If you’re searching for great new employees, you may not need to look far. Your next star recruit could frequent your business as a customer already. I spoke with small-business owners about the unexpected places they found some of their best employees – who just happened to be pretty familiar with their companies already.
The Crafter’s Box is a subscription service that releases a new workshop every month to help you learn new crafting skills. The service includes a video tutorial led by a professional artist and all the supplies you’ll need.
Building a team that truly loves the company product and core values is an incredible gift to a small business. [...] Welcoming customers to the team helps all to improve and grow.
—Morgan Spenla, founder, The Crafter’s Box
While it primarily shares its open positions using traditional routes such as LinkedIn and social media, founder Morgan Spenla says subscribers are so passionate about the company’s products that they reach out to ask about open positions proactively.
“We love to keep the résumés of interested customers on hand,” Spenla says.
It’s certainly paid off. Spenla says these customers-turned-employees have “amazing familiarity with our workshops and artists, insight on how we might improve and grow, outside perspectives in their individual areas of expertise, and a love for our mission.”
Those customers help fill in blind spots within the company because they’re approaching the product as someone intimately familiar with which parts of it work and which need to be improved.
An Experienced Point of View
Jacqueline Do is just one of the former customers who now work at The Crafter's Box – she was hired two years ago to be the company’s social media manager. She had been laid off from her previous job due to COVID-19 and decided to treat herself to the premium organic tapestry weaving workshop. So when Do saw The Crafter’s Box was hiring, she thought it would be a “perfect match.”
Fast-forward a few years and Do herself led a circular weaving workshop that was a hit with customers. Do says being a customer who had watched and followed along with a crafting workshop gave her new insights into developing her own workshop.
“I think being a customer definitely changed how I viewed the workshops,” Do says. “I really tried to make a workshop as easy as I could.”
Do knew from previous experience as a customer that a workshop focusing on the basics leads to less frustration for customers and a better experience overall.
Spenla says that customers turned employees even have an impact on fellow employees who may not have had that experience before their hiring.
“Building a team that truly loves the company product and core values is an incredible gift to a small business,” Spenla says. “Welcoming customers to the team helps all to improve and grow.”
“Customers turned employees just care more, especially if they’re a fan of the product or service, because they want the business to succeed and they’re advocates for the company as well,” Do says.
From Customer to Owner
Jamie Mathy, who owns one of the largest board game shops in Illinois, Red Raccoon Games, knows all about wanting to help a business he loved as a customer. In fact, Mathy came to own Red Raccoon Games after frequenting it himself.
At the time, he was the founder and chief technology officer of a computer company, and whenever he needed a break, he would pace around downtown Bloomington, Illinois, where the hole-in-the-wall store was located. The self-described “geek” and his friends played Dungeons & Dragons as teens, so finding the store was almost kismet.
Mathy became friends with the shop’s former owner and began suggesting ways he could improve the company’s website, social media presence, and branding – all business aspects that were part of Mathy’s own area of expertise and that he, as a customer, could see were missing.
“I didn't want to see another game store in Bloomington go out of business, because we've had a lot of them over the years, and they all last, like, five years, and they all go away,” Mathy says.
One day, Red Raccoon’s former owner made the offhand comment, “Why don't you just buy the store and do it yourself? I think you could take it to the next level better than I could.”
After some time thinking it over, that’s just what happened eight years ago. Mathy improved the areas where he felt the business fell short. He set to work rebranding the store with its current name, moving to a new location with bright lights, and adding vinyl decals and LED signs with “Red Raccoon Games” on the door and windows to make sure potential customers knew exactly what the store was about with just a glance.
A Rebrand With Customers in Mind
And he didn’t stop there. Mathy wanted to open up his niche business to a new customer base beyond the older male customers who most often visited. So he made a conscious effort to recruit women customers who were friendly and already had great relationships with current employees and fellow customers.
“We made a purposeful effort to recruit those people, those women who could hold their own and talk to people coming in the door,” Mathy says. “As we did that, more and more women started coming in. And then we got this reputation for being a safe space for people.”
The customers turned employees even brought ideas for new products for the store to carry, opening up an entirely new market of people who were looking for plush toys and apparel.
“I would never have brought this stuff in before. It's not something I ever would have considered. But now that our customer demographic has shifted, those things sell like gangbusters,” Mathy says.
That inclusivity has brought in a whole new generation of gamers.
“We won't tolerate bullying,” Mathy says. “It's a shift, and it means the parents want to bring their kids to us and they want to teach them about games.”
“Those steps rebranding and then changing who our employees were really have defined a lot of what the store is,” he adds.
Red Raccoon Games’ customer recruitment has been such a success that the store has outgrown its current space and just broke ground on a building that will feature a café run by a fellow small-business owner.
“We recruited people who we already know love our hobby. The more games they play, the deeper they are into the hobby, the better the conversations they can have with customers,” Mathy says.
He recommends recruiting those friendly customers who already know a lot about your business and products, saying that’s what has made Red Raccoon Games a force to be reckoned with.
“I had to step outside of my comfort zone to listen to [customers turned employees] about what was important to them,” Mathy says. “And I think we’re a better organization for that.”
