Today we’d like to introduce you to Abby Riedel.
Hi Abby, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – To start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers.
I’ve loved art and creative outlets from a young age. My grandfather on my mother’s side and my mom enjoyed arts like chalk drawing, painting, and simple crafting too. Their enjoyment of the arts helped cultivate my own! When choosing a college to attend I was very excited to look at art programs while also hoping to play soccer. Bemidji State University was able to give me opportunities in both.
I majored in Art & Design with emphases in studio arts, graphic design, and exhibit design. It was a wonderful experience as I was able to gain skills in more traditional art practices as well as the digital side. I had interned in a marketing department before my final year in college and was blessed with an offer of a full-time job when I graduated. I was a marketing specialist at that first job for about 3 years and eventually came to a point where I was looking to relocate to Detroit Lakes, Minnesota as my boyfriend at the time (now husband) and I were talking about making a home there. I applied to a few different places, including The Nines, a women’s boutique. The Nines has two store locations, one in Detroit Lakes, MN, and one in Fargo, ND as well as a website.
With no experience in the area of retail, I wasn’t sure if they would feel I was the right fit, but my interview with the owner Lauren Zima was great! Lauren and her husband Steve are so passionate about connecting with people and giving back to the community! Lauren loves finding clothing for women of every age and size that helps them feel confident and beautiful! They also work hard to invest in their employees and help them grow as people. I could tell from my interview with her that it would be a special place to work and an opportunity to use my design skills from school along with my marketing experience. I was offered a Social Media Assistant/Marketing Specialist position and over a couple of years have grown into a Marketing Manager.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Leaving my stable marketing job and family home in the Twin Cities to start a job in a new city where I didn’t know anyone, and work in a field I had never been in was a little intimidating. So, I would say that’s a decent-sized bump in a mostly smooth road. It was a good challenge though and looking back I’m proud of myself for doing it.
As I mentioned, I had never worked in retail before so I was taking on a new field that had a very different target audience than what I had been working in before. I would tell others that as scary as going into a new field can be, there are so many resources out there for you to learn new things. You really can do what you set your mind to by finding those resources. I have also been fortunate to have a boss and coworkers who have helped greatly along the way.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
As a Marketing Manager, I can do many different tasks in a day. Lauren the owner, and I will discuss her plans for weekly/monthly inventory launches and how we think the content should look and then create that content. That content includes images and videos for social media posts and stories, scheduling the content, creating multiple weekly emails, scheduling promotional texts, overseeing an assistant who helps load product to the web while occasionally loading myself, working with the warehouse/web team on quantities and measurements for those web items, and so much more while managing all the hiccups that can happen in between!
I think what sets myself, the owners, my coworkers and The Nines itself apart from other boutiques is that it’s more than just about the sales. Yes, honestly sales are super important, you need them to keep a business, but to have a retail business full of people that genuinely enjoy just being there for customers and each other is amazing! When creating content, we want to bring our shoppers fun new things that they can be excited to see every day. People joke about retail therapy, but it’s real! Sometimes our shoppers don’t buy anything but they see something on social media that brings them to the store where they get to spend time with the girls on the floor and just enjoy chatting about whatever they need to that day.
We love surprises, fun facts, and unexpected stories. Is there something you can share that might surprise us?
I think something surprising that people might not realize is how much we’ve grown our website traffic over the past couple of years!
Our website gets orders from all over the country and the amount of orders is growing every year. I’m proud of this as my job affects it directly!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.shopthenines.com
- Instagram: @shopthenines
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shopthenines
