Made in Tarrant: The Velvet Box owner starts a personal coaching business for women - EUROPE SAYS
Editor’s note: Made in Tarrant is an occasional Q&A series on small businesses started in Tarrant County. Submit your businesshere. TheVelvet Box, Marcelle LeBlanc’s growing Fort Worth chain of luxury. . .
Editor’s note: Made in Tarrant is an occasional Q&A series on small businesses started in Tarrant County. Submit your businesshere. TheVelvet Box, Marcelle LeBlanc’s growing Fort Worth chain of luxury adult toy stores, has come a long way since she and a partner began the business in 2009. The company now has six stores in the Metroplex, selling adult novelties, lingerie, books, and online and live sex education classes taught by a certified sex educator. LeBlanc has launched a personal coaching business calledThe Conversation Architect, which grew out of her volunteer work mentoring budding entrepreneurs in theEntrepreneurs’ Organization Fort Worthchapter’sAcceleratorprogram. The goal: to “help sharp, capable women have one honest relationship conversation before committing to a life that won’t fit,” says LeBlanc, 54, a divorcee. “No years of silence. No endless therapy. One real conversation that creates clarity and the courage to move forward — together or apart. ”LeBlanc sat down for a Q&A with the Report. The interview has been edited for length, grammar and clarity. The Velvet Box: thevelvetbox. comThe Velvet Box social media:The Conversation Architect social media:Scott Nishimura: Give us an update on The Velvet Box and what your plans are for it. Marcelle LeBlanc: We are at six locations right now, and (have) no real plans to expand. The economy has been a little bit tough. I think retail’s down across the board everywhere. But it’s been fun working on a lot of AI stuff. We got a new point of sale system a couple years ago, and we’ve been implementing a lot of AI processes, and we’re able to really talk to our data now, which is very interesting. I wouldn’t have imagined this. Nishimura: What do you mean by talking to your data?LeBlanc: We’re looking at inventory, and my buyer starts asking (the AI bot) some questions, and it’s able to pull every sales transaction we’ve done for the last two years. We analyze it by sales associate, and it tells you trends about what they like to sell on the sales floor and their comfort level with certain products and where they might be staying a little bit longer, where they might need some more training. And then we handed that over to our area director, who did a bingo card that put products together on a card that was individualized per sales associate, so they can expand their knowledge on different items to help them sell more. We could not have done that two years ago. Nishimura: Have you found sales have responded over the last couple of years to the use of this technology?LeBlanc: I don’t know that sales have responded as much as our buying has gotten better. Our buying is the best it’s ever been. Inventory, labor and rent are our three biggest expenses, and so being able to monitor that to the next level is really a game changer. Nishimura: How many employees do you have these days?LeBlanc: We have about 35 right now. Nishimura: So you said things are a little soft now. You’ve still got a partner who has his own stores in Dallas, right? Is there opportunity, as the economy gets better, to open more stores?LeBlanc: There’s always opportunity when people are spending money. You have North Texas that’s continuing to grow. It’s growing out towards Weatherford. Our (sales)conversionis really high. Just our foot traffic is down. I think people are on a cash crunch. There’s less dollars to spend, and we’re not a necessity. You know, we’re an optional item. Nishimura: Do you have increased competition these days from cheap imports or lesser products?LeBlanc: People come to us because of our expertise in curated product lines. We’ve been in business 17 years, and I’ve been wanting to do something private label, and (four months ago) we finally did find a product that represents us. It’s (a vibrator) called theHello. Glow. We brought in our first product, and we’re working on a second that’s in the works. We call it affordable luxury. Normally, something that like that would come in about $150, and (Hello. Glow is) just under $100, for the same quality. It’s our No. 1 seller now. It’s pretty. The packaging’s gorgeous. It’s conservative and nondescript. Nishimura: How much has local acceptance of you and your stores changed over the years?LeBlanc: We’ve had no issues. We opened (a location in) Flower Mound, and the city was a little nervous, but then that took about two months and then we never heard from them again. Nishimura: Let’s segue to this consulting business that you started. Tell me how that idea came up. LeBlanc: The Conversation Architect. Yes. I’ve been working on it for probably 18 months now, and it stemmed from a couple things. I’m very involved with theEntrepreneurs’ Organization, and I have been coaching theAcceleratorprogram, and I have just so enjoyed that. And then I went through some interviews with a coaching company. I talked to ourfractional CFO. And he says, “I think you could do this in your sleep, but you’re going to be incredibly frustrated if you sign people on for three years and they won’t be very accountable. ” I also had a personal business coach and he says, “You have a gift; why use someone else’s recycled content? You should continue developing this. ” We didn’t have a name for it yet. I eventually developed The Conversation Architect. Nishimura: What’s the concept?LeBlanc: I came to that over the years of talking to thousands of (clients) at The Velvet Box. I was honored to be part of these conversations. They were managing resentment, disappointment, boredom, and they were already entangled and not sure what to do. There’s a lack of connection: We’re strangers in the same house. There was a group of people that would come in, and they were in love, looking to spice things up out of curiosity. But there were a lot of these people that … were already disconnected (and) were trying to solve with product what had been caused by silence. And so I believe women need to tell the truth to themselves and their partner, so they don’t waste years of their life hoping things might get better. Nishimura: How do these conversations work?LeBlanc: I developed a values-based framework where we figure out what you want, strip out all the rambling, and say it in a way that you can be heard. A lot of times, women are not taught to have hard conversations. They’re not taught to figure out what they want. They get really good at guessing what other people want, but never ask themselves the question. A lot of women treat their needs as selfish, and these are very capable people. These are women that are running companies. They’re doing multimillion-dollar deals. They’re hiring and firing people, and for some reason, they are not being honest in their relationship. And I think people trade honesty for belonging, and they’re not doing it because they’re weak. They’re doing it because they’re kind. They love their partner. They don’t want to hurt their feelings. But you’re kind of losing yourself in the process. Nishimura: What’s the difference between this and what people think of as therapy?LeBlanc: It’s not therapy. Therapy is long-term processing. It’s good if you want to figure out a whole lot of things, but this is a short-term engagement, and I fit with this one particular moment. Nishimura: Short-term engagement, as in one meeting?LeBlanc: Six sessions. Nishimura: What kind of setting?LeBlanc: Virtual. Because I have clients here and there. They’re not always close by. I have an office at my house. It’s quiet and private. Nishimura: What do you charge?LeBlanc: I prefer not to say. It’s going to be far less than the ring she throws back at him in 12 months’ time. Nishimura: So these conversations occur with women. There’s no occasion in which you’ve got the couple together?LeBlanc: No, it’s not couples therapy. It’s having her figuring out what she wants and what that alignment is (that) prevents regret. Nishimura: How many clients do you have capacity to do this with?LeBlanc: I want to keep it at about three or four a month. It’s a big responsibility to somebody that comes to you and they’re scared, uncertain. I don’t take that lightly. So, I want to make sure that you know I’m not breezing through a lot of people. Nishimura: It sounds as if most of your clients, or all of them, are in a long-term relationship already?LeBlanc: A lot of them, yes. A lot of them are second time around. Some of them are divorced or are about to divorce. Originally, I was focusing on younger people, before they get married. But surprisingly, I have an older group of people that have been reaching out as well, people that are feeling stuck in their marriages. I’ve never had more passion behind something, and I really, after I turned 50, it’s just been so much fun giving back. If I could be that light or beacon that I didn’t have, I’d love to be that. Scott Nishimura is senior editor for local government accountability, Fort Worth City Hall reporter, and a contributor to the business coverage at the Fort Worth Report. Reach him at scott. nishimura@fortworthreport. org. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policyhere. This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4. 0 International License. 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