Heidi Jarvis is the founder of 2 eCommerce businesses – Boutique Heidi and Garage 79. Launched in 2011 and 2013 they’ve experienced rapid growth in 2020 – Garage 79 is up 1,071% and Boutique Heidi up 4,601% year on year.
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About Heidi
Heidi has a B2B eCommerce background. She started out consulting and creating websites and marketing for other businesses.
For her new venture, she wanted something entirely different.
About Boutique Heidi
Boutique Heidi sells handmade handkerchiefs with high quality material. The hankies are similar to Liberty of London and Heidi wanted to emphasize quality.
Four seamstresses make them locally and Heidi sources material out of London and Japan. She also loves the gift quality and sustainable aspect of handkerchiefs.
About Garage 79
Garage 79 sells t-shirts designed by Heidi’s husband. He is a car fanatic and the t-shirts are all illustrations of different car models.
About the Businesses
- Located in Ballaret Australia
- Both eCommerce sites sell internationally
- Started on Big Cartel—now on Shopify
Heidi is a huge Shopify fan. If you’re ready to get going on Shopify, browse our episodes to learn more and check out Shopify here.
Favorite Shopify Widgets
The Team
Heidi is the primary team member. Her husband works full time outside of the business but also contributes with artwork.
They have four seamstresses to sew hankies and a few people helping with shipping. Heidi’s 11 year old son also lends a hand with his video skills on the weekend.
Making the Business a Priority
Covid gave Heidi an opportunity to focus on the business as her first priority.
Listening to Lucy Bloomfield talk about business stopped Heidi in her tracks and inspired her to sign up for her course.
Connecting with someone who challenged her and discovering a supportive community of like minded business ownerswas a game changer for her businesses.
Getting the Messaging Right
For Boutique Heidi, Heidi’s most successful ad was filmed by her 11 year old son. It’s a simple video of her hands opening and holding a hankie while talking about why she loves the product.
This simple video has over 300,000 views now and Heidi says it’s been tremendously popular for people to give the hankies as a gift, especially as people feel more disconnected from their loved ones during lockdowns.
She has received a lot of good stories from her customers that she’s been able to share.
Garage 79 required a different sort of marketing finesse and Heidi had to experiment a bit more to get it right.
Eventually, they did a similar video of Heidi talking about why they created the business, but she says the tagline (which she doesn’t like) of “cool t-shirts for cool people” worked surprisingly well.
They also shifted their targeting from men exclusively to women and men which dramatically increased their sales.
eCommerce Book Top Tip
- Atomic Habits by James Clear
eCommerce Traffic Top Tip
- Facebook Ads—even though Heidi was skeptical, she has converted her thinking and says the business wouldn’t be where it is now without them
Tool Top Tip
- Monday
- Working with a business coach
Growth Top Tip
- Get a business coach. It will level you up fast
Interview Links
Related episodes
- Ethical eCommerce and how to get to 10,000 customers in 18 months with Lucy Bloomfield
- Improving Conversion Rates: Getting your customer personas right is rocket fuel for conversion rates with Lucy Bloomfield
- Yandy’s Thom Brodeur-Kazanjian – how to seize opportunities to achieve huge growth in your business
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