Have you ever been part of the “Sandwich Generation”? If you are not sure what this term means, it references being an adult child of aging parents and having your own family.  The struggle is trying to make enough time to meet everyone’s needs.  Usually, your needs are the only one’s not met and you are exhausted however you lovingly help your parents. Shaz’z Organizing Solutions rescued me in 2006 by helping to downsize the family home in preparation for my Mom to go into assisted living. She was so professional and prepared as items were sorted into categories based on my input.  Take a look at the before and after photos. Fast forward to 2018 and it is no longer a one-person operation. They have a great website and work all over the lower mainland of British Columbia.  The majority of this success can be attributed to traditional marketing methods such as cold calling real estate agents and moving companies.  These resulted into referrals along with referrals from referrals.  How does an established business transition fully into utilizing social media marketing?

Upon embarking on this quest for an organization to represent in this final case study, it was suggested to me that I write about my business Value Vintage Fun (VVF). VVF is a small yet significant business that I have owned and operated in essence since 1991. It all started as a casual dinner comment from a friend visiting from Tokyo who suggested that I sell my collection of Anchor Hocking Fire King coffee mugs from the 1950’s; the Japanese market would be crazy for them, especially in Fire-King Cafes!  To that end she connected me with an antique dealer in Tokyo. I used a fax machine as a method of receiving orders. My payments were sent by regular post. I sometimes think back to those days and wonder how social media may have first-handedly impacted the business back then. I have since witnessed many changes in technology and consumer attitudes on items that were once labelled old and dated to now being valued as retro and vintage.