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Swanky Slings: Duann Barr

Stylish Baby Gear!

Duann Barr, proprietor of SwankySlings.com, has her grandchildren to thank for setting her on the path to her online business selling baby carriers. The "near retirement age" grandmother lives in Windermere, Florida, a picturesque former fishing village surrounded by lakes, where Tiger Woods and Shaq have homes. Even though the town of Windermere (population about 2,000) still has some dirt roads, it's ten minutes from the main gate of Walt Disney World in Orlando. "I can see the Magic Kingdom and Epcot Center fireworks every night from my patio, I'm that close," says Duann, who was named after her father, Duane.

Though her grandkids love that she lives so close to Disney World, they figure into this story in a different way. Duann had wanted for a number of years to have a web-based business, but didn't have a clear idea of what that would be. "My husband and I had tossed around the idea of having a franchise business. I particularly wanted to have another source of income coming in," she says. "The whole point, though, was that I wanted to free up my time, spend more time with my grandchildren. And all of a sudden we both looked at each other and said, 'We're going to have to work harder than we ever have if we do this!' So we put that aside."
Duann was attracted to the idea of selling children's products. Then one day she had a revelation. "My daughter-in-law and some of her friends had a party, and some of the moms showed up with a product they called Hotslings," she remembers. Hotslings are a popular, hands-free way to hold a baby close to your body. They come in fashionable colors and fabrics, and can be sized for the individual. Being a hip and stylish grandmother herself, Duann wanted one of those slings, too. After all, a grandmother who spends a lot of time taking care of kids needs her own gear. It dawned on Duann that this could be the product she was looking for to sell. "I went into it like, 'yeah, this isn't going to cost me a whole lot to get started and if I sell a few slings we'll see where it goes," she says.

When Duann was ready to begin, she hunted for a designer/hosting company that "seemed small." She didn't want someone "large and daunting and that maybe with $20,000 I could get something done." "I wasn't even sure if I had a product I could sell," she says, "so I didn't want to spend a lot of money on a test thing." Duann found an independent designer who worked by himself and got her going. For the first few months, the site did its job. As her sales grew, however, she quickly realized the many limitations of the site. She had grown to such a capacity that the way her customers maneuvered the website was no longer practical.

"For example, I would have 6 categories that people would have to scroll down, then they would have to scroll down for something else, and all of a sudden they were going from page to page," Duann says, just to pick fabric or color. "Also, whenever I got a new fabric in I couldn't put it on my home page because I didn't know how to put it on the home page." Without her own knowledge of programming and code, she knew she would have to rely on her designer to do things for her, but the way in which the site was built required her to pay him for each and every update, large or small.

Because of this, inventory tracking was a huge problem. "I had to get a big whiteboard and keep 25 fabrics on there and sizes for each thing," says Duann, "and as I began selling more and more, I was losing track of my inventory, and I couldn't remember if I'd taken the item off the board or not." She was in the position of apologizing to her customers, too often. "I'm sorry," she would have to say, "I don't have that although it says I do. Fortunately, I had a lot of forgiving moms who usually selected something else."

After a year of this, Duann knew she needed a change. "I was ready to step up my game," she says. "I was googling the Internet just looking for designers or hosting companies, hoping I'd find what I was looking for. I went to one company who told me they didn't do the inventory control like I needed, that they were more for people who didn't have that kind of need. But they told me that there is another company called MightyMerchant who does that, and they heard that they are very good." While it's a bit surprising that a competitor company would direct a prospective customer to MightyMerchant, that was all the recommendation Duann needed to check us out. "I read everything [on the MightyMerchant site], and the thing that impressed me was all of the reviews that I read. There were reviews from people who said, 'I didn't really know how to build a website.' I was looking for that, for those kind of comments," Duann explains. "I needed to hear from someone who was more like me, who felt a little intimidated. I needed that comment that said, 'I felt comfortable, it was not that difficult to learn."

"When I first called I talked to Jeanie on the phone and she was so nice and so friendly. And when she hooked me up with Kathy who did the actual site I was really impressed, because she sounded like someone I could relate to; she has a grown daughter. When I called the other companies I always talked to someone who sounded like my son, and my son still rolls his eyes at me when I talk to him about computer stuff!" Duann laughs. "With Jeanie and Kathy I felt much more comfortable."

MightyMerchant's Site Manager tools turned out to be just what Duann needed, and her new site debuted in July of 2007. "When I discovered I could actually know how many size 2's I had, it was absolutely remarkable that I felt so much less stress!" Switching to MightyMerchant "has been a total transformation for me," she says. And her customers love the site. "I had a lady tell me that she was shopping around and decided on my site because it was really sharp looking, and that is nice to hear, that people went with you because you just looked better."

Now running SwankySlings is fun like it should have been from the beginning, and her business has improved as a result of her new look. "In the first month with MightyMerchant I have more than doubled the business I've ever done, and I really do credit it to a very user friendly, sharp looking design," she says. One feature that Duann is putting to good use is the "Rave Reviews" page. "I carry products that are conducive to moms giving me a call or emailing me and they say nice things," she says. "I've never been able to use them on my website before and I have had a couple moms say to me, 'Yeah, I'm glad I listened to a couple of these reviews that were on your site because that helped me go ahead and buy from you."

Duann worried about losing visibility on the search engines when it was time to switch to MightyMerchant, but that has not been a problem. "Over the last 8 months or so I have started coming up naturally because people are looking for something specific like a "turquoise pool pouch' and I would pop up. I thought with a new hosting site they're not going to be able to find me, but it's been super."

"I wish I had done this from the beginning," Duann says, "but when you're just starting out you don't know where to go. You just hunt on the Internet and hope to find not only someone who can help you, but I also wanted people I could trust. It's been a real learning experience." In 5 years or so, when her grandkids are bigger, Duann will be ready to put even more time into the business, and she knows that with MightyMerchant she "will have a company behind me that will help me grow."

Thank you for choosing MightyMerchant, Duann!