--- type: Article title: "She Didn’t Show Up to Vote — Weekly Retail Tidbits #251" description: "Your customer didn’t come in to vote — she came in because she trusts your eye. Why curation beats crowd-sourcing, plus a meet-Erin-Gray new line." resource: https://amyfaychandler.com/she-didnt-show-up-to-vote/ tags: [she-didnt-show-up-to-vote] --- [Curate With Courage](https://amyfaychandler.com/category/friday-retail-tidbits/curate-with-courage/) | [Weekly Retail Tidbits](https://amyfaychandler.com/category/friday-retail-tidbits/) # She Didn’t Show Up to Vote — Weekly Retail Tidbits #251 By[AmyFay Chandler](https://wordpress-1600709-6279960.cloudwaysapps.com) May 29, 2026July 31, 2026 “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 P.S. June market appointments are open. Excited to see many of you! I keep thinking of special things to do for my appointments. I super appreciate your making the trip to Atlanta — and for carving out time for us to work together. It means a lot! [BOOK MY JUNE APPOINTMENT ➤](https://amyfaychandler.com/atlanta-market-appointment/) 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 f