Blogs

South African Stylish Homeware Online

Published

4 years ago

03/27/2021

Kossi Adzo

Nikki Tyack, owner of Esque tells us about their exclusive, beautiful, stylish, and trendy pieces of furniture and decor.

Table of Contents

First of all, how are you and your family doing in these COVID-19 times?

Nikki Tyack: We are thankfully doing well. We have managed to stay Covid free, and everyone is healthy.

Tell us about you, your career, how you founded Esque.

Nikki Tyack: My business partner and I founded the company in 2013 as a side hustle, fun idea, and dream. Over the years, we built it up to what it is now. A few years ago, we decided to split the partnership, and I took over full time, and my business partner focused on her family and other business full time.

How does Esque innovate?

Nikki Tyack: We keep up with the trends of the interior and decor industry worldwide. We follow leaders in the game and do our best to give our customers the best service and experience when shopping online with us.

How does the coronavirus pandemic affect your business finances?

Nikki Tyack: We have been fortunate enough in South Africa that our clientele are sitting on the high LSM, and those who would be traveling overseas were now stuck at home spending their money on upgrading their homes and shopping online. So we have been positively affected financially by Covid.

Did you have to make difficult choices regarding human resources, and what are the lessons learned?

Nikki Tyack: Fortunately, we didn’t need to retrench anyone. We delayed some interviewing processes and hiring of new team members in the beginning until we knew how Covid was going to affect us. And then we got back up and carried on business as usual.

How did your customer relationship management evolve? Do you use any specific tools to be efficient?

Nikki Tyack: We focused on our communication and interaction with our customers – we saw an increase in our engagement and new customers due to people shopping online more and focusing on their homes. We leveraged this and did our best to provide personal and outstanding customer service.

Did you benefit from any government grants, and did that help keep your business afloat?

Nikki Tyack: For the first two months of our national lockdown, we weren’t allowed to operate fully, and we benefited from our government grants for staff salaries. However, thereafter we stopped claiming, and business opened up for us, and we carried on as usual.