The third episode of the Digital SOS series sees Vodafone Business support a London-based fashion boutique with online sales. Vodafone UK News visited the three sisters behind the business to hear exactly how the support has helped them grow.
“Our parents owned a shop; we lived above it for over 20 years…we grew up there. A business ethic was always instilled in us.”
D.A.Y Boutique (D.A.Y) is the passion project of three sisters – Disha, Apee and Yukti. Built from a love of independent retail, the trio has been styling and selling under-the-radar brands to their Peckham community for six years.
Their business journey started at a much younger age, however, while growing up above their parents’ shop in Hayes, West London.
The experience wasn’t all free chocolate bars as their friends might have hoped, though. Instead, holidays were spent supporting the family business – hard work that certainly seems to have paid off now.
The three sisters often reminisce about the community that their parents built during this time. A spirit that they have successfully emulated within their own independent boutique, creating relationships with customers and owners of other local shops in the area.
With a strong, loyal following in Peckham, the next logical step was to take these brands beyond the local community and grow their business in the process. But doing that meant a stronger digital presence was needed.
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Small businesses like Mejuicer can reach their potential through the better use of technology, with a little help from Vodafone V-Hub.
Enter Vodafone Business and its V-Hub service – a collection of engaging and informative content that helps small and medium-sized businesses get the digital tools they need to thrive.
Together with entrepreneur and brand ambassador Steven Bartlett, V-Hub adviser Mark and the team got to work with helping D.A.Y overcome some persistent obstacles.
“We’ve established the brick and mortar of our business,” says youngest sister Apee, “but the next step is e-commerce, where our main challenges are how to translate our boutique feel online and where to place our focus.”
By working with the business to make quick, valuable changes to their online approach, the V-Hub team helped set D.A.Y up to better reach a new audience of online shoppers, both near and far. Changes that the busy family-run business didn’t always have time to experiment with or learn themselves.
Steven Bartlett visits D.A.Y boutique in Peckham to support co-founders and sisters Disha, Apee and Yukti
A growing family business
After all, between children and a still-growing business, ensuring a healthy work-life balance has been difficult for the sisters and their young families. With a stronger online presence, however, there was potential to expand without sacrificing these other important areas of life.
“Being online means you don’t always need to be physically in the shop,” says Apee. “Using e-commerce gives us the platform to work flexibly while still growing the business.”
Having spent a day working with Steven, alongside ongoing advice from the V-Hub team, D.A.Y has begun realising this potential.
While they’ve carefully honed the instore experience for their customers, they hadn’t – prior to receiving the help of Steven Bartlett and V-Hub – carefully crafted the same user experience online.
V-Hub’s e-commerce guidance
Thankfully, the e-commerce guidance provided by Steven and Vodafone’s V-Hub team can be put into practice by any small business.
If you want to make an impactful change to your online activity, simply follow this four-step checklist:
Analyse behaviour
Use data and analytics to provider a deeper understanding of your customer, allowing for more targeted messaging and marketing.
Run experiments
Increasing the rate of experimentation will increase the rate of success. This can include testing everything from website images to product description text.
Sell on social
Drive social sales by using tools such as Meta catalogues. It allows customers to buy products on social channels without having to visit the site itself.
Remove barriers
Create a frictionless checkout experience, so that your customers are more likely to complete their online transactions.
The family’s foundations may be stronger than most but, with one-to-one guidance from a V-Hub adviser, the sisters can now take their independent shop to the next level.
“We’ve all had such a positive mindset shift,” says Disha. “We have spent much more time thinking about the website.
“We are super excited about the analytics available to us, and we now know what to look out for. It is mostly tracking customer journeys, and the key thing for us is basket abandonments.”
Steven Bartlett shared his own thoughts, after meeting with D.A.Y: “They viewed e-commerce as intimidating, but they now see it for the opportunity it is. They have already started using shoppable links, for instance, which is great.”
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With support from V-Hub, D.A.Y has embraced the strategy that not all online merchandise needs to be available in-store. In fact, by broadening their reach through their website, the sisters plan to go one step further.
They want to become an agency for international brands that lack UK representation, offering wholesale opportunities and supporting their online representative in the UK.
“With an increased online presence, we have the flexibility to try new things, apply this agency mindset online, and become these brands’ online representation in the UK,” says Yukti.
Despite their ambitions for online growth, it’s clear that community remains at the heart of their business. Visitors to their elegant boutique in Peckham, for instance, will always be greeted with a warm smile that radiates a strong local spirit.
“We would love for Peckham to remain [as it is] with authentic, independent shops and local businesses,” says Disha. “There is a WhatsApp group, where we support and push each other. We want to keep that community vibe.”
Thanks to the support of Vodafone Business, D.A.Y Boutique is now better equipped to keep blending this traditional community ethic, which customers love, with a modern digital approach that they increasingly expect.
Watch the full episode here, and stay up to date with the latest news from Vodafone by following us on LinkedIn and Twitter/X, as well as signing up for News Centre website notifications.
