Editors note: Today’s guest blogger is Christina Wallace, Co-founder and CEO of Quincy, an online retail store for professional women. Quincy joins other retail organizations in going Google. See what they have to say.
At Quincy, we understand that every woman’s body is different. After years of struggling to find boardroom-appropriate clothes that really fit, my business partner Alex Nelson and I realized that typical size charts are often the root of the problem and decided to take matters into our own hands. That’s why we started Quincy. What sets us apart from the competition is that our clothing sizes are defined by height, bust, and hip-to-waist ratios -- three areas of the body that women have the most trouble with when purchasing clothing.
When Alex and I decided to go into business together, I was living in Washington D.C., while she was in London. That didn’t stop us, but we needed a simple and inexpensive communication solution that would help us stay efficient and organized while working in two different time zones. Using Google Apps for Business we were able to get our retail brand off the ground in less than a year. Today, Alex and I have built an office in New York and have grown to seven additional full-time staff and six interns.
Over the past year, Google documents and spreadsheets have become some of our most important tools. Docs makes it easy for us to write shared documents like our business plan together, and we can be confident we don’t have to worry about version control when we reference it later. We keep all product development information in spreadsheets, including the textiles, trims, colors and more. We’re able to easily keep track of each product in real time, and if we have a merchant issue, we know about it immediately. We also keep track of all our costs in spreadsheets, which makes it easy to manage and share with our accountant.
Google Chat has also become an important tool for the company. We work in an open-concept office, so Chat provides some privacy in conversations between Alex about sensitive business matters, for example. We also like the option to go "on the record", in case we want to go back to reference chats later. We also use Chat to connect with our customers. While browsing our website, shoppers are able to chat with someone from our team if they need help navigating our site or understanding how our size chart works. And what’s great about Google Apps is that we are able to chat with customers from our office, home, or mobile device.
While we are busy making the perfect fit for our customers, Google Apps has been the perfect fit for our young and growing business.
