Building Felix for boutiques

Felix is my own product for independent fashion and lifestyle boutiques. It helps them bring good customers back, with personal messages based on their own sales history. No boutique runs on it with real sales data yet, because I am still working towards the first pilot. Part of what is in it today came out of sales calls.

What Felix does

An independent boutique knows its best customers by name, but usually has no sales team and no time to keep in touch with all of them. People who used to come in every season drift away, and nobody notices until much later. The information to do something about that is already in the till system.

Felix is built to connect to that till and look at who bought what and when. It then suggests who the owner should contact and says why, for example “hasn’t visited in six months”. That suggestion is called a nudge. For each nudge, Felix writes a personal message the owner can edit, and nothing goes out without the owner reading and approving it. The reasons are in Why Felix sends nothing without the owner.

What the first pilot is waiting for

I know a boutique to start with, but it is going very slowly. The biggest question sits with the vendor of the till system: will they give access to the API, the connection software uses to fetch data? Without that access, Felix cannot read that boutique’s sales data, and I don’t know yet whether it will work out.

Felix is not built for one till system, so this is about that one pilot. Beyond that, it comes down to outbound: approaching other boutiques.

Where the voice notes came from

On a sales call, an owner said they keep forgetting what they wrote down, and for whom, after a few days or weeks or even months.

A note like that is quick to make, during the visit or just after the customer has left the shop: person X needs product P in size M. Felix saves that note. When the stock is added in the till, Felix reads it and the nudge is ready to send.

A new blue shirt

Bulk messages came out of sales calls too. Say a new blue shirt comes in. You take a picture and send it to the people who might want it. Felix suggests that group based on their purchase history, and you can also pick people yourself.

The newsletter that did not happen

In one conversation, someone asked for a newsletter. I listened, thought about it and said no. Felix should not become a newsletter.

At first sight it looks like bulk, because in both cases several people get one message. With bulk you choose a group, and the message is specific, or it should be. A newsletter, to me, is a general message to everyone. A newsletter can be targeted too, so this is the line I draw for Felix, because I think a feature should always fit the product.