She Didn’t Show Up to Vote — Weekly Retail Tidbits #251
“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”
— Herbert A. Simon
Have you done it? Watched another shop do it? On their IG: “Vote — which color FacePlant do we bring in, oatmeal or taupe?” Engagement spike, sure.
Feels like inclusion. What it really is, is a decision you’d rather not make alone — when your customer is hoping you will.
She didn’t show up to vote. She showed up because she trusts your eye.
At the dinner table the other night I sat quietly listening and asking questions until someone asked me how I was. Inside I was so excited about what I had done that day. I was over the moon. But when I told everyone, “I built an AmyFay agent,” they just all kind of looked at each other and the conversation moved on without me.
Don’t make the audience care about your engine. Decision fatigue is real.
I came back to it later. This time I didn’t lead with what I’d built — I led with what it does.
“When you ask ChatGPT something — like where to buy a brand near you — ChatGPT is a bot. It doesn’t just know the answer. It quietly goes and asks other bots, underneath, in the background where none of us see it. And for an answer to come back, those bots have to be able to talk to each other — that back-and-forth is what people mean by ‘agents.’ So I built a little bot of my own, one that can answer when another bot comes asking about the brands I carry.”
They leaned in close. They asked real questions. Same fact. Different door. They didn’t want the engine. They wanted the trip.
That’s what’s happening on Instagram too. Your customer didn’t come in for a vote. She came in because she trusts your eye. She wants you to pick. She wants to walk out with what’s working, not the burden of having helped choose.
So this week: pick the pajama. Pick the candle. Then tell her in your post why you picked it. “We picked the new taupe because it works on every skin tone and washes like a dream.” That’s your engagement. That’s also your sale.
xoxo,
❤️ AmyFay
Tech Tip — Try Your Own Store (From the Customer’s Side)
Things you might not have done — but every customer who never came back has:
- Sign up to your own newsletter from a fresh email. Does the welcome arrive? Look right on your phone? Is the unsubscribe link visible or buried?
- Buy something from your own website as a guest. Skip the admin login. How many fields? Does it work in Safari? Does the confirmation land in the inbox (not promotions, not spam)?
- Open your homepage on your phone. Hours visible without scrolling? Phone number tappable? Menu work with a thumb?
- Search your store name on Instagram. Profile come up first? Bio current? Link-in-bio still going where you think?
- Text your homepage URL to yourself. Look at the preview that pops up — a photo of your store, or a default placeholder? When customers share you, this is what they see.
Five fixes in thirty minutes. The customer who hit friction didn’t tell you. She just left.
New Line Alert
Meet erin gray design.
This is a Peruvian Pima cotton tee and 14K gold-filled jewelry line out of Atlanta — women-owned, ten years strong this December. But the number that matters to your floor is this one: it’s the everyday tee a woman wears for years — and comes back for three more colors, with a stack of bracelets to match.
Here’s where it started. When Erin’s mother was facing pancreatic cancer, she told her daughter the thing all of us need to hear: life is short — do what you love. Erin had always loved fashion, so she started small, making jewelry on the floor of her kids’ playroom in 2016. Today that playroom company is in more than 800 boutiques and gives back to CURE Childhood Cancer every single month. This isn’t a brand-new gamble — it’s a proven line that’s just new to us. That’s a story your customer feels, and a brand she’s proud to wear.
Real gold, light as air, wears for years.
This is real 14K gold-filled: gold melted with brass, never plated. Plating wears off — this doesn’t. It wears like solid gold at about a third of the price, and it’s waterproof. Your customer swims in it, sweats in it, showers in it. It’s feather-light, too — which is exactly why she stacks a bunch up her wrist and doesn’t feel a thing. The everyday workhorses are the 2, 3, and 4-millimeter bracelets, the pearls are the real thing (never glass or plastic), and the new COIN Collection is the fresh story for fall. Best part for your floor: the display stands are free when you fill them — branded gift bags included.
The tee that comes out of the dryer the same size.
erin gray design’s Pima cotton is grown in Peru and made exclusively for her — pre-washed and pre-shrunk before it ever leaves the mill — so it can be washed and dried on high and still hold its shape, wash after wash. Tagless. The slub is tuned so it never goes see-through. Start with Celia, the short-sleeve that’s sold out thirty times (white, black, Arctic blue, linen, navy, oyster). Then Grace (a pretty ruched sleeve) and Sophie (made for layering). Open sizing XS–XL, you can mix your sizes, and the minimum is five per color.
Not a summer line — a year-round one.
Start with the puffer vests — there’s a sweet new cap-sleeve — and you’ll see what makes this line work: it’s built to layer. The tees go under vests, jackets, and cashmere when it cools off, so they’re not a summer-only buy; they carry your customer all year. And underneath it all, it’s a beautifully basic line that’s just so easy to reach for and throw on every day. (There are washable weekend totes and brand-new modal-Pima pajama sets in the mix, too.)
A first for Erin — and for us.
We’re thrilled to be partnering with erin gray design. You may have met her in the temporary booths at market over the years — this is her first time in a permanent showroom, and we couldn’t be more excited to have her with us.
If you bring her in, here are the must-haves: Celia — the short-sleeve that’s sold out thirty times — and the 2, 3, and 4-millimeter gold-filled bracelets. They sell all day, and they give you both sides of the line on day one. Opening order is $1,000, tees and jewelry combined; reorders are a friendly $350.
Want to see it? Email me and I’ll send you the full look and the line sheets — or grab a June market appointment and I’ll walk you through every piece. ❤️
a tidbit more — Atlanta Market, June 9–14
My appointments start Sunday, June 7
More and more shoppers — and the AI tools they ask — are searching by brand and by town. When they do, I want your store to be the answer. Book an appointment and keep one of my lines stocked (a reorder within 90 days), and I’ll feature your shop on a page built to surface in exactly those searches and point those shoppers right to your door. No cost, and nothing to set up on your end.
📋 Resale certificates — a quick, important one.
Several of our vendors now need your resale certificate (sales tax ID) on file before they can ship to you tax-free — auditing has picked up across the industry. If you don’t have one yet, your state’s department of revenue is the place to start (quick and free). If you have one but haven’t sent it to me, email it to [email protected] and I’ll get it to every brand I rep — so you only send it once.
Visit the Tango Showroom
Shop in real life at the Tango Showroom — open Monday–Friday, 10:00–4:00 at AmericasMart, Building 2, Floor 10, Suite 1000b (by the round elevators).
See my lines · Free retail calculators (margin, sale-price, OTB & more — bookmark it!)
Our 15 Tango lines — book a June appointment to see them all in the showroom:
Bunnies by the Bay · Cobblestone Living 🎁 · Compendium 🎁 · erin gray design · EvaBelle · FacePlant Dreams 🎁 · Lenny and Eva · LINNEA · LJ Sonder 🎁 · Mary Lake Thompson 🎁 · Meghan Browne 🎁 · ORI London 🎁 · The Winding Road 🎁 · True South Puzzles 🎁 · Whispering Willow 🎁
🎁 (in gold) = part of my June Market goodie bag for TN/KY stores. Book an appointment, and I’ll deliver one to you after market!
“Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
|
Can’t wait to see you in June — there’s so much good coming this summer! xoxo, |
 |
With heart eyes on — finding things we ❤!
Counting down to June Market.
❤ Miss Millie’s — Lawrenceburg, TN
❤ The Write Impression — Murfreesboro, TN
AmyFay Chandler
She reads all of this so you don’t have to. Based in Knoxville, TN, AmyFay is a wholesale sales rep for the brands she represents across Tennessee and Kentucky, and she oversees the D2C side for Sweet Tree Jewelry and Caroline B Cook — two of those brands — making sure brick-and-mortar retailers always come first. She writes Weekly Retail Tidbits (now in its 251st issue) because she’s living the same questions her retail customers are living, and figures things out alongside them. Her whole project: helping independent retailers stay human while the rest of the industry tries to automate them away.
Also from AmyFay
Two of the brands I represent run their D2C side through me, with brick-and-mortar partners prioritized at every step:
- Sweet Tree Jewelry — school-spirit polymer-clay earrings
- Caroline B Cook — children’s books (the Virtue Series, Church Kitty)
Wholesale questions? [email protected]
Don’t miss next Friday
Get the Friday Retail Tidbits in your inbox
One long-form read every Friday morning — the brands I represent, what’s moving in the stores I walk, and the lesson behind it. Read by 3,800+ independent retailers before they unlock the front door.
