Aunt Leah’s Thrift Store
The Challenge
Aunt Leah’s had been successfully operating their brick-and-mortar thrift store for years, but when the COVID-19 pandemic began they were forced to shut their doors. At the time we had already worked with Aunt Leah’s to develop a beautiful website for their organization, and so they approached us with the challenge of helping them bring their thrift store online, in an ecommerce format.
As a non-profit, Aunt Leah’s was already working on a relatively small budget, and with the pandemic interfering with the funds they’d normally be bringing in from the thrift store, that budget was even tighter this time around. They also needed a quick turnaround time to get back on track as soon as possible.
The Solution
In the case of Aunt Leah’s we were lucky in that we’d already developed a site that embodied the organization’s branding and goals, so we were able to pull inspiration from that existing design to create an ecommerce website as a subdomain of the existing site.
To develop the online thrift store, we used the Shopify platform, finding an existing template that we knew we could fit into Aunt Leah’s branding style. After styling the Shopify site, we provided key Aunt Leah’s staff members with training so that they could update and manage their own product inventory.
The Results
Aunt Leah’s Thrift Store has transitioned beautifully to a clean, easy-to-navigate ecommerce website. The clients were able to quickly learn how to manage the shop in an online format, and they’ve continued to do a great job of making sales and updating their inventory independently. Bringing the shop online helped them weather pandemic lockdowns while continuing to bring in much-needed funding.