Ann Matthews' Journey of building a Boutique Empire

Well, thank you so much. My name is Ann Matthews and I am the owner of a women’s boutique and men’s boutique in Washington state. It is Arktana and Bigfoot Mountain Outfitters is men’s. We are in Camas Washington, Vancouver Washington and Ridgefield Washington.

Well, 10 years ago, I opened the first Arktana downtown, Camus, in a little town where we live. We’re right across the river, just to give you kind of an orientation of where we’re at. We are right across the river from Portland, Oregon. So to get from my home or even my store to the Portland Airport, it would take probably 15 minutes. So we are in Washington, but very close to Portland, Oregon. And it’s a small town, one high school town and we did not have a shoe store. So on the main street, very community, you all the restaurants and all the merchants and things downtown, I thought, well, this is my opportunity to, you know, be part of the community and fill a need that we needed.

So 10 years ago, we started as a shoe only and then we slowly grew, very slowly and very organically grew into what we are today. So now we have three locations, like I said, and our newest one is our min store, which we only have one of. But now we carry clothes, shoes, handbags, jewellery, everything.

I love it when people ask me that because I do feel like we have a very specific person that we like to appeal to and work with and really that’s everyone. Really, I mean, we can take care of my daughter who’s 24 and a school teacher and she’s an extra small and then myself, you know, in my mid fifties and I’m an extra large. So we can fit all sizes, all ages and we are very , you know, very easy to wear brands. So all of our styles are very known to many. We have a lot of the name brands that people know and love and there’s nothing too trendy, nothing too basic. It’s just kind of fits that basic, basic every day. I always say we can, we can dress you from seven days a week from morning till night. We just don’t do a whole lot of suiting, but other than that, we can cover all the basic swimsuits to dresses.

Very.

Well, we take a very personalised approach. I think being on the e -commerce side is a little more difficult than it is to be on the brick and mortar side. We spend a lot of time with our customers. It’s truly a boutique. So we have stylists and all of my team loves to engage with our customers, build relationships with our customers, all the things from our back of the house team to our front of the house team.

It really doesn’t matter where they work in Arktana, which location they’re in, like I said, the front of the house, back of the house, they’re building relationships constantly with our customers and each other, which I think is very important. They love to take someone that’s travelling per se, for example, and help them get packed and ready for their trip. Or, you know, if it’s a guy coming in to go to a trade show or on a business trip, we can help him get ready for that.

Well, we have, like I was saying, we do have a lot of the name brands that a lot of people know and love. And, you know, Spanx for one, that’s a very globally known brand. We carry all of their clothing. We have Tribal and Sanctuary. People come to us for denim and, you know, we can help them with their business attire or their casual attire with sweatshirts all the way up to nice blazers and slacks.

But it’s just full of fantastic things for everyone, really. The shoes are fantastic because they fit the comfort niche and the fashion niche. So we really take care of people there. We carry handbags, which are, you know, that’s a California company. We try really hard to bring in things that if we can, as much as we can from the USA and, you know, Spain, Portugal, Mexico, things like that.

well, you know, the obvious one, it would be the COVID. that was Okay, let’s not say COVID then, because that is obvious.

No, no, we’ll skip COVID. I do think that a lot of the challenges that people that do what I do is building your team. There’s always that, right? Because it does need to be a good fit for everyone. And obviously you want that to be a good fit. You want them to fit with the customers and fit with the other, the team and things like that. So building your team can sometimes be a little bit of a challenge, but I think we are

We have just nailed it. We’re so blessed with retention and people that just love to work with each other in our community. Another challenge I honestly will say is growth. You know, when you feel ready to grow and you know, I went from my one location to my second and then onto my third and there are a lot of unforeseen consequences that come with growth, both good and bad. But you asked me about challenges, I definitely think getting the amount of inventory correct, how you’re going to bring your flows in, how you’re going to do your turns, all the things that you think you understand because you have one and then two stores, then you add the third and it’s just so much more than what you could ever foresee.

Well, you know, I’m an empty nester now. My husband and I have been together for 30 years and all of our children are gone and he is working with me now. So he’s full time with the company doing that alongside me and we’re having a blast with that. I can’t say that we have any expansions in our future, but I’ve also learned along the way to never say never. At this moment, we don’t.

I think what my future plans would be to just settle into what we have. We have four locations, if you consider the men’s in there too, which is you would need to. So we have four brick and mortar locations and two online stores. And that’s a lot. That’s a lot for a small mom and pop, if you will, to manage, it’s a handful. So I think we’re just going to settle into that and try to do the very best we can with the community that we have and grow it from there.

We have actually a very cool niche, I would say. I’ve seen a lot of others do it as well, but I come from direct sales. And before I started Arktana, I was in direct sales and we really used Facebook to our advantage in that. So we do a lot of Facebook lives where we just show new arrivals and try -ons and the stories and try to do things like that. We do a few big, huge sales a year online on Facebook.

And that has been just phenomenal for us. For having as many locations as we do, we have very, very, very little overage in our products because we have learned to move all of our excess on Facebook or Instagram via our website. So our website has been an unbelievable tool for us to move products once we’re down to onesies, twosies, and things like that. That’s been a very big advantage for us to be able to access that channel.

It does.

You know, I believe that sitting in the shoes that I’m sitting in today, people ask me a lot. I do get that question a lot. I have a lot of young entrepreneurs, people wanting to start their businesses, go have coffee with them. And I just tell them, you know what, it takes guts. Anybody can do this. This isn’t hard. It’s just very gutsy. You have to be able to go for what you want to do and you have to not be scared because it is scary and

It is, you know, definitely it is like I said, it isn’t hard, but you just have to have a lot of guts and you have to stand in it. And when it gets hard, you have to just gut it out. You know, my husband always says, and you remind me of like, you know, those old movies that we watch and it’s like all the horses and the guys go into battle and all their armour and stuff. There’s the guy at the front. Everybody’s charging him and he’s like, hold, hold, hold. You know, you got to know when to hold him and you got to know when to go.

And sometimes, you know, the team will be like, we just have a sale or let’s do this. And takes a lot of guts to just stand and hold sperm and know what you’re buying. you have to really it’s a lot gut-based, I believe you have to really trust your gut a lot in this business. And it’s not great advice. I wish it was more technical and sophisticated.

Well, I would love for everybody to go check out Arktana, you know, online. We have a website, arktana.com, bigfootmountainoutfitters.com. The name Arktana comes from, My husband is from Arkansas. I’m from Montana. So it’s just a made up name. And that’s OK, too. You know, I think that what I always like people to know is, if you see something you want to do, you know, we live in America. Right. Be proud of that. What’s greater to live in America than to be able to start a little brick and mortar store? I always tell my husband also, there’s nothing more American than owning your own little shop, right? I mean, we own a few of them, but people that want to do what we do, I think they should go for it. It’s just, you know, utilise your strengths, your guts, your courage, and go for it. Because it is a lot of fun. It’s a lot of fun.

Thank you for having me. It was fun to talk to you. Okay, take care.