By LIZ CRUMBLY
Editor
Kimberly Rupp posted an addition to her online store last year – pony rolling pins – before leaving town with her family for the weekend. She figured the baking accessories, studded with pony silhouettes, wouldn’t garner a whole lot of attention while she vacationing, but she was wrong – she returned home to a flood of orders.
That’s pretty much how business has been for Rupp’s store, The Pony Habit, which she launched in early 2014.
“We didn’t really plan on it being successful as it was,” she recalls with a touch of incredulity.
Surprised or not, Rupp has taken the boon and run with it. Her profits doubled in 2015. She opened another storefront, The Western Habit, to cater to a wider clientele, and she’s now looking at opening a brick-and-mortar installation of the Pony Habit in her hometown of Ashland, Va., near I-95, next year.
Rupp says she owes her success to several factors:
- A unique relationship with her 126 vendors. Most are female and many offer handmade or customizable products. Rupp markets their wares to the general public and drop ships the items from vendor to customer.
- A strong knowledge of the sales game. She previously worked in ad sales for several equestrian magazines, so she knows how to reach the public. Facebook has been an indispensable resource for her marketing efforts. She posts new products and special deals there frequently.
- A love of networking. Rupp has a large pool of friends in the equestrian industry, and she doesn’t hesitate to share ideas with them. She’s done things like supply jewelry makers with handmade pieces from other artists to
A brilliant set of show bows, just one of the custom offerings from The Pony Habit. incorporate into their work.
Social media has proven a reliable vehicle for making meaningful contact with the public – her Pony Habit Facebook page currently has nearly 30,000 likes, and the Western Habit has racked up 11,000. In two years.
Perhaps the most shocking thing is that, according to Rupp, all these likes are organic.
She’s the first to admit she works for the attention. She posts to various horse-related Facebook groups daily with little teasers to both her business pages, but she says the constant peddling seems more like fun than work.
“You have to really like doing this,” she says. “Facebook is an addiction.”
Rupp’s career has run the gamut in terms of variety. She has an educational background in biology and spent 15 years as a Naval officer before making the jump to ad sales and eventually retail.
She jokes that she can’t decide what she wants to do permanently, but it looks like she’ll be catering to equestrians through The Pony Habit for some time.
“I guess you find your talent in life, and this is just mine,” she says.
