Andréanne's Journal - February 2025

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2025! (I know, it's a little late to wish you a happy new year, but I'll do it just the same.) I wish you a year filled with health, sweetness and success!

How did the start to the new year go for you? At Womance, we don’t slack off! We often think that we’re going to have a little relaxation period after the holidays, but in all honestly our new projects come on strong and fast.

The beginning of any new year in the retail industry is coloured by everything we learned in the previous year. In September of 2024, we opened our third store at Carrefour Laval. It was quite the challenge to open a store in the most established and successful shopping center in Quebec. We started with a small, perfectly located 1000 square foot space. In all honesty, we couldn’t afford to rent a bigger space. We didn’t want to take too big a risk since this was only our second “out of office” location. To give you a better idea of scale, at our Dix30 location we have an 1800 square foot space. Our laval space is about half the size, but due to our really quick inventory turnover rates at that location, we thought it would work perfectly. However, we quickly realized that it wasn’t actually ideal. It didn’t have enough space for us to properly display the clothes. We thought about it and decided to wait until after the holidays and then aim to make improvements at the end of January 2025. We changed an entire wall to add clothing displays, creating more latitude for us to showcase more styles in different ways. As much as we thought the older displays were beautiful, they just didn’t work for the new space.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank our loyal long-term customers and all the new ones that are becoming fans of the store. Thank you for taking the time and writing to me, contacting our team through the Womance page, and leaving us great Google reviews. It’s with your comments and feedback that we grow and build our future. And it’s so touching and rewarding to see how much you love the store! We’ve received so many compliments on its design, location and of course – the wonderful team on site. It’s very reassuring to me to know that we are taking very good care of you, especially when I’m often so far away. We already have so many new customers who recently discovered us coming back after every new drop (pinch me, I must be dreaming!)

Opening a new store is super exciting. Of course it brings a fair share of challenges, but the feeling of accomplishment once it happens is indescribable. The next challenge is to consider the factors that will make the business successful, whether in terms of traffic, new products, displays, conversion rates, presentation of the team… The real work begins the day we open. Don’t think that once the store is open, everything after that is a breeze. It’s really the opposite! Our Dix30 store has been open for nearly a year and a half, and our Laval location for six months now, and we are still constantly learning new things.

Now that we have two active stores, it allows us to have better data and to better understand our potential in shopping centers. We now have a better understanding of customer preferences, behaviours and spending cycles. We were also able to narrow down a square footage that would be ideal for us depending on store traffic. I think if we ever open another store, a space equal to or a little larger than our Dix30 location, say 1800 to 2100 sq. ft. would be ideal.

So what do you think? Will we open another store location in 2025? I’ve heard through the grapevine that the chances are good. Where do you think it will be? BETTING IS OPEN!