CASE STUDY
PAINT ME VINTAGE
Paint Me Vintage is a boutique painting and decorating supplies shop based in Pyes Pay, Bay of Plenty. They sell a huge range of chalk paint which is a key focus for them, as well as selling unique vintage, French, craft, stencils, transfers and decor to help people create beautiful homes.
It all began for Carla Lowe (owner of Paint Me Vintage) when she moved into a beautiful old 1950s villa in the country. Being a dedicated townie, it was a shock to her system to find herself surrounded by green paddocks, a large unruly garden, some friendly chickens, a few sheep and a really ugly dark red Villa. She knew that dark red had to go – the villa needed painting, and a lot of it! So she began by painting the walls and just didn’t stop. After dealing with the red, she turned her attention to their furniture which was in desperate need of an update.
After researching online, she discovered the amazing products and results that people were achieving overseas. However, she found that sourcing the products she required to create the stylish French Country look she wanted was much more difficult than she imagined, as they were purchased from overseas and the wait for them to arrive on our shores took forever!
Carla knew she was not the only New Zealander passionate about creating unique and beautiful furniture pieces and there were bound to be other who disliked the torturous wait for products to arrive in New Zealand.
That was when the idea for Paint Me Vintage was born, and in April 2016, Paint Me Vintage was launched!
“I have grown the business slowly and steadily as I have gone along. I am pretty entrepreneurial so I knew if I kept the business as just me, it could only ever get as big as what I could do on my own.”
As the business and sales started to grow, Carla found she was in a position that many small business owners find themselves in – feeling overwhelmed and overloaded by the administrative tasks that were taking up so much of her time.
This meant that focusing on continuing to grow the business was forever being pushed to the bottom of her priority list and, in the end. they started to see stagnated growth.
Carla’s goal has always been to be the most well-known, well-stocked and successful furniture painting store in NZ and she knew that to achieve that, she needed to bring in some extra help
“The pricing structure, availability to get tasks done and being able to communicate with the team directly made the decision to bring Admin Army on board easy.”
Before bringing on the Admin Army team as support, Carla was finding her main frustrations were:
Not having enough time to focus on the aspects of the business she actually enjoyed
Not understanding enough about the bookkeeping, GST and Payroll processes and having to self-train
Unable to achieve business goals due to a lack of time and focus
The process of starting with Admin Army was seamless and we were up and running with admin support the minute the contract was signed – this was a huge relief for Carla and meant we could all hit the ground running and free up Carla’s time quickly.
Carla was now able to concentrate on the parts of the business that she enjoys and is good at – selling and producing!
As the business grew, Carla found she was still spending too much time working on her business rather than in it. She made the call to add bookkeeping and payroll support to package which has meant a scalable outcome for her as her business needs changed.
The business has a MUCH steadier and proactive social media presence (especially when compared to other businesses in the industry), as Carla can really focus on planning and producing this content.
Social media and digital marketing plays a large part in the business strategy and with the ability to now focus on this, they saw their sales double (when compared to the previous 12 months).
Without bringing Admin Army on board to help with payroll, bookkeeping and general administration tasks there is no way Carla would have been able to scale the business to where it is today.
She has confidence that her GST, bookkeeping and payroll is being dealt with effectively and efficiently – when year end comes around she knows her accounts are up to date and is ready to present them right away.
“I rely on being able to easily (and quickly!) add in more tasks as we require – such as another social media aspect, or like when we added payroll into the mix.”
Carla now has the time to focus on growing her business and achieving their current objective of relocating the business from being rural into the Tauranga township – we can’t wait to work alognside the team and help them to achieve this goal!
“You do what you say you will and we can talk it though to totally customise it for my business, which is pretty unique”.