Willow Home piques DIY interest with digital strategy
In the midst of the pandemic, Heather Stark and her husband moved Willow Home, their home decor and furniture painting shop in Walkerton, into a space three times larger than the one they’d spent the previous two years in. “Quite a few people shook their head when we decided to expand during the pandemic,” admits Stark. The move only put the business – which both sells paints for DIY projects and offers furniture painting services – a block and a half further into the town’s centre but it boosted their business exponentially.
“It was 100% the best decision we’ve ever made.” It seemed, all of a sudden as if the business had been discovered. And it had, in a sense. The pandemic had led to an influx of new people moving to Walkerton and other places in the area, in search of slower-paced, more community-driven lives than they’d lived in the city. “We’re so lucky here in Walkerton because our downtown is so vibrant… we’ve got such a good mixture of different types of retail downtown,” says Stark. And it was a draw for newcomers to the area. Alongside that move came a heightened interest in DIY projects.
But the pandemic wasn’t all good news for Willow Home. Stark admits she’d only started to chip away at the business’ website when she started WIllow Home five years ago. Work on the website had fallen off as she got busier. “I had started putting inventory in and then I had such good walk-in traffic, I was like, I don’t really need to sell online,” she says. “As soon as the pandemic hit, I realized oh my God, what a bad mistake.”
She scrambled to get inventory online. She also realized she had an influx of requests every time she threw products up on social media. “My kids were like, mom, put stuff on Instagram stories… and I wish I would’ve known about Instagram stories right when the pandemic started because it took me about six months to figure it out,” says Stark. “As soon as I started using Instagram stories every day, never was there a day that I didn't at least sell one item.”
It prompted a realization that she needed the digital side of the business to augment her brick-and-mortar shop. Stark was aware of Digital Main Street, a program combining grants and one-to-one support from the Province of Ontario alongside partners to help main street businesses strengthen their online capabilities and plan for the digital future, having received the $2,500 Digital Transformation Grant in the past.
But in 2022, she underwent the digital training again and received another grant, this time devoting the money to upgrading the business’ website. “Every time I finished a training video, my mind was just racing,” she says. “They’re just so full of information and by the time I was done, I was like….. just learned so much.”
Going forward, her website will be critical as Walkerton undertakes a massive downtown revitalization process that will reroute traffic and impact the downtown core. “My online store really has to be totally up-to-date and running,” she says. And it will be, Stark says she won’t be taken by surprise again. “I think five years from now, we’re gonna be in a much better place than had that pandemic never happened.”
Interested in decor for your home? Visit Willow Home's website here.
To learn more about the Digital Transformation Grant, and how it can help your business 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.
Continued investment from the Province of Ontario, through the Ministry of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade (MEDJCT) has allowed the ongoing expansion the Digital Main Street Platform in order to support more businesses going digital across Ontario.
