In any business, founders have a role in promoting their products or services. How you market your company can make or break a new business.
This can be especially taxing for local entrepreneurs who are running a business alone. It can be intimidating to dive into branding and marketing. Some may feel that competing with big-name brands online is a waste of time.
According to a 2022 Forbes article: With over 270 million active social media users, social media platforms can provide ample opportunities for small businesses to increase their brand awareness online, drive website traffic, and sell their products.
For those brave enough to decide to take their business online, sometimes through careful research, sometimes through luck, the decision can pay off and expand their customer base from Northeast Indiana to the world.
Kyle Sommer, owner of Sommer LettersKyle Sommer of Fort Wayne is one of those intrepid business owners who has seen the benefits of social media firsthand. She Somerletter Co., Ltd. The account has over 166,000 followers and over 2 million likes. On TikTokVideos on the Sommer Letter Co. page have received anywhere from a few thousand views to 3.9 million. On Instagram, The business has over 7,000 followers.
Sommer says her start in the stationery industry was a typical one: She made her own wedding invitations and soon friends were asking her to make them for them. She was a high school Spanish teacher at the time, but was going through a mental crisis and thought it would be best to quit teaching and pursue art.
@sommerletterco My 7 year small business journey #smallbusinesscheck #smallbusinessjourney #stationerybusiness #artistsoftiktok ♬ Home – Edith Whiskers
In 2015, she set up a studio in her mother's basement and founded Sommer Letters, a bold decision that Sommer now looks back on with gratitude. She says that without her husband, none of this would have been possible, as his support and perseverance gave her the opportunity to learn about entrepreneurship and start a stationery business.
Products designed by Sommer Letter Co.Sommer Letter's first products were greeting cards, cell phone cases and notebooks, which she sold at farmers' markets and pop-up shops in Fort Wayne and Chicago. Though the Fort Wayne community has been supportive and encouraging of her business, these events have been causing her to lose money.
“I feel like I have a lot of support from Fort Wayne,” she says. “To be honest, a lot of the reason I struggled was because I didn't have enough business knowledge and didn't know how to market or reach customers.”
In 2020, COVID-19 canceled many of the events Sommer typically attends, forcing her to rethink how she connects with potential customers.
Somerletter notebook.Forbes points out that small businesses often can't afford to spend money on marketing, so for Sommer, who was already on a tight budget, the solution wasn't as simple as throwing money at marketing to attract new customers.
Sommer was trying to figure out how to market his business when he met his friend and fellow stationery store owner, Betsy Garcia of Bloom Wolf Studios in Florida; Gaining 10,000 followers on TikTok in one month: After talking with Betsy about using TikTok as a way to market her products, Sommer felt it was time to give the video app a try.
She decides to give herself 60 days to try out TikTok as a marketing strategy. After 60 days, evaluate: Is this making a difference to your bottom line? Is this worth your time? Did you enjoy learning the app? Do you understand the culture? Did you give it a fair try?
@sommerletterco A little bit about why I make greeting cards. #mentalhealthmatters #greetingcard #depressionanxiety #artistsoftiktok ♬ original sound – Sommer Letter Co.
The trial period was not easy and I found it took some time to learn how to use the app.
“I felt like an old lady in a noisy arcade,” Sommer says. “There were a lot of things flashing on the screen, and noise and trends. I wasn't interested in that culture. I wasn't on TikTok, and I felt so inadequate. But if I've learned anything as an entrepreneur, it's that you have to learn through experimentation and failure.”
Sommer posted her second video on TikTok, which garnered more than 10,000 views the weekend after, despite only having 12 followers at the time. Although the video wasn't focused on her company or products, but rather recommended the tool to other artists, Sommer quickly realized that TikTok could help her business.
@sommerletterco Did I mention this lamp is made by a small family-run business? They are such amazing people. #artistsoftiktok #smallbusinesstiktok #artisttok ♬ original sound – Sommer Letter Co.
“I don't want to say it was easy, because it wasn't easy to succeed there, but it was very quick,” Sommer says. “I had five years of business and marketing knowledge under my belt at that point, so when I walked into TikTok I was very well prepared to hit the ground running.”
And she did. Sommer found a unique way to introduce her products to her audience and give them a behind-the-scenes glimpse into her life as a small business owner and artist. Within a year of starting on TikTok, her planners went viral and she sold out her entire year's supply within 24 hours.
@sommerletterco in response to @katiejinright Where is my planner person? ❤️ #plannerbusiness #plannertok #shopifystore #smallbusinesstok ♬ Original Sound – Sommer Letter Co.
Sommer says that before TikTok, her customer base was mostly in the region. Now, her customers are all over the world. She's also converted some of her TikTok followers into an Instagram community where she shares similar content, answers questions, and shares some of her work on her Instagram Stories almost daily.
The inside of Somerletter's popular planner.Sommer Letter Co. is one example of a local business that has used the Internet to reach a new customer base. Sommer attributes its success to a lot of trial and error, while another local business attributes its international customer base to good timing and organic growth.
Urban Hippie A staple of Fort Wayne's boutique clothing market, it's currently located at The Landing Downtown. On TikTok, the store has over 405,000 followers. They have garnered over 6.3 million likes, and videos on their page regularly reach anywhere from 5,000 to hundreds of thousands of viewers. On Instagramwith over 37,000 followers.
The boutique sells women's clothing and accessories with a unique mix of retro hippie and trendy, modern bohemian and urban styles that owner Tammy Castleberry says reflects her own personal style. Castleberry said she struggled for years to find clothes that fit her style in Fort Wayne, so she decided to open a boutique to fill that gap.
The exterior of The Urban Hippie's new store (111 W Columbia St Ste 101, Fort Wayne, IN 46802).She began her career in the clothing industry by buying clearance items from stores like Macy's and Bloomingdale's and selling them on eBay. Eventually, she rented a small studio in downtown Fort Wayne, where she kept a vintage refrigerator full of drinks and invited friends over to try on the clothes she was selling.
She loved the environment, so when selling on eBay became complicated, she chose to pull away from the online marketplace, but she didn't want to give up her fashion or her studio.
The seating area inside The Urban Hippie's new location at The Landing.“I decided that if I'm going to continue doing this, I'm going to sell what I want to sell,” Castleberry said, “so I'm going to buy some clothes that I've always wanted but never been able to find in Fort Wayne.”
At first, they continued to operate online, but friends pointed out that since the studio already had a brick-and-mortar location in downtown Fort Wayne, it would be better to open it up to the public. When they did, Urban Hippie quickly became a popular spot with its kitschy vibe and vintage features, such as old bank vaults and filing cabinets hanging on the walls. A few years later, they expanded to a location at 534 Westbury Street in downtown Fort Wayne and continued to grow. But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Castleberry said she knew things would change.
“We knew that foot traffic in our stores was going to be pretty volatile,” Castleberry says. “People were very hesitant. We knew we probably couldn't sustain ourselves with just a brick-and-mortar presence. So we decided to go after social media.”
From the boutique's early days, Castleberry ran Urban Hippie's social media, coming up with ideas for posts and recruiting models. She made sure to feature iconic Fort Wayne locations on social media; she says people had an attachment to downtown even before it was redeveloped. Places like Coney Island, The Landing and the beautiful church steeples in the Fort provided Urban Hippie backdrops that drew followers' attention.
Though Castleberry was happy with the brand's online presence, she had been considering joining TikTok and knew that online business would be essential to surviving the pandemic. So Urban Hippie put out a call for models, as it has done many times before, but this time Castleberry connected with Fort Wayne native Delaney Lilly. Lilly had been building an audience on TikTok, and Castleberry wanted to get her brand on the app. The two struck a deal; Lilly would take over Urban Hippie's account and grow the brand's presence on TikTok.
In the two years since Lily took over social media, her Instagram following has more than doubled and she's gained a huge audience on TikTok.
translator Dell wanted you to be the first to know 😉
♬ Original Sound – Joshua Myburgh
“I was really lucky to find her in the way that I did,” Castleberry says, “It happened at a really important time and the timing couldn't have been better. The growth was unpredictable.”
Lilly has helped Urban Hippie grow a larger online business than its brick-and-mortar store, and while Castleberry admits that online isn't her preferred way of doing business, it's allowed the boutique to continue to grow.
In October, the store moved to the Landing for the third time, bringing with it the same kitschy atmosphere that Castleberry created in her first studio. Now, as the first retailer at the Landing, Castleberry acknowledges that moving among a row of restaurants and breweries is something of a gamble, but she hopes the new location will draw customers and help balance out the mix of online and in-person business.
Located at The Urban Hippie's new store (111 W Columbia St Ste 101, Fort Wayne, IN 46802).Castleberry said social media can be a struggle for small businesses — finding your voice and style on an ever-changing app can be tough and require a big investment of both time and money — but it's worth it.
