Organisation Name: Lolly Wolly Doodle.
Website: http://www.lollywollydoodle.com/
Industry: Personalized children’s wear and accessories.
Started as a way to use up extra fabric from crafting clothing for her own children, Brandi Tysinger-Temple used social media with some unexpected results.
When looking at the clothing available to children in stores, Brandi Tysinger-Temple felt they didn’t reflect her view of how a child should dress. Wanting to have her children wearing clothing equally suited to the street and church left Brandi looking to designer stores; which she found were financially unobtainable. Brandi decided to make use of her sewing and monogramming skills, taught to her by her grandmother, to craft her own clothing.
Finding herself with some extra fabric one day, Brandi decided to post a couple of ads for her dresses on Ebay and found they were quite popular. The use of Facebook substantially increased her Ebay sales. Soon her business moved from Ebay to Facebook with posts simply asking interested parties to Facebook message her for products. Customers would like and comment on a product to show their intent of purchase The products were limited-run, and only available through Facebook.
Using Facebook to market and sell her product has allowed her customers and potential consumers to voice their opinions. Facebook allows customers to share the products easily with friends and proved to be a huge driver for many sales.
One of the first posts Lolly Wolly Doodle made on Facebook; simple, but proved to be successful in driving sales.
After success with girl’s clothing; Lolly Wolly Doodle branched out to include boys as well.
With continued success of the brand, Lolly Wolly Doodle introduced their secondary brand, Designed by Me. Designed by Me allows customers to design a dress for their child and have it shipped to them within a week. The Designer allows you to add ruffles, monograms, change the colour or pattern on the dress and create a unique product based around a few constraints to give your child a new look.
With many parents loving the products but having a hard time finding adult-sized clothing to have a matching family look, Lolly Wolly Doodle started to produce clothing for adults!
Lolly Wolly Doodle now makes use of all sorts of social media to showcase their products, with entire lines being shown on Pinterest and Facebook; they are considered a poster child for successful use of social media in marketing, collaborating, and selling to customers. They have become an example for other clothing manufacturers, are actively studied by corporations and educational institutions, and are even spoken of by fashion industry pod-casters such as the American Fashion Podcast in their 4th episode:
http://fashionmediacenter.com/afpod/2014/06/episode-004-the-american-fashion-podcast/
Lessons for others: Having grown to become the largest business working through Facebook and grown from one woman working out of her home producing clothing she felt was more proper than mainstream production clothing to a factory with more than 100 employees and receiving funding from America Online Co-founder Steve Case; Lolly Wolly Doodle is a poster child for how successful the use of social media can be for a business. By allowing customers to suggest changes, purchase, and comment on products Lolly Wolly Doodle grew and firmly solidified their position as a niche producer of children’s clothing. Brandi Tysinger-Temple’s business is also considered a major positive for the town of Lexington, North Carolina. Brandi feels she is doing her part to bring jobs back to her hometown and reduce the unemployment rate to reach the 10.7% it currently sits at.
Author: Forrester Hinds, Social Media for Business Performance Student, University of Waterloo – To contact the author please direct any questions or comments to: fhinds@uwaterloo.ca
If you have concerns as to the accuracy of anything posted on this site, please send your concerns to Peter Carr, Programme Director, Social Media for Business Performance.
Information Sourced From:
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2014/05/15/small-business-success-brandi-temple-and-lolly-wolly-doodle/
http://www.lollywollydoodle.com/pages/what-a-journey
https://www.facebook.com/LollyWollyDoodle
https://www.pinterest.com/lwdoodle/
https://designedbyme.lollywollydoodle.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLkzD3V_SfM