Chase Clymer
With every decision you're making, it kind of doesn't matter what decision you make, it's make a decision.
Gina Cecala
Gotta just go with it. Gotta trust that you know what you're doing, and that even if you don't know what you're gonna do, you're gonna figure it out.
Chase Clymer
Honest Ecommerce is a weekly podcast where we interview direct-to-consumer brand founders and leaders to find out what it takes to start, grow, and scale an online business today.
Honest Ecommerce is proudly produced by Electric Eye, a Shopify Plus partner helping ecommerce brands sell more with strategic design and development. Visit electriceye.io for more information.
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Honest Ecommerce. Today I'm welcoming to the show the COO of The Snooki Shop, Gina Cecala. She spent the last seven years turning a single boutique into a growing multi-location retail business with loyal customers, an amazing community, and a national ecommerce presence. Gina, welcome to the show.
Gina Cecala
Thank you for having me, I'm excited to be here.
Chase Clymer
I'm excited to chat. We kind of talked a little bit before this. This is such an interesting and unique business because it's not necessarily like a flagship product or products or line. A lot of this is built into the celebrity of the face of the company and the namesake of the business. So I'm super excited to talk with you.
But first and foremost, I guess, take me back in time. Where does this story start? How do you become the COO of a company that is basically the brand of another person?
Gina Cecala
Yeah, so that position never existed, honestly. There was just a bunch of chatter going around our local little town in Madison, New Jersey, about this store opening up run by Snooki herself. She lives locally, and she was just looking for sales associates, and I was just looking for something extra to do. I said I would never go back to retail. I actually quit retail. At the time I had a very bad taste in my mouth, but everyone kept sending it to me and I'm like, you know what, might as well… it's part-time, I can walk there. Let's see what happens.
I walked in, I actually got denied for my interview three times before I even got my interview. She kept being like, "Sorry, it's not working out with us," "Sorry, it's not..." And then finally I got my interview and she's like, "Do you want to be a manager?" I was like, sure.
And then after a couple weeks, I just started sitting there being like, we could do more. And then every time I kind of got a little bit more out of her, I got involved a little bit more, and it just started growing our relationship. And the next thing you know, here we are, almost eight years later, chief operating officer. Yeah, the short version of it. Sorry.
Chase Clymer
That's amazing. I'm gonna force you to break down a few of these things. Now, let's go back to how you helped foster growing that relationship with her. What were some of the things you were asking to do, or some of the opportunities that you saw, like "we could be doing this, we could be doing that"? Do you remember any of those from the beginning?
Gina Cecala
Sure. Well, first off, simple stuff. She did everything herself. Everything. I mean, she was tagging the clothes, she was taking the inventory into her house and then bringing it to us, she was doing the scheduling, literally everything. And I'm like, girl, you have way too much going on in your life, let me take off some of that load. So it was slowly getting that started.
But I think one of the biggest things that I implemented and went to her with was that we didn't have a connection between our online store and our physical stores. The ecommerce was being run by somebody in a whole other state, they had their own little warehouse that they were using. It was different items, we didn't even have the same clothes, because the warehouse and the online store had been around probably since like 2010, and we opened up in 2018. So they were two different entities essentially, run by different platforms.
And I just was like, we have to figure this out, there's a way to streamline it. And I did a lot of research on my own, just looked into it, looked at what the website was being run by, what we were using in store, what's more user-friendly, how can we combine the two, and also the overhead of it all. I'm like, why do we have a warehouse and someone else running all of this when we have a store where the clothes are coming from? We should just be shipping from in-store, because we weren't that big.
And I would say that was probably like the biggest thing I went to her with, probably like a year into being there, maybe a little bit less, and was like, “This I think would be a major change and a game changer for you,” So that is kind of where things really started to flip in our relationship and become... I still wasn't given this title yet, but it was like a slow burn where she started to be like, "she knows kind of what she's talking about." Yeah, I think that would be one of the biggest ones.
Chase Clymer
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Chase Clymer
And so you consolidate, you get rid of the warehouse. I mean, that sounds like a big project. We don't need to necessarily get into that too much because we kind of know the end result, you get rid of the warehouse. But what did that project take? How many months? What did that look like?
Gina Cecala
It sounds like a big project, but it wasn't that crazy. I think the hardest part for her was just making the move, because the people who were running that were people really dear to her. They had been with her since the beginning, with other projects she was doing, and she hates to let people go. She still has them, they're still involved in other ways in her career.
But I would say the biggest part was just getting her to make the move. Once we started getting the ball rolling, it was: get on the phone with Shopify, figure out what to do, what do I need. It was all the research I had already done leading up to it. So once she said yes, the bulk of it was pretty much done.
The warehouse itself, it was just getting things that they still had sent to us, or donating things to different women's shelters and such, where we were like, we don't want that anymore, let's move on to new products. So it was just kind of that move. We didn't need any storage, we were moving locations anyways, from a smaller location in Madison to a bigger location, so we had the space for it.
But it was just kind of getting the knowledge behind it and knowing exactly... I didn't know anything about ecommerce, to be honest. So it was really learning that aspect. That was the biggest, toughest part of it all for me.
Chase Clymer
We will absolutely get into that. But I do have a... what you just mentioned now, I feel like this is probably a common theme, is that people with a lot of notoriety probably have a lot of people in their life who are offering services or expertise to them beyond the normal entrepreneur.
Gina Cecala
Yeah, we get people who reach out to us constantly. They want to help her with stuff. And people were always like, "I know Nicole,” or “I know her family, I can help you with this,” or “I can help you with that."
I even get people like that who reach out to me. The guy who helped us with our website was somebody I had met years ago, and as soon as he found out I was working for Nicole, he was like, "how can I get in there?" And it ended up benefiting us, I mean, he was awesome, and he still helps me with stuff every day. But I think, since she's such a loyal person, she really keeps her people and reuses them wherever possible. If something is no longer working for them in that field they're doing, she likes to keep them along and see what else they can help with.
Chase Clymer
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Chase Clymer
So we just talked about you leading the transition over to Shopify and unifying the inventory and getting your feet wet learning about ecommerce. I think that is a parallel to a lot of entrepreneurs that have a cool idea, have a product, and kind of just stand up a Shopify store. What were some of the other things that, looking back, you didn't think you would ever learn, and now you consider yourself an expert in?
Gina Cecala
Honestly, the whole aspect of Shopify. My friend says it to me all the time, he's like, "you could be a Shopify specialist." I'm like, okay, let's not get crazy. But it's just learning how to navigate all that stuff. Even emails, we use Attentive, but even with email blasts, or just inventory... I mean, honestly, such a simple question, answer everything. I would have never expected myself to know the things I know related to ecommerce and retail in general.
I find it very interesting, and I keep researching it because it changes so quickly. So every day I feel like I'm learning something new. Plus Shopify updates like every other day, so I do have to learn a new way to do things like every other day. But yeah, it's really just the whole aspect of Shopify in general and ecommerce platforms.
Chase Clymer
How did you learn it? Was there any secret sauce, did you hire a coach, take a lesson, or was it just a YouTube university?
Gina Cecala
Not even, honestly. I think it was more researching it. I don't even think I used YouTube, honestly. It was just, "hey, what is Shopify," reading all their FAQs and about pages and all that. And then also my friend Jay, he works with ecommerce brands, he's a director of ecommerce for a company.
He really walks me through every little step if I have a question, but he also challenges me and is like, "I want you to try to figure it out and let me know if you figure it out, and if you can't, come back to me." And a lot of the time it's just clicking around and then remembering what you did. I write everything down after I've done it so I can remember, okay, this is how I got to that place.
Even with the loyalty programs, he helped me find which ones would work for me, but then I have to do the work myself once I'm in there and figure out how to make those apps work for our business. And I'm still learning.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. I think that's something we at the agency often tell clients, and young entrepreneurs, where there's such a weird thing where you definitely want to delegate and get things off your plate, but if you're delegating something you don't know what good looks like, and you don't understand it, how do you know what you're getting back is good or not?
Gina Cecala
A hundred percent. I struggle with that a lot. I'm not a good delegator, so we're working on that, the more responsibility I need, the more delegating. But you definitely need to know what you're giving out to people. I'm really big on over-communicating too, so I like to really break it down. I'll send videos to my staff, like "okay, this is what I need you to do." Recently I just decided to start having them help me with some inventory stuff they don't normally do, like discrepancies and such that I normally handle myself. It's such a simple task, but I'm so nervous about having someone else do it. So I'm like, okay, here's a video of exactly what you need to do. And they're like, "it's pretty simple." I'm like, doesn't matter, watch the video.
Chase Clymer
I mean, even on our end, I can almost mirror your frustration with Shopify updating all the time. All of our SOPs constantly have to get updated, and part of onboarding and joining our company is learning how to read these standard operating procedures. And then the second thing you learn is, if it's wrong while you're doing it, your next task is now on the back burner. It's to update the SOP, and then go back to what you were doing.
So we're trying to build this constant iteration machine that keeps all of that up to date so people know how to do everything internally. And my gosh, the most unsexy part of a business is building a process.
Gina Cecala
A hundred percent, I get that.
Chase Clymer
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Chase Clymer
So let's talk about how you went from one location to two to three. What did that look like?
Gina Cecala
Honestly, and no, most of the answers you're gonna get are like "on a whim," because it truly is kind of that way with her. She has a vision, she had a vision from the beginning, but wasn't really sure how it was gonna get executed, again, there's no big team behind us, it's her and me. She had people she would refer to for certain stuff, but nobody's ever done this with her before. So, to backtrack to an original question you asked, it was kind of like starting from scratch for her.
When I got the job, she didn't really have a big team, so there was never really anyone to refer to and be like, "how do you do this?" We had to figure out how to use Square, I had no idea what I was doing, neither did she, to be honest. She was like, "we're gonna figure it out together," and that was the original system we had. It was kind of nice because you're going from a blank slate, and I could be like, "hey, we have so much room to grow."
With that, I remember I had an idea, I hadn't gone to her with it yet, but it was written down. It was 2019 going into 2020, and I was like, we should do pop-ups. Everybody writes to us on Instagram being like, "come here, come here, come here." I was like, how fun would it be if we could do mini pop-ups all across the country? And she was like, "interesting you say that, I actually was looking into getting a mini van, like a boutique van, to take around and do pop-ups with." I was like, great, let's do it.
The van didn't end up working out the way it was supposed to, but at that same time we were moving locations to a bigger store, because the store we had was just so tiny at the time. And then the pandemic hit, so everything kind of halted. So we didn't really get to do the van the way we wanted. And then when we started doing the van, it just didn't work out that well. So with that, she was like, "let's open up a second location, I want to open one up where I live."
And it just so happened her best friend was looking to switch careers at the time as well. So she was like, "it would be perfect, she can run the store, it'll be up where I grew up." And that's how that started.
Then, when that happened, we kept talking about, why are we not in Seaside, where it all began? Makes no sense, we need to be where it all began, Seaside Heights, New Jersey. So then that's when the third location opened. And now we're in Nashville also. And then we moved that upstate New York location to Huntington, New York, so we'd be more on Long Island, more city-centric.
But yeah, that's just kind of how she works. Once it's in her head, she has to do it, and we're not gonna wait to do it, it's happening now. And it's worked out really well. I mean, I physically go to every location and open it, I was in Nashville for three months opening that store.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. Now there's two things in there that I want to point out, and I've heard this a couple of times, and I'm gonna try to ask this in a way that isn't a leading question, but I don't think I can do that. Knowing what you know now about how hard some of these decisions you made were, do you think you would have made them?
Gina Cecala
Yeah. And I almost like that we didn't put too much... I don't necessarily suggest this to other people, but I almost like not having all the knowledge going into some of it, because, yeah, you're right, if you knew too much, and you knew how hard it was gonna be, would you keep doing it? I don't know. But I do keep doing it.
Chase Clymer
I knew the answer before I asked it, because I've done this hundreds of times. But some people are like, yeah, it's the ignorance of a young entrepreneur. You have so much drive and ambition, and the not knowing how hard it is, you just start tackling hard problems, and then you get so far into it, and there's the sunk cost fallacy in your brain, and you're like, well, I have to see this through now.
And knowing that, it might be a strength of a budding entrepreneur, that ignorance of how hard a problem is to solve. It's something that's come up on the show multiple times.
Gina Cecala
No, and that's what I was gonna say right before you said it, I was thinking that in my head. Because once you start, you're like, I can't stop now, I gotta keep going, we just gotta get through this and figure out how to do it. Now, obviously, I have my systems in place that make things a little bit easier, but there's still growing pains every single day.
But I've said it before to somebody who asked me for advice, people who are starting up a business, I'm like, just do it. Just do it, just start wherever you can, don't wait. Because if you wait, it's never gonna happen, there's never gonna be a right time. It's like they say with having babies, it's the same thing, there's never gonna be a right time, you just gotta do it, and it'll hopefully all work out.
Chase Clymer
You got to the second point I wanted to highlight too, which was that with every decision you're making, it kind of doesn't matter what decision you make, it's make a decision. And it sounds like that's one of Nicole's strengths, she makes a decision and you work towards it, and then when stuff comes up, a decision gets made. I think analysis paralysis and waiting for perfection is a death knell for a lot of businesses.
Gina Cecala
Totally. Yeah, I've actually never really thought about it that way, but she's really good at making decisions. She's just like, yes, no, yes, no, we're doing this, we're not doing this. I'm not as good at that, but I'm learning through her, it's just trust your gut. She's huge on trusting her gut, and if she feels like something is gonna work out...
And of course, she does have a little bit of a cushion in the back, that if something doesn't work out, she knows she has the money there with her career, she's always gonna continue to make money in different aspects. Not everybody has that luxury, so I can understand, starting something from scratch, especially if you don't have that in the background to help you out, is gonna be really scary.
But gotta just go with it, gotta trust that you know what you're doing, and that even if you don't know what you're gonna do, you're gonna figure it out.
Chase Clymer
Hey everybody, just a quick reminder, please like this video and subscribe if you haven't, we're releasing interviews like this every week, so don't miss out. Now back to the interview.
Chase Clymer
She obviously has her celebrity, and she has her career outside of these boutiques. Celebrity can bring attention to the business, but how do you sustain that? How do you make a business that isn't just a flash in the pan? I mean, obviously you guys have figured it out, so what are you doing to succeed outside of relying on her clout?
Gina Cecala
That's actually one of the biggest things I've been saying to her forever, pretty much from the beginning. I said, we have to make this not just about Snooki, obviously, you can't take that out, it's in the name, you can't get rid of that. But I don't want it to be only about you. I've said that to her a million times, that it's a boutique, we want it to sell regular clothes to people, not just something that says "Where's the Beach" on it, not just something that says Snooki on it. We have so many other options in there, cute clothes for everybody, accessories, whatnot.
So how can we do that? That was a question I asked from the first year, what can we do? And I don't know if there's a secret way of doing it, but it's putting other people's faces in front of the brand. I think that's part of the reason why you have me doing something like this, it's getting other people out there and not just utilizing her. Because you see other celebrity brands, right, they always use the celebrity, the celebrity's in every picture, they're in every promo, and that's amazing. But realistically, she can't do that anyway, she doesn't have the time to do that with everything going on.
So how can we make it so people realize this isn't just a Jersey Shore gimmicky kind of thing, that there's other things for you? It was just utilizing your staff to be the face of the brand, real normal people, showing everyday people wearing the clothes, coming to the stores, interacting with the customers, and making them feel like normal people, not making them feel like when you come in here you're only coming in for Snooki. I don't assume people coming into my store are coming in because they're a fan, I assume they're coming in or shopping online because they like the clothes. That's how I treat it every time, rather than the other way.
But also getting involved in different things too. I mean, again, it's not really keeping you away from Snooki, because the name is there, there's nothing you can do about that. But getting involved in local things in the community with the brand, where again, her face isn't attached to it, making it about the clothing brand, being involved in charities where, again, it's not Snooki doing it, it's the brand doing it. If that makes sense. I don't know if that really translates the way I'm trying to say it, but it's kind of just something we're still trying to figure out, to be honest.
Chase Clymer
Yeah, no, it makes sense. It's always a work in progress, but I think identifying that is the first step. It's like, what is this without her? So it's, how do we build something that's a little bit more sustainable? And like you said, it's one percent better every day, and it will start to figure itself out.
Gina Cecala
Yeah, for sure, hopefully. It is a little bit, but hopefully it'll continue to. Because, you know what it is? We had a lot of backlash when we started with our brick and mortars. I don't think the online website ever really had backlash, because you only know it exists if you know it exists, right? So when we started with the brick and mortars, we got a lot of backlash. It was like, the Snooki of it all, "why is she coming into our towns, why is she doing this, I never liked the way she dressed, so why would I want to shop there?" It was a lot of negative like that.
So it was trying to get away from that, rather than the opposite of people thinking, "oh, it's Snooki, so it's easy, people probably just love to shop there." No, we had a lot of backlash. So that's kind of why separating the two is important, because even though the haters are gonna hate always, it's letting them know there's so much more than that person from 2009 on a TV show. She's more than that, but the brand is also more than that.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. And obviously now it's working out for you, you're serving tens of thousands of customers each month, you guys have a crazy loyalty program that you've built, and like you said, you've got working in the community and stuff. Is there anything I didn't ask you about today that you think would resonate with our audience?
Gina Cecala
I think, to kind of go back to where it all began, for entrepreneurs in general, or even just somebody trying to switch careers, you don't have to have a college degree to work in ecommerce, you don't have to have a college degree to work in retail. I know people hate hearing that, but I don't have one.
My life took a completely different turn, this was never the plan, I was supposed to be doing makeup, this was never where I was supposed to be. And I think it's just, if you work hard enough and try hard enough to do something you love, and people see that in you... you need someone, either you see it in yourself or someone sees it in you, one person takes a chance on you, and, obviously, the hard work behind it, and then one person takes a chance on you, you can be successful without all that in this business, for sure.
Chase Clymer
That's a fantastic place to end it on. Gina, I can't thank you enough for coming on the show and sharing all those insights.
Gina Cecala
Thank you, I appreciate you having me.
