tegen Rowett Owner of Tegen Accessories. Some time ago, I was in the process of creating a website on a well known platform, and had begun struggling with a number of features. And I reached out to a Facebook community Tegen was super quick to respond and offer me some great support and guidance. It was fairly soon thereafter, she offered to show me her website, and was extremely kind to meet me and walk me through how she and her partner had developed their site. Tegen had at that time a lovely boutique in Brighton. But circumstances beyond her control, have now made that no longer viable. In this episode, I'll be exploring with Tegen the challenges facing High Street retail, and how COVID-19 and Brexit are changing the ways in which she operates her business. Along with the actions she's taken to manage her inbound and outbound supply chain. So hello, Tegen and welcome to the show.

 Tegen Rowett  01:38

Thanks for having me on.

 Dave Barr  01:40

You are very welcome. Perhaps we could start with you spending just a few minutes informing the listeners about yourself and your entrepreneurial journey to the current day.

 Tegen Rowett  01:52

Yeah, sure. So it started in 2012. When I got made redundant from my shop job, I was the manager of the store and buyer for a hair accessory company. And that company went into liquidation sadly, and I loved the job, I loved the team. So it was quite a sad and I thought, well, maybe I can do something with the shop that I worked in, because it was the Brighton shop that I worked in that was profitable. Whereas there are other stores and their wholesale company weren't is doing as well, which is why the company went into administration. So yeah, I did some some chats with suppliers and, and opened the shop six weeks later, after I got made redundant, hired some of the team back, some of the been already moved on to other things by then, but that's okay. And yes, so we open the shop, I rebranded. And I also knew that I wanted to launch a website to go with the shop. And so that took a little bit longer in 2014, I launched the website. And yeah, and fast forward to today. And we've actually closed the shop this year in March at the start lockdown. And we decided that actually it's far better to be 100%. Online. And that's where we are now.

 Dave Barr  03:25

Okay, okay, so sad because obviously I visited the store and it was a very well laid out and I could tell that it was quite attractive for certainly your clients, which brings on perhaps to the products you sell, perhaps you can give an overview of the products you sell today, the service you offer, and how would you describe your target market?

 Tegen Rowett  03:48

Yeah, so we sell hair accessories, predominantly, and, and about 90% of what we sell French handmade hair accessories. As a high quality hair accessories, a lot of them are more everyday hair accessories, but we do have some crystal pieces and some more sort of fashion led pieces and things as well. Our most like our highest converting customers actually ladies 65 plus, but we sell like to younger age groups 25 plus as well. But yeah, so someone who's looking for something a bit like higher quality than the everyday sort of throw away hairclip.

 Dave Barr  04:31

Okay, that seems a kind of product that, that people feel it's sort of it's tangible. You need to hold it and try it on and, you know, look in the mirror and things like that. So, so how do you find your new way of working without a physical location and having not to sort of turn up for work every day?

 Tegen Rowett  04:50

Yes, so I have a wonderful team that really focused me and I actually feel like I turn up for work more now because we have our routine we go for coffee at 10 together. Whereas the shop that had a lot more part time staff, flitting from the shop to the office a lot. So now we have like much more focus on one particular project that we're doing. Whereas the shop staff were part time, and they were helping with the website, put in product descriptions and photography and stuff, but obviously their focus was the customer that was in front of them. So anything they did on top of that was a bonus. But it was harder to actually do some of that work and wrap the orders in amongst like serving customers in the shop and doing the customer service live chat online and getting customers in the shop. Whereas it's far easier to actually focus now. And so I'm even more excited to like turn up to work, we got lots of things coming up. And we're doing photo shoots and blogs and mailers all the time and I have a great team that I work with that we can actually get together and sit down and not get interrupted by customers coming in.

 Dave Barr  06:09

Okay, talking about the customers, thinking about the product being something that people will almost model and try on in mirrors and such. How do you continue to gauge the pulse of your customers and their changing tastes? From an online position? Do you miss the personal interaction? And have you developed new ways of interacting with your customers?

 Tegen Rowett  06:32

What we do is very data driven. I think having the website, like obviously you have sales and sales reports in the shop. But even more with a website, you've got lots of different data from the websites that can help your buying. So we focus on the fastest moving lines, the ones that make us the most money. We obviously have like new styles coming in to keep regular customers interested. But yeah, I think we still manage to like chat to our customers, like people ring us up, we're on live chat with customers, we email customers. So we have that interaction with customers, even though it isn't face to face. And I still like in the shop, I used to imagine certain customers buying certain products. So it's less easy to do that now. But some I do have characters that I missed from the shop. But basically selling online is far more efficient way of selling. So yeah, I still think selling online beats that actually.

 Dave Barr  07:40

Okay, I guess having a store carries lots of other costs that you don't have to bear in your online side. So do you find that the sales and margins you now, enjoy are more positive than you had with the physical store?

 Tegen Rowett  07:57

Yeah, basically, from when I opened in 2012 to when I closed in March, the rent of the shop had gone up 35% and our footfall and turnover each year was going down. So that made it more and more difficult to actually make a profit. And when you're putting all that work in, like doing all those displays and and things, it is a bit like soul destroying when it's feel bad. So basically, in the beginning, it was great. And it was great because the website grew out of the shop. But in the end it just wasn't viable. Whereas in June, we moved into our new bigger offices just around the corner from the shop. And the rent even though it's a much bigger space is literally 20% of what the shop was. And, and we can still have appointments. And we literally around the corner from where we were anyway. So after COVID and stuff when people actually are more comfortable coming into space, more face to face things, we can still have appointments. But the shop like we needed to take like three grand a week just to break even. Whereas with the website, if like an ad isn't working, you can turn it off, you can scale up or down much more easily. But with the shop like the overheads are so big, you have to make a lot of money just to pay those costs. So you can turn off an ad that you can't stop paying your rent basically. And again, it's much better with the with the website.

 Dave Barr  09:46

Okay, do you know what was causing the reduction in footfall? anything particular? Is it just other stores closing or anything?

 Tegen Rowett  09:55

Yeah and for when we started in 2012 when we closed, there were a lot of shops that had closed down around us that were like, like shops that complimented our business. And they had all disappeared. And nothing new had come in, a lot of like the shop that was empty opposite was a big unit. And that had been empty for three years. And it's still empty now. And a lot of other shops like that were fashion and clothes and things that were sort of complemented our shop just had completely gone from the area. And it was just all jewelers around us. And I think sort of more and more people were shopping online. But a lot of our customers were tourists to the area, but they kind of were just, it wasn't a shopping destination. By the time we'd finished. We were hanging on for a new lane to be built around the corner from us. But even when they built the new lane and opened it, and all of those units were empty for ages as well. And they're just starting to fill them with temporary pop up shops, but it's a little bit too little too late really.

 Dave Barr  11:18

So much of it seem now like the Christmas type shops that are open for a month and gone again it sounds.

 Tegen Rowett  11:24

Exactly. And the thing is Brighton it's it's very touristy. So our busiest time was in summer. But the good days kind of got less and less. And as I said you had to take like about three grand a week just to breakeven. So in the summer, you do a lot more than that. But the good times kind of were getting less and less to trying to eke the out through the winter. got harder and harder.

 Dave Barr  11:53

Right. Okay. I understand you have quite a strong and well established relationship with your key supplier. How do you envisage Brexit will impact your inbound supplies. And here I'm thinking about the customs duties, processing delays, lead time impacts, and the potential for a possible increase in costs.

 Tegen Rowett  12:18

Yeah, Brexit will happening perhaps on our business, as I said before, about 85 to 90% of our products come from the EU. And we're working on that as we speak, to try and get up to date with all of the forms we need to fill out and everything we need to have in place and the software that we need. That's still an ongoing process. This is a lot to do. And yeah, there is obviously going to be a cost and impact. But our customers look for products that are high quality. And that we've we're hoping that they're buying them because they're looking for something that's going to last a long time. And they're not shopping with us because they're the cheapest. So if we put, if we have to put up our prices a little bit, I'm sure our customers would understand and buy them because they're valuable, because they last a long time, not just because they're the cheapest on the market, because they're not basically.

 Dave Barr  13:28

Interesting, because obviously you have a lot of repeat customers, you know, as a as a guy, I probably wouldn't think of, you know, hair clips and that something that somebody comes in regularly for you. I almost think you buy one. And that's done for a while. So things but obviously, people are taught to build up a suite of these products, then I guess.

Tegen Rowett  13:51

Yeah, we have styles that people come back and they want it in a different color, or people have their favorite clips. And then they say oh, like I'll go for a different color or slightly different style, different hair clips for different hair types. And we are definitely more of a "less is more" company because we focus on the high quality so you don't have to buy as many of one product. But yeah, obviously we want something to like, go with their different outfits and maybe try a different hairstyle and obviously especially over lock down people's hair is growing. So they need a clip to take more hair for example. They get their hair cut off and need a completely different hairstyle and different hair clips. So I think we definitely have repeat customers and about 30% of our sales are people coming back that have shopped with us before.

 Dave Barr  14:49

Okay, right. I understand that. So, now you've moved to an online business. How has that changed your product portfolio? Is it the range grown or reduced, or how's it developed?

 Tegen Rowett  15:04

Yes, so in the shop, we sold a lot more hats and fascinators for events like Ascot and things like that, whereas we don't sell those products online. In the shop, we were quite known for our fascinators and things. But those were one off items that we buy in for those seasons in those events. So it was very much people would come in maybe with their outfit wanting to match something. And when we started the website, we did try and put them online, but having a product that's one off and needing to exactly match a color or an outfit or style of something, we found that that was very much more difficult to sell online, we'd get a lot more returns, they were big, bulky items and delicate to post. And so that model didn't work as well on the website, whereas the hairclips, where are a lot of them were restocking and again and again, again. So we take the product photo once and model photos. And we're not having to continuously take like each one of five photos of those, and also in the shop, we like we had a lot of passing trade from tourists. So we wanted the shop to like, look pretty with like maybe crystal broaches that were sort of more impulse buy less practical items. Whereas the online shopper, obviously, they still buy some of the more decorative things we do. But it's much more of a practical item that they're often looking for that online shoppers often know what they're looking for when they come on their website. Whereas in store, it was basically people just browsing around the shops, so quite a different market. So I think about, we've got rid of at least 40% of what we used to sell in store and focused on the most profitable, highest selling lines just on the website.

 Dave Barr  17:11

Okay, so moving to fully online, that must have meant quite a bit of change. Have you needed to change your order processes, procedures, and scale up those operations to optimize the processing time of your orders.

 Tegen Rowett  17:28

So without the burden of the shop, I have better cash flow so I can place bigger orders. As before, we were selling out of lines before we were getting the stock back in our handmade lines take about four weeks to make. So it's not something that we can get in quickly. And so I've actually done a plan for the next year ahead of what I need to order, which before it was a bit more reactionary, or we're selling out that we need to order it we never get in as quickly. And but now I actually placed a huge order five times what I'd normally order, ready for Black Friday to be fully stocked of everything. Because obviously when we were selling out things, we were leaving money on the table, but also really frustrating customers sometimes if their favorite clips weren't in stock, and they'd have to wait for them. So now I've got a whole plan for next year ahead of ordering things on a rotation. So I'd order like three months worth of stock, an order clip only every third order, for example. And so hopefully it will work. And hopefully I'll have everything in stock and be able to work out what I need three months ahead.

 Dave Barr  18:52

Right. Okay. So you must have a much slicker, sort of pick, pack and ship type process now, do you have to have any more staff than you did before? Or have the staff you had previously in the shop, have they just migrated across?

 Tegen Rowett  19:08

Yeah, so I've got I had one full time staff member working on the website beforehand and and she would basically do everything from marketing, customer service, to packing web orders. And with a little bit of help from the shop as well if she was busy and they would help with some of the things. Now I have two full time staff members and two part time staff members who pick and pack the orders as well. And we're also looking to utilize the government's kickstart scheme and getting two new full time staff members, hopefully to help out because there's still not enough time in the day to get everything done at the moment.

 Dave Barr  19:57

Okay, so you're able to scale up for let's say you increase your business next year by 50%. You're in the your premises and the way you're working would would enable that still to happen, I guess.

 Tegen Rowett  20:11

Yeah. And I guess we might need to add bigger space to store some of the stock. And there's another office in our office building we might need if we had loads of stock, but generally, yeah, we've got enough freedom to have more staff. Our stockroom is, like fully labeled with all of our different lines and things. So yeah, we're ready to scale up. Absolutely.

 Dave Barr  20:38

Okay. So you know, you're placing bigger orders, and you've got a plan together. Has that helped you in your negotiations with your supplier at all?

 Tegen Rowett  20:50

Um, good question. Yeah, I am, I've got a good relationship, as I said, with my supplier, because we've been buying from them for the last eight years. And I, I tend to not to negotiate too hard with prices and things because I, I kind of feel like that, I just want the stock from them. Like, and I know how much work goes into them. So I'm just appreciate, too, for actually receiving the stock. And I know the work that's gone into them. And so I think from my negotiation with suppliers it's more like, please, can you prioritize my order before you prioritise others, that sort of thing. But but yeah, then they are lovely people my main supplier that I buy from, and actually, I would have liked to go over there this year, but because everything with covid, I'm gonna hold off going over this year, and we've been having lots of zoom meetings instead.

 Dave Barr  21:59

Okay, understand, just turning back a little bit to the technicalities of Brexit. How are you finding the information and support from the government? So the local Chamber of Commerce, obviously, your supplier themselves and any shippers you use to move the goods. Are you finding it easy to keep aware of the changing developments? Or is it quite challenging?

 Tegen Rowett  22:25

I must say I have been delegated a lot of those jobs. So I'll find out whether it's been easy when my team manage to pull it all together. At least they'll oversee all of that. But yeah, there is information online. And we've just got to find our way through really. My supplier, and he sells a lot to Asian things. So he's kind of used to selling outside of the EU. And I mean, we will have will be hopefully fully stocked and not be like desperate for stock to come in. And so I will be, my delivery that's due at the beginning of January, I will be asking if we can push it forward a little bit and get it before the 31st of December, because that could save some money on customs. But some. But yeah, I think if there is a delay, we will be ready because we will be stocked up by then anyway. 

 Dave Barr  23:32

All right. Yeah, that makes sense. It certainly, if it was me, I'd be recommending pulling stocks in before, obviously, things change. Because there may well be quite a lot of disruption in January. It may not be of course, but at least you know, you have the stock available. And that's obviously it, you're able to sell it. So I would certainly in my own expertise, I would have said, bring things forward a little bit, plan a little bit ahead, get things prepared and organized. And then you give yourself some wiggle room, if there are some delays in the first month. But that'll be my personal suggestion.

 Tegen Rowett  24:11

Absolutely. Yeah, if they can make it quick enough. Like I need it as soon as they can make it really.

 Dave Barr  24:18

Yeah. So what do you see is your main challenges in 2021 from a retail perspective?

 Tegen Rowett  24:27

Yes, so running a shop and an online business is quite different. So I actually am quite relieved not to have the split focus anymore. And I'm actually quite excited about the sort of having the room to just explore like making the website as great as it can be. Like each year we strive to make like grow the business and improve the business. So it'll be great that we can work on bigger projects, and hopefully expand our team with the help of the government kickstart scheme to be doing more and more like things like more videos of like, hair tutorials, how we can use hair clips, and more blog posts and stuff. Whereas at the moment, we feel like, we want to do more of that. But there's only so much time in the day, especially, we're getting all the orders out and things like that. And so I think, yeah, next year, just be kind of honning that even more. And I'm, like, yeah, I, I kind of, I have other little ideas in my head of maybe like, making another website or launching a men's hair accessories website, or even doing like consulting and things if I've got my team sort of working on everything. And we can go to other brands and say, like, I've got a team do you want to utilize them. And so I've got lots of ideas, but I'm very much like someone who wants to make things perfect first and can't really move on, until I've done that, which means that like something is never perfect. So I have these ideas of things I want to do. But whether I'll actually get to them I'm not sure.

 Dave Barr  26:17

Okay, its interesting you mentioned the videos. Is social media, an important aspect to your campaigns that go out there, then like YouTube, and you've got a strong YouTube account, or how does it work?

 Tegen Rowett  26:31

Yeah, so we would like to have a stronger YouTube channel. And we've got some videos on there that have ranked quite highly. And we do get people clicking through to our website for them. Social media as a whole, is something that we want to build up more of, and actually have a bigger strategy rather than just pacing things. So that's an area that we are, it is on the cards of something we want to grow more of. And at the moment, and a lot of our customers have come through, come through to our website, organically. We've done a lot of stuff through the years of making sure we rank highly on Google, and our other highest sort of customers coming to our website or come from the Google Shopping ads. Those are customers that are looking for a product, they know what they want. And then they click through having seen the products on Google Shopping, so they convert quite highly. Whereas social media, it's a more of a long term sort of getting customer warmed up and getting them to know your brands then sort of like getting them to realize they actually want to hair clip for the first time. So when so yeah, we hadn't cracked social media yet. But that's good in a way because we've got room to grow. So so yeah, that would be another thing for next year really?

 Dave Barr  27:56

Absolutely. Sounds good. What would you say were the most important learning experiences and kind of habits you've gained in your journey of the last 10 years.

 Tegen Rowett  28:10

To build a big team, and people that have faith, and the right sort of attitude, really. I think that I had, I've got a girl that works for me. She actually started as a Saturday girl when she was 15, just out of school. And she helped me a lot when I was building the website, photography and putting products on the website. And she then went away to university and went to London College of Fashion and she also did a year working for Hunter, Hunter welly boots, in product development and things. So she's got a lot of like skills that she's learnt, merchandising, buying, and a lot of like, the more business side bit, spreadsheets and stuff. And now she's come back to work for me full time. And she's worked for me last year full time. And I think it's nice to have those like team members that you've kind of almost homegrown so they didn't have to have all the experience from the beginning. I've got other stories that that another girl that works to me she started off just working part time and now she's working full time and grown into more of the marketing role. And I have moved from some girls that used to work in the shop and they help with the packing the orders now and they're still students at uni or doing other things as well. But it's just getting that person that's passionate about what you do. And that wants to do well because they take pride in what they do and understand the biger picture. So yeah, I love like working with my team and building that team. And yes, I have had not so great staff as well. But we won't go into those. But yeah, I think that is a key thing to build a good team. I also want to build a business that work can work without you because I haven't got, hadn't just given myself a job. And I can go away from my business and it will run without me, the orders will go out, the emails to customers will go out, customer service will be done. So although I, I'm a bit of a control freak, and I like to get involved, I kind of step away from business as well. And another thing I'd like to say like having sort of been in business for like, eight, nine years now is what I've learned is sort of the data is key. And you can only improve like what you're recording. So when it comes to ads, like look at, like, what is working, what is not, we have a great big spreadsheet, which one of my team members fills in each week, with all our key performance indicators. So how many customers are on our website and like, everything from like, sort of all the stats for like how many people came through from Facebook, or all sorts of different sort of information that we can sort of look at, week on week, and set individual targets to improve those things like improve our conversion rates on the website and things. So when it kind of focuses us more. So we've got the bigger picture. And then we've got this sort of like this is what the conversion rate is now how do we get it to the next step? What can we do to do that? So yeah, I'd say those a few little things that I've kind of learnt and led to enjoy along the way as well.

 Dave Barr  32:04

Yeah. Just Just curious, do you have kind of like daily production meetings in some respects to you decide what you're trying to achieve on on the day? Do you go through what issues occurred yesterday? How do you manage the sort of day to day awareness of, you know, the processes and the procedures and that to make sure they are actually be maintained and improved upon.

 Tegen Rowett  32:30

We have weekly meetings, and those are loosely based around our KPI dashboard, spreadsheets, and what has happened the week before and things like that. And we have like general chats throughout the week in the office. Certain things, sometimes I feel like things should be more structured. And obviously, we've only had, I've only had a bigger group, and a bigger, like, sort of working in an office with more of my team around me since June. So all of those things are kind of like striving to get a bit more structure and plan and months ahead, and things like that. So we're not there yet. But But yeah, I think I have got one girl that worked from home part time and stuff. But actually, like, I know, like the government are saying work from home if you can at the moment, but we have a bigger office so we can social distance. And actually, it's so much easier to have people in the office bouncing ideas off each other. So it is good when we can to be all here talking and chatting and stuff. One thing I would say though, is sometimes I have to say, right, it doesn't need all of us to plan the photo shoots, you do one element and you do the other elements. And I have sort of learnt that a bit more in like having a team and expanding the team and trying to create more like defined job roles. So one is more in charge of the brand voice and the copywriting and another ones more the sort of overall look of the brand and developing those photoshoots and how they're going to look and things like that. So sort of rather than just everyone pitches in and does a bit of everything and and stuff like that. So I am trying to be a bit more organized and defining those roles, more

 Dave Barr  34:36

It sounds like you have many people that are on the creative side of things then?

 Tegen Rowett  34:41

Yeah, and I think also they bounce off each other and complement each other well. I'm a very detailed person and sometimes gets too bogged down in details. My partner is more of an overall picture kind of guy which does help although we clash as well. But then the team as well I've got, like, one is more sort of methodical, and gets her work done. One is kind of flitting from different things and sort of getting things done that needs to be done. And reactionary because is great, because I'm like, Oh, can you do this? And can you do that and stuff, but actually, like, like, it's kind of not necessarily what she should be doing. It's like my fault for for distracting her. But it's good because you kind of like I have different members of the team that are kind of good at different things and work well together. So I yeah, it works well.

 Dave Barr  35:42

Yeah. So I guess the structure of the business, as you say, the job descriptions and roles, the  procedures and processes, the KPIs, all these things are becoming the talk of a bigger business for sure. I would have said.

 Tegen Rowett  35:59

Yeah well, that's, that's always the dream, isn't it. We were really lucky overlooked down because, I mean, I know a lot of businesses have struggled. But we were one of the lucky ones that it meant people were shopping online a lot more in the peak. And our business literally did four times what it was doing before lockdown. And although that slowed down a little bit, it's still doing a lot more, which has enabled us to grow. And to sort of take in the pain of losing the shop or giving up the shop away. The shop was something that each year, I was sort of getting closer and closer to the fact that isn't as viable, and the website was starting to pay a lot of the shop bills. And I was being hopeful for a few years that things could turn around. But with a covid then I just then was like there's no way that I put in store retail is going to do well at the moment. And with the boom of the website, everyone shopping online, and also people not being able to go to their hairdressers over lock down, obviously helped us because people were needing to maintain their new longer hair style, so that helped us, headbands and side cambs being sold. And so that helps the business. And like I've said made it a lot easier to kind of not feel sad about getting rid of the shop that I had for eight years. We're moving to a new, bigger, better office, that we've completely redone our stock room. And we've got a big packing station and pigeonholes for each order. And yeah, so we've kind of got a chance to design like a perfect office for this. And it's kind of like I didn't have to worry that the website can survive on its own. And even though the website would financially be supporting the shop at the time, like the stock was held in the shop, the like we, out the back of the shop, we had stock and all of our packing station. Obviously that meant that if I was getting rid of the shop, I then had to pay for a bigger office. Well, luckily, we suddenly did more money, which meant that we could do that. So yeah, all in all, it's been all the hard work over the years has come to this point, that we were able to make the most of the situation and, and then give us more time moving forward without the shop to be able to focus more on making the website as good as it can be, and maybe expanding into other things as well.

 Dave Barr  39:07

That sounds really good. Well, you've been extremely generous with your time. If you can finish on one note, perhaps it should be what should your customers be looking forward to or excited about for 2021? Have you got anything you want to, to share to whet people's appetite?

 Tegen Rowett  39:27

Yeah, we've recently been designing some lovely new gift bags. So our handmade range of products. So I'm very excited to see them when they come in. And  yet basically more more tutorials, more blogs, more content and hopefully making everything as great as it can be and more more exciting new products. So yeah,

 Dave Barr  39:57

Brilliant that sounds good. Well, thank you very much your time I find the discussions really informative. If one of the listeners would like to find out more about your products, where would they go to to seek you out?

 Tegen Rowett  40:12

You can find us at www.tegenaccessories.co.uk and Instagram @tegenaccessories. And you can contact me directly if you wish it's tegen@tegenaccessories.co.uk.

 Dave Barr  40:33

Fantastic, fantastic. Well, as we've just heard, I think the impact of COVID-19 and Brexit simultaneously, are certainly creating huge challenges and concerns for many businesses and of course impacting the local and global economies, particularly those who are either or, or perhaps both source their products abroad or supply their customers internationally. So I do hope you the listeners have found the discussions quite informative.  Thank you for listening to this podcast. Please subscribe and leave a positive review. If you can spare a minute or two. If you would like to contact me, my email address is David@thereallifebuyer.co.uk or find me @reallifebuyer on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, where you're welcome to direct message me. I look forward to you joining me on future episodes. Take care. Remember, Save Money and Buy Smart