New Ventures That Are Not In Twirl's Favor

About two months ago, the Twirl Girls and I came up with an idea to hire an alterations lady to come to the store to alter the bridesmaid dresses to acquire some extra money for the store. We had some interviews and had them alter an old dress on each of us to see their finishing work. After a two week process of seeing their work, we finally decided on Pam who has been working with us for almost two months now. Pam owns her own alterations company and works out of our store in which she gives us a profit for working from our store. At first it was a learning process because we had to completely revamp our dress process when they get delivered to the store. We had to accommodate with the little space we have in the back of the boutique to store the dresses, and our calling procedure to all the bridesmaids to make appointments for pick-up and now alteration appointments. We decided to do the alterations in the store on Thursdays and Fridays after 4pm. The first couple weeks was working out well, we were starting to get appointments and it was working out well until we started to get angry phone calls. This is where it took a big turn for our store, but in a bad way.
We started to get many phone calls that were upset bridesmaids who had received their dresses back from alterations and were not happy with what had been done. The problem with this is that we do not know what Pam is doing to the dresses, in which we reiterate to the bridesmaids. They are taking their anger out on us and we are getting penalized for this. We added up the total amount we have charged for alterations which to date is $1,052.00 and we have lost $504.00 because people have demanded their money back for the work that has been done. So this is coming out of the stores pocket and Pam is still getting paid in full.
After making another refund for an entire $350 dress, we came up with a new way to do alterations through our store. We are now going to have all the bridesmaids contact Pam when they come to the store to get their dress altered, so if they have a problem they call Pam instead us here at Twirl. This will ultimately leave us as the middleman who has no inclination about alterations out of the situation. We are also going to have the bridesmaids pay Pam instead of going through us. Again, this will leave us out of the alterations process besides making appointments and providing a facility for Pam. Hopefully this will solve the angry phone calls we are getting and let Pam know that she needs to pay more attention to her work otherwise we are going to have to Twirl her out of the store!

Half Way

It has now been exactly 12 weeks since the first day of my internship at Twirl Boutique. There have been lots of experiences that sometimes makes me question wanting to get married and have a bridal party in general, but I love working there. Thus far I have learned a lot about the planning process of a wedding, how to deal with vendors directly, and how to market on a budget for small businesses like ourselves. Twirl is opening a second location in Chandler, AZ that will carry completely different designers than the Scottsdale store. This has been a great opportunity to see all the steps that are being conducted to get the new store up and running. I get to see the layout, designs, and policies in which the store will run. This is an exciting time because it is only 2 months out from opening day! The Twirl girls have been putting our heads together to make the new store just as good as the Scottsdale one.
I have become really close with the Twirl girls; we are a little family that loves to work with the everyday bride to make their wedding day a dream come true. I am happy that I am apart of it and excited to see what the next couple weeks bring as we get closer to opening the new store and hopefully me getting hired full time!

A Thread Event

One of our vendors is coming into town for a Trunk Show that we are having at our store. You may be wondering what the heck is a trunk show? Well it is when a vendor bring their newest products or products that are not normally sold in stores and showcase them for a certain among of time. It can be just for that day, or in our case, for the whole weekend. We are hosting this trunk show for Thread, which is one of our vendors that have just the most adorable dresses. Many of which could be used other than for a wedding. Melissa, who is Thread's representative coming to our store for this lavish event, is so excited to be coming and see our store. We having been cleaning and making our store sparkle for this special event. In loo of this event, tomorrow night, we are having a cocktail party for the designer. It is for previous customers, and those brides interested in a new line to come preview the trunk show dresses. We are having wine, champagne, appetizers, and good company to celebrate Thread. I am really excited because I have been calling our potential brides and bridesmaids to invite them to this party that I have helped implement and plan. The Twirl girls are all so excited for tomorrow and this weekend's festivities.

Bridezillas

I know that most girls dream of that day that they walk down the aisle in a big white dress with all their family and friends there to see you marry the person of your dreams. The process leading up to that gets stressful and brides tend to get ruthless and become what people call "bridezillas". The Twirl girls try to make the wedding planning as stressful as possible and help out in anyway we can, but sometimes we get a "red sticker" bride. Let me explain what that means; we have a color sticker system that we put on the brides file to let the Twirl girls know how high maintenance they can be. It just lets us know if we need to give a little extra attention or care when speaking with them or answering any of their questions. Being a red sticker bride means extreme bridezilla. In the last week I have dealt with two red sticker brides that were just awful to me which was defiantly not necessary. They are demanding and have no sensitivity towards others and treated me as if I was incompetent. This made me want to curse her and tell her what I really thought, but of course I kept my composure and apologized profusely for the mistake that she made. I made her feel at ease after the 15 minutes of cruelty, but it was worth it because you want to make the bride happy so she can refer us to her friends. Bridezillas think the world revolves around them and they demand intangible things. They are just unbearable to be around when it comes to the planning process and will put down everyone on the way. I always thought your wedding was supposed to be a blissful time, happy times, planning the most memorable day of your life, but apparently this is not the case. I have learned what a real bridezilla is and I decided when I get married I am going to let my mom choose everything and hope to be a green sticker bride!

My Revamping of Forms

This last week I was pondering how I could change some of the forms at the store in order to bypass the phone ringing a thousand times a day with the same questions that seem to be answered on the forms that these bridesmaids and brides have in front of them.
Twirl has such a uniform way to keeping tabs on each bridal party. We use various websites the send thank-you emails, to make appointments, send emails about updates/deadlines, and how to order a dress from Twirl for the brides wedding. After being there for over a month now, I have noticed that a lot of the emails have not been updated with current policies, and bridesmaids do not like to read in general. So I took it upon myself to completely revamp all the emails to make it idiot proof for those that do not like to read lengthy emails. Highlighting certain phrases seems to work. Now we don't get 20 phone calls a day asking the same questions about how or where to order a dress or get information.
Of course I asked before I decided to change how the Twirl girls have been doing it for the last 4 years, but they seemed to be very content with what I did to make the store seem less chaotic without the phone ringing off the hook every day. I like to make life as less complicated as possible and starting with simple tasks like forms at work, helps every little bit.

The First Month

Being in my last semester at ASU, I took on an internship with a small business in Scottsdale called Twirl Boutique. It is a small business that caters to bridesmaids and all the accessories that goes along with a wedding party. I took on this internship in order to learn the ins and outs of a small business and to gain knowledge on weddings and what goes into planning them. Twirl Boutique wants to help create the whole vision that the bride has for the wedding and we help them bring it to life. I am learning the basics of the business to know how to run my own appointments and work with the vendors myself to network for the future. I am looking forward to learning more about the financial side and the marketing techniques that they use to make their business so successful in this dreadful economic slump.