eBiz Profile: NaughtySecretaryClub.com By Robert Slydell
March 14, 2007
Santa Claus would say you can't have it both ways, but Jennifer Perkins proves him wrong: The Texas native is decidedly nice, but also naughty — and skyrocketing in popularity, thanks to an e-commerce Web site with a cult-like following that she's parlaying into a brand with endless extensions.
Perkins, 32, is founder of the Naughty Secretary Club, which sells handmade jewelry, purses and fashion accessories to thousands of hip, indie high school and college girls, averaging tens of thousands of hits daily. She's one of nine members of the Austin Craft Mafia, a consortium of young female business owners in the fashion, art and craft industry with a do-it-yourself ("DIY") mantra.
Ain't Misbehavin': Jennifer Perkins, CEO of Naughty Secretary Club.
Long before joining "the familia," as they call themselves, Perkins was showing off her artistic creativity as a little kid growing up in McKinney, Texas.
"I always loved jewelry and it was one of the first crafts I remember doing," says Perkins. "My mother is super artsy so she always encouraged my younger sister Hope (another Mafia member) and I to make things. On the flip side, my dad is very business-minded. He would encourage us to set up a roadside stand and sell it."
While debating grad school after college, Perkins worked as an administrative assistant for a telecom company.
Over the next few years, when she wasn't filing papers or answering phones, Perkins was learning Web design and also launched the Naughty Secretary Club as a print 'zine, offering craft tips and interviews with local musicians. The name of her company was inspired by her desire to pour her energy into her creative ventures rather than her daytime workaday routine. "I created the business while I was a secretary so I was being naughty," she says.
NSC: Getting Hits as Members of the Austin Craft Mafia.
Bustin' Loose to A New Job In 2001, Perkins quit her job on three days notice to make jewelry and run the Web site full-time, overwhelmed by orders after being mentioned in the women's pop-culture 'zine Bust. Since then, she's landed gigs on the DIY TV network shows "Styleicious" and "Craft Lab."
"I am not ready to build a mansion — and I still drive the same Honda Civic I have had for the last 10 years, but things are good," she says.
The NSC site today features a wealth of women's fashion items, made by Perkins herself and a slew of young designers (including sister Hope) whom the NSC "Boss Lady" is more than happy to carry. Perkins herself works with vintage parts, and nowadays designs pieces and lets her assistant duplicate them.
The line's success has also allowed Perkins a rare opportunity for an e-retailer: she now sells wholesale to stores nationwide and invites wholesale inquiries on her Web site. Despite the profit hit, she says it provides her business necessary buzz.
"It just helps spread the word about your company," she raves. "All my products come carded so it's clear that the piece of jewelry is from Naughty Secretary Club — even if someone is just shopping in a store they might see my tag and go home and check out my Web site and buy from me directly. There are still lots of people who have trepidations about shopping online, and if you do not have your product available in stores those people will never get your goodies in their hot little hands."
MySpace Marketing Strikes Again Perkins hardly solicits retailers; they seek her out, mainly because she's a marketing maven. "I LOVE marketing," she says emphatically. "If I ever quit making jewelry I would want to go into PR for other crafty companies."
Perkins used to be all about getting links, each one "a new avenue in a little city," she says, but admits to still not feeling comfortable with Google ads yet. Instead, she runs an extensive MySpace page, which aligns well with her "tween" demographic. The Mafia also ships out postcards advertising each other's businesses with orders.
Perkins has advertised on websites like Crafter.org in the past, and is about to launch a partnership with a blog called Modish. She also places ads in select craft and niche magazines such as Bust, Venus, Adorn and Ready Made. "Their prices are not exorbitant and the magazines cater to my core audience," she says. "I appeal to punk-rock crafty types."
Free Press: Getting Print The best buzz, though, has been Naughty Secretary Club's numerous editorial placements, which Perkins says luckily come her way without much effort: "I can guarantee you that a nice bit of editorial coverage on my jewelry in a magazine will sell a million more times of product than any ad will."
Perkins uses DreamHost as a hosting provider and processes credit card payments through Authorize.net. She's about to switch shopping cart software to OS Commerce (more on that below), which will take a smaller per-order percentage but a higher monthly fee than her current Mal's e-commerce system.
She also gladly accepts PayPal. "A lot of people do not accept PayPal and I am here to tell you that they are silly," she says. "I do a lot of business through there."
Since there's no drop-shipping at the NSC, her assistant Travis Nichols handles order fulfillment, working out of Perkins' bedroom. "I have all my products lining the walls on peg boards and in shelves." Nichols packs the boxes, prints out postage from a Pitney Bowes machine and drops them off at the local post office.
As for the future, Perkins hopes implementing the new OS Commerce software will also help with inventory issues. "The shopping cart I currently have works great, but it does not keep track of inventory, so I am constantly over-selling things," she says. "I am hoping for a shopping cart that is very similar to that of Amazon.com. I would love to have last-minute checkout selection, and have a shopping cart where we store credit card info and people just have to log in with a user name and password to shop."
Sure, none of this sounds all that naughty. But so long as Perkins' thousands of loyal customers keep shopping, nobody seems to mind.
Perkins, assistant Travis Nichols, and a graphic designer, bookkeeper and Web programmer as needed.
Key strategies:
"Marketing is every bit as important as your product. It's 60 percent what you can do, and 40 percent how you market it," says Perkins. "My other rule of thumb: I make jewelry that I would want to wear, not what is trendy. So far, that has worked for me."
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