‘I’ll make more money online’
Trevor Nichols - Sep 25, 2017 - Biz Releases

Image: Facebook
A West Kelowna business owner says he’ll make more money by shutting down his storefront and moving entirely online.

When Jordan Pearce lets his commercial lease expire in November, it won’t be because his business is in dire straits, or because he can’t keep it running any longer.

Pearce is letting his lease expire because he just doesn’t need it anymore.

The owner of West Kelowna’s Retro Thrift–a second-hand shop with a prominent, Main Street storefront–says the amount of foot traffic he gets in his store pales in comparison to the online audience he reaches each day.

“Right now, with my business, I don’t need this storefront. It’s just costing me money.”

With the cost of rent increasing, utilities draining his bottom line, and sinking cash into driving the shop each day, he says he no longer sees any point in keeping his storefront going.

“Unless you have a perfect location where you’re having a lot of walk-in traffic, it’s going to be difficult for someone to make a living,” he says.

“I have to sell a lot of stuff to make money, whereas if I get a storage unit, and say I’m paying $400-$500 a month, I can put everything in there and then do appointments.”

It would be easy to see Pearce moving his entire operation to a storage unit as a bad sign, but he explains that the physical location of his business isn’t anywhere as important as his online presence.

Pierce does a whopping 80 per cent of his sales online. He is a member of 20 different Facebook “swap and shop” groups, and spends most of his energy pushing products through social media.

He says the platform allows him to reach exponentially more people than through a physical storefront or traditional advertising.

Every group he’s in has at least 800 people in in, many have six-to-eight thousand, and others have membership as high as 15,000-18,000 people.

“When you’re posing on 20 groups at a time, you have access to tens of thousands of people, and they all see your post. If you do it consistently, it’s free advertising.”

He says he often gets approached by salespeople pushing traditional print and radio ads, but can’t figure out why anyone would use them–especially at the price they charge.

“Three-hundred dollars for a tiny ad in a newspaper, are you kidding me? If you go on Facebook, and you go on swap and shop groups, and you set up your page properly, if you spend $50 a month you’re going to get 50,000 people that see your post. Whereas how many people read the newspaper?”

Retro Thrift will remain in its West Kelowna location until the end of November, and until then Pearce says he’s having a massive sale to clear out his inventory.

Pearce says there’s some great chances for deals while the store is still around, but come December, you’ll only be able to find him online.


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