W
hen Joanna Mileos decided to leave her radio broadcasting career, she wasn’t particularly excited about the idea of following the path of many ex-journalists by going into public relations.
Instead, she decided to buy a toy store.
Granville Island Toy Company celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. The original location on Granville Island is still going strong, but since buying the business eight years ago Mileos has opened up a location at Main Street and 17th Avenue and another at Granville and 71st.
She also created an online shopping website.
“I went into this completely cold turkey, and I can see why, [for] people who want to make a transition into a business of their own, it really is scary,” she said.
“But once you go into it and you think about it as a series of little steps … it’s not as intimidating.”
Mileos found she was able to skip the cost of hiring a professional designer to design the layout of her new stores, in part because she was able to enlist the services of her husband, a contractor.
But she found putting the money into a professionally designed website and switching to a hosting company that could handle a large volume of product offerings have paid off.
“Having an online store is like having another location, with the amount of time it takes to upload products and everything else,” Mileos said. “Spending that money to change our hosting service, we saw an increase in sales dramatically because it didn’t take as long to upload products.”
As to how the small, independent business competes against retail giants like Toys “R” Us and Chapters, Mileos said excellent customer service is key.
To attract and retain the right people, Mileos said she offers flexibility to her staff, many of whom are going to school.
“Our policy is, if you want to take the time off and we have someone to cover you, you can take it off. So I’ve had some staff who have taken off as much as seven or eight weeks.”
On trusting your front-line staff | “I take some of my key staff members on buying trips and they help me do the buying. Sometimes I’ll find an item I absolutely love and they kind of look at it and turn their nose up at it, and if it doesn’t excite them, I don’t bring it in to the store.”
Has a work or life challenge taught you a key career lesson? Contact Jen St. Denis at [email protected]
