Cindy Hussey, founder and creative
director of Velvet Eyewear
NEW YORK—Cindy Hussey is an optical retailer turned women’s eyewear brand owner. As founder and creative director of
Velvet Eyewear, an independently owned optical frame and sunglass designer based in New York City, Hussey recognized a problem: she wanted to make her brand available online while continuing to support her “three O” customers. To do this, she created Velvet’s Exclusive Retailer Program, a social media-focused solution for Velvet partners. The program is a segue, Hussey said, for the optical industry as a whole to embrace the web and its opportunities.
The Exclusive Retailer Program for Velvet’s customers came about as both a response to changing market conditions as well as feedback from sales representatives.
“For a while, I had been hearing from our sales representatives that one of the issues that the retailers were having was us being online. I’d been on their side because I’d had a few optical stores in the past. I knew that the issue isn’t the product but a stumbling block in their minds.”
Hussey, who had owned optical stores in the past, wanted to increase brand awareness but also wanted keep relationships with retailers top-of-mind. The Exclusive Retailer Program solved this—by partnering with customers through social media, Velvet increases their retailers’ online ranking through geo-targeted, co-branded ads, thus increasing foot traffic to those locations. According to Hussey, her customers love it.
“[When you hear about] any new brand, the first thing you do is Google it. It is an absolute necessity to be online. We all have to be online whether we like it or not. Wholesaler or retailer, anyone that’s in business is online.”
The first step toward making the program a reality was taking control of their website to allow for customization. “We took control over our website about six months ago. We wanted the dealer locator but wanted to make it a little more special for our retailers, so we started putting in all their logos so now the retailer locator page brings up their websites if they have them. That’s what started this whole thing. Then I thought, ‘wait a minute, we can take this one step further.’”
Social media and photography had both been big focuses for Velvet, which made co-branding ads a natural next step. “Social media is a lot of work and most of our customers are small businesses trying to take care of the customers that are walking in the door,” Hussey said. “We spend a lot of money on our photography for our website and have a full staff of creative people on board, so [we thought], why not share?”
Each week, Velvet features a new company across Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Page and the Velvet blog, often with a seasonal focus—for example, a Las Vegas based retailer was featured the week of Vision Expo West, and a Florida-based retailer is set to be featured in winter. “It has nothing to do with how much they spend with us—it’s more or less a relationship builder,” Hussey said.
Some of the first featured retailers included
Drs. Farkas, Kassalow, Resnick and Associates of New York and Roslyn, N.Y.,
Metrovision Optical Boutique of White Plains, N.Y. and
Lido Optical of Newport Beach, Calif.
“We know what it’s like to feel like you’re kind of left out, or searching for an ad for your local magazine or paper—we provide them with that."
Once an Exclusive Retailer is featured across Velvet’s various social media platforms, ads are geo-targeted to the retailer’s neighborhood by zipcode using AdWords and Facebook. “We specifically target females who are interested in fashion accessories because we’re a female brand,” said Hussey. “We also try to read up about them and get to know something so we can pinpoint it a little bit further”—an example of this, Hussey said, is targeting female golfers. “It takes time, and takes some effort, but we feel like our customers are worth it and it’s been successful so far.”
Since the program began, Hussey has turned a group of hesitant ECPs into an Exclusive Retailer waiting list. About 20 partners have been featured so far, she said.
“At the end of the day, buying online is a great concept but the technology isn’t there yet. People still like to go into the store and try on and I want to be there for them. We need those brick and mortars. It’s not just about selling eyewear to a location. It’s a partnership.”