Eco-Friendly Apparel in the Digital Realm: Planks Canada's CDAP Journey
Ashlynn Ross, the owner of Planks Canada, used the knowledge and support she received through the Canadian Digital Adoption Program (CDAP) to take her business to the next level.
Ashlynn Ross is the visionary behind Planks Canada, an eco-friendly apparel and home decor brand in Crystal Beach, Ontario. Ashlynn launched her business as she felt “a need to do retail, better”, and achieves this goal by offering shopping experiences that revolve around ethical and sustainable practices, positive initiatives, and the promotion of other Canadian brands. “Customers are becoming increasingly more aware and conscious of their shopping habits and I want to continue to work with the customers to offer, ethical, sustainable, thoughtful products in-store and online”, shares Ashlynn.
Ashlynn felt her business was ready to embark on an expansion journey. While seeking the next steps, she discovered the Canada Digital Adoption Program (CDAP) and microgrant, which she saw as a golden opportunity to improve the Planks Canada online presence.
The Canada Digital Adoption Program is designed to empower smaller businesses, like Planks Canada, to understand digital tools and technologies, enabling them to embrace e-commerce solutions for their business. Each business is paired with a dedicated E-Commerce advisor to help them on their digital journey and can help them access the $2,400 microgrant to support integrating e-commerce tools into their business.
“Being so close to your business you lose sight of what outsiders/customers may see that you don't. Our advisor really helped us see where we could improve and helped us re-align our online store with what is happening in our retail storefront. (The E-commerce Advisor) pointed out small changes that I would have overlooked myself and that is invaluable to me as a business owner”, shares Ashlynn.
With the support of her E-commerce Advisor, Ashlynn identified the need to improve the Planks Canada online store. One way they sought to improve the Planks Canada site was by implementing a new ‘tag' feature for products on the site. These tags display as a visual graphic and allow customers to filter their search by different categories of products.
Ashlynn was able to implement the new tag feature on the site, and through the program also learned a lot of ‘useful information' for her new site. She learned a lot about SEO from her E-commerce Advisor. She was able to implement some of these SEO best practices into her newly improved site, which will help her find new customers moving forward.
“CDAP (gave) us the insight and the jumpstart we really needed to focus on our online presence and get our website more in line with our brand. (The grant allowed) us to improve our website and get our business in front of more of the right customers.
From one small business owner to another, Ashlyn offers the following advice:
“I found the entire program full of useful information and I loved the one on one with an advisor. If your website or online presence has been behind or fading into your day to day grind, this is the perfect extra push to focus on getting back at it and give it the time and energy it deserves.”
To learn more about Planks Canada, or to shop for ethical, sustainable, Canadian-made products, you can visit the new Planks Canada site here.
To learn more about the CDAP program, please visit here.
Digital Main Street was created by the Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas (TABIA) with direct support from the City of Toronto. DMS is also supported by a group of strategic business partners, including Google, Mastercard, Shopify, Meta, Intuit QuickBooks, Square, Lightspeed, Ebay and Canada Post.
As part of the Canada Digital Adoption Program, the Government of Canada has partnered with Digital Main Street to deliver the Grow Your Business Online grant to small businesses in Ontario. The program offers eligible business owners a micro-grant of up to $2,400 to help with the costs related to implementing an e-commerce strategy and hands-on support from a network of E-commerce Advisors.
