Give the Best of You — Weekly Retail Tidbits #255
Give the Best of You
This weekend, the youngest of our three sons is getting married. Wedding weekends have a way of pulling those closest to us into one room. It’s had me reflecting on family this week, as my husband and I sew up the last details for the rehearsal dinner Friday night.
I remember my mom passing along something her mother — my grandmother, Fay — taught her:
“Give the best of you to your family and those closest to you.”
It usually came at a pointed moment — when my four siblings and I were tired at the end of a long day and one of us did something that called for correction. Looking back, that lesson about giving your best almost always landed when we had the least of it left to give — which may be exactly why it stuck. The people we love most do deserve our best — not the leftovers, and not the part of us we just don’t feel like reining in, no matter how late or how tired we are.
At work, the same is true. Customers are the easy case — of course they get our best. You try harder for them. You summon extra discipline to stay kind when something goes sideways, even when you’d like to blow your top.
But what about your own team? Do you show up with your best each day — for one another, not just for the customer?
Small-business retailers have a lot on your plate. I got curious about what actually helps a team thrive, so I had my AI team dig into the research for us:*
“A leader’s mood is contagious — bring your best and the whole team rises with you; bring your worst, and everyone feels it.”
1. You set the emotional weather.
“Only 1 in 3 workers strongly agree they got recognition or praise for good work in the past seven days — and the ones who feel unrecognized are twice as likely to quit within the year.”
2. Recognition is the cheapest tool you’ve got.
“It takes more than a 20% raise to lure away an employee whose boss truly engages them — and almost nothing to poach one who feels ignored.”
3. Engaged people can’t be bought cheap.
“Replacing one employee costs about a third of their annual salary by the time you count hiring and training.”
4. Turnover is the invoice you never see.
“When researchers gave some Gap stores stable, predictable schedules — posted two weeks ahead, no on-call shifts — those stores’ sales rose about 7% and productivity about 5%.”
5. Predictable scheduling actually pays.
The truth is, a leader can sit in any seat and hold any title. If your title actually implies leadership — how well are you leading? And if it doesn’t — do you still bring your best to the people who work beside you every day?
Saturday night, the wedding party will have the head table — that’s tradition. But Friday, at the rehearsal dinner, a friend gave me advice I loved: honor the parents and grandparents. So Friday, the centerpiece of the room will be their table, with our bride and groom seated right at the head of it. My hope is that every one of them feels the love — and our best.
And I hope your team feels your best every day — wherever you sit among them, and especially if you sit near the head.
xoxo,
❤️ AmyFay
Technology Tip — The People, Not the Tool
The biggest story in tech this month isn’t about machines — it’s about people. The AI giants all have the same tools now; anyone can rent the best of it for about twenty dollars a month. So what are they spending billions fighting over? People. A couple of years back, Google paid around $2.7 billion to bring a single scientist back. One person — that’s what the right one is worth.
(The one that made me smile: John Jumper, who won a Nobel Prize for teaching AI to crack a biology puzzle that stumped researchers for 50 years, just left Google for Anthropic — my favorite AI company. He also happens to be my brother-in-law’s cousin. Small world, big week.)
And that’s your life too, isn’t it? You lie awake sure the shop across town carries your same lines — and sometimes they do, the same stuff, the same catalogs. But they don’t have your team, your eye, the store you built around all of it. The edge was never the tool. Everybody can order the stuff; nobody can order your build. So this week, don’t fret over the stuff — give your best to your people: the ones on your team, and the ones at your table.
3 Tango Tidbits — Meet the Artists
Speaking of people — every line I carry starts with one. Here are three artists behind the things landing on your shelves this week.
True South — The Artist Behind the New College-Town Minis
Every True South puzzle starts with a real, independent artist. Susan, who owns True South, commissions the art, pays for it, and lets the artist go on selling it elsewhere — she calls it opening doors.
These six are all the hand of artist Jennifer Savage, who painted each SEC college town in watercolor — Knoxville, Tuscaloosa, Athens, Oxford, Gainesville, and Auburn. Look close and you’ll find the local landmarks she tucked into every one.
Brand-new this season, shipping July 1st, sold in 6’s — great for anywhere a game-day fan shops.
 Knoxville
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 Athens
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 Auburn
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 Gainesville
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 Oxford
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 Tuscaloosa
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EvaBelle — New Coasters, a First for the Line
EvaBelle started the way the best art does — Vanee, recovering from open-heart surgery, sleepless, tearing paper by hand until a verse took shape. So it’s fitting that her newest pieces come from another artist she believes in: a painter on a second-chance journey whose watercolors now live on EvaBelle’s very first coasters. Four designs — a heart for 1 Corinthians, a little bird for Matthew 6, the whole world in His hands, and a John 3:16 cross — each verse lettered around the rim, each one just as at home holding a coffee cup as standing on a tiny easel. The first color ever to come to the line, and proof that what EvaBelle really sells is a maker’s heart you can set on a shelf.
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The Winding Road — Felt Ornaments by the Women of Nepal
Every one of these is needle-felted and hand-stitched by the 200+ women artisans Marla works with in Nepal — and the frogs might be the cutest thing they make. Look closely: every little dress, jacket, and crown is sewn by hand. Set the black cats out for fall and bring the frogs in for the holidays — order now and they’re on your display this season, not on a truck come November.
 Black cats — for fall
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 The dapper frogs — the line’s #1, every outfit hand-stitched
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More than the order
When you carry my lines, you get a partner, not just a rep. Most folks don’t realize I can do all of this for their store. A few of my favorites:
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✓ Reorders from your numbers
Send your sales report and I’ll draft one around what’s selling. Yours to trim to fit.
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✓ A dashboard of your lines
Every line you carry with me, when you last ordered, and a nudge when it’s time.
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✓ Opening orders for new lines
Curious about a line? I’ll build a first order sized right for your store.
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✓ Your order, ready for your system
A file you can drop straight in, with no re-keying by hand.
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✓ A price book for your display
A little book with a photo and price for each piece, to set right by the display — so the price is always there and your tags stay clean.
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✓ A scan book for checkout
For lines with barcodes, a printable flip-and-scan book I make for your register.
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“The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.”
— William James
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Here’s to the people at our tables xoxo, |
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* Sources for the research above
1. “A leader’s mood is contagious”: Daniel Goleman, Primal Leadership (2002).
2. Recognition stat: Gallup.
3. The 20%-raise finding: Gallup, 2021 — “The Great Resignation Is Really the Great Discontent.”
4. Cost of turnover: Work Institute, 2017 Retention Report.
5. Gap scheduling study: Stable Scheduling Study, Harvard Business Review (2018).
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 255th 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]
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