Material Retail Dumps

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to material retail dumps episode eight. This is the second episode in a series of episodes around hiring, managing and engaging employees. As we know, it's probably the most important part of running your business. In this episode, we'll have a special guest named Robin. Robin's a business owner with over 15 years experience and really has a very corporate way of hiring and retaining employees. It's really cool to hear how she motivates her managers and her whole staff and gets everybody on the same team to increase her sales. And of course her bottom line. Well, I hope you guys enjoy this episode and here it comes. All right. My guest today is Robin Robin owns and runs three retail locations in California and Texas. Um, so I'm gonna let Robin introduce herself really

Speaker 2 (00:43):
Quickly. Hi guys. Um, I'm Robin. I have owned my boutiques for 16 years. I have one in San Francisco, California, which is my original, and then I have two locations in Texas in the Dallas sport worth area, one in Dallas and one in Plano. Uh, San Francisco we've had the longest, Dallas was second and Plano of course is our most recent store.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
Awesome. That's amazing. We're so happy to have you on the podcast with three stores, it must be really hard to staff the stores and also run the business. Tell us about how you view your store managers and what role they play in helping you run the business.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
I would say my store managers are integral to my business. As you pointed out, I have three locations and they're in different geographical areas. So I can't be in six places at once. So in the beginning, of course I was the store manager along with my business partner and we were the ones kind of doing all of the day to day, but as we've grown and our business has grown, we now hire full time store managers who run every aspect of the store within the store. They manage the employees. They take care of the day to day of the store. They handle customer issues, they handle sales issues, they handle visual merchandising issues, and I've found that it helps for me to kind of lean into what they're interested in and what they're good at. Um, so if they're good at visual merchandising, I let them do that.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
But maybe if they're sort of other areas where they aren't as great, that's kind of where I step in as the owner and sort of help them. I'm like their teammate. I sort of more act like their assistant manager. Um, when I kind of think about how my managers work and I can honestly say, I wouldn't be able to do my business without them. I've had, um, a number of store managers and that interim period between not having them sometimes I think, oh, I could do this. And then I realize immediately that I can't do all of it.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
right. No, that, that makes a ton of sense. And it really talks about how important it is to, to keep your employees kind motivated and happy. So tell us about, um, like how you pay them, your starting pairs and like some manager incentives.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
Yeah, absolutely. So, um, I look for full-time experience store managers. Um, so that is a sort of longer and more in depth process when I'm hiring my managers and that pay can either be hourly or salary. And it's based on a full-time work week and they have a special bonus structure that's based on how well the stores do overall to kind of motivate them, to be able to motivate the team. Um, and then they help me in hiring all the employees that we have right now. We have, I think more than 40 employees in our three locations, um, we tend to hire part-time employees, uh, for all of our stores. That's kind of the vibe we're going for our customers 18 to 34. So we hire a lot of high school and college girls. We do have a number of girls that work for us who have graduated from college and maybe work this job with a few other jobs as well.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
So when looking at how to pay and incentivize our team, you know, if you've never had a job before, uh, depending on which state we're in, obviously in California, we're kind of stuck by the minimum wage that is required there. So that's sort of our entry level position there. We kind of go up from there in Texas, we have a little bit more flexibility on where we pair our employees. So, you know, we start around $9 an hour, if you have no experience. And we work up from there in an hourly wage based on if you've worked in other stores before, if you graduated from college, if you've graduated from high school and kind of think about it in that sort of corporate type of way.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
Well, that's, that's really cool. And I'm sure there's some sort of a commission going on. So how do you decide, you know, which employees get paid commission and how much they get paid in commission?

Speaker 2 (04:16):
Yeah. In the current work environment, commission has been a really important hiring tool for us. Um, I think it's really competitive to find employees now. We've been pretty lucky in that our stores have been around for a long time and are fairly popular in the areas that we're in. So we do get a lot of applicants, but I think commission is a way in which we can pay people more while still making it financially viable for our business. A lot of times, small business owners end up overextending themselves by paying employees more than they can really actually afford to pay the employees. And then they sort of end up upside down. But for us, we've found if we do an hourly wage plus, uh, commission, uh, we can incentivize our employees in a really great way. So the way our commission structure works for our individual employees is that we have a daily break point.

Speaker 2 (05:02):
So every day that the store is open, we assume that you're gonna sell X amount. Um, whether that's $50 an hour, a hundred dollars an hour, $150 an hour, kind of like something in that range. And it varies by day. So obviously you don't sell as much on a Tuesday as you do on a Saturday. Anything that our employees sell above that amount, we pay 2% commission. It's a flat rate across the board for anyone that makes commission on our team. Um, we use commission as a hiring tool. So if you have experience, we often offer a commission structure as part of your compensation. If you don't. We usually offer that as part of an incentive raise after you've been with us for six months or a year. Um, it's really lucrative for the employees. I have some employees that are making over $5 an hour in commission on the shifts that they work, especially people that choose to work the Friday night shifts or the Saturday daytime shifts, they end up making significantly more and kind of the sky's the limit, right? If you have a thousand dollars sale with a customer, you're getting paid $30 an hour, $35 an hour for that shift that you worked because you're making so much in commission from those particular sales. So it incentivizes my employees, um, to work harder, which don't get me wrong. They, they try anyway, but it helps them understand how to clientele and kind of build that clientele business. It encourages them to be more outgoing with customers. And I think that it really works well for us.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
Nice. That's awesome. I think that's really good, a good way to keep, uh, individual employees motivated. So that brings me to another question. I know sometimes with commission, it can get a little competitive in store, which could be good, but also could be bad. So tell us about some of the things you do to just keep the team together in terms of team bonuses, team incentives. So everybody's kind of working towards the same goal.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
Yes, we are very lucky. I have seen that a few times in having the stores where there have been issues between sales people and arguments over commission, but usually our team works together and there's kind of enough sales to go around. So people feel, um, comfortable as a team, but one of the things, what we do, let let's say this, we do two things. Three things that I think are really important when it comes to incentivizing the team to work together. One is our manager's bonus based on the entire store. So their goal is always to make sure that everyone is working together as a team to reach the highest level of sales. So their commission per se, is based on the total store, monthly sales, and that keeps them kind of in the right mindset to be thinking about how to motivate our team together.

Speaker 2 (07:16):
The other thing we do is we have a, a weekly team goal. So every week we have a sales goal sale goal for each of our locations. And if our team meets that sales goal, they, everyone on the team gets store credit. If they do 10% better, which is our goal, they get more store credit. And if they do 20% better, which we call stretch, they get even more store credit. They end up being able to use that store credit to purchase anything in the store for free. So pretty much our whole team gets free clothes. You know, they earn anywhere from 25 to $50 a week in store credit, and it's an everyone thing. So you have to work at least one shift during the week. Um, and then everyone on the team makes it, so that kind of helps them feel like they're motivated towards working towards the thing, the, the same thing.

Speaker 2 (07:58):
And also everyone loves free clothes. Uh, the third thing that we do is store contests. So while they're individual contests, we often have multiple winners and make it kind of a team goal. So we'll do a contest to see who sell has the highest U P T units per transaction over a two week period. And the top three people in the contest we'll get either a cash bonus or store credit. And then they'll also get a no two week rule, which in retail is very important. Um, we only allow our employees to buy clothes after they've been in the store for two weeks, but of course they always want the newest, most fun things. So a lot of times we'll do a contest where we take away the two week rule and they can use their store credit to get something that's brand new in the store before all the size sellout to customers.

Speaker 1 (08:41):
That's awesome. That's really amazing. Thank you so much. Um, for sharing all that information, I know it'll be really helpful to a lot of business owners. Um, yeah,

Speaker 2 (08:49):
Hiring is always hiring and retaining employees is always tough, but it is really rewarding, especially to see a team where everyone becomes friends and they go out and do things, obviously without me cause now, but you know, they become real friends and those friendships carry forward. We have some girls from our San Francisco location who have gone to each other's weddings now and been bridesmaids and you know, our friends outside of having worked at Y and I, so I think that, that it makes me really proud.

Speaker 1 (09:17):
Wow. That's amazing. Thank you so much, Robin.

Speaker 2 (09:20):
You're welcome.