Meet Stephanie Edwards | Manager of E-Commerce and Digital Marketing

We had the good fortune of connecting with Stephanie Edwards and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Stephanie, what do you attribute your success to?
We attribute our success and longevity to our committed employees and management team, creative makers and vendors, and our FIERCELY loyal customers. But any time we have been tested, we have found that if we just double-down on WHO we are and WHAT we do, our customers have come through for us… as long as we were able to PIVOT, PIVOT, PIVOT. That is what has truly shaped us into who we are as a business.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Urban General Store (Urbangeneralstore.com) is the online home of Chicago’s ENJOY, AN URBAN GENERAL STORE—a specialty, queer owned, woman run, independent gift store with two retail locations on the north side of Chicago founded in 2005 by Rebecca Wood. Our unofficial motto is “Nothing you need, something you want, everything to ENJOY.”

In 2008, during the US recession, we were faced with the possibility of losing our first retail location in Chicago’s Lincoln Square due to the possible sale of the building. It was a scary and uncertain time in the country. We were faced with either closing the shop after 3 years of hard work growing the business and the brand, starting over in a new location which required capital we did not yet have, or taking our business online so that even if we did not have a physical location, we could still operate. Stephanie Edwards came on-board to help launch our website making over 5,000 products available online in the still-early days of ecommerce. Our business sells funny mugs, letterpress greeting cards, retro candy, puzzles, baby onesies, novelty socks, celebrity candles—are these the kinds of things people want to spend their money on in a recession? We weren’t sure! But we soon learned that offering items and gifts that are “nothing you need” is actually what people wanted most. Our customers shopped in store, some shopped online and we grew our business across the country (and around the world).

In 2019, the business was at another inflection point. We had hired a veteran big-box store manager, Dena Jo Pavlovic, to handle the day to day operations of the store, we opened a second location in Chicago’s Andersonville neighborhood, operated annual holiday pop-up locations while moving our website operations to a larger facility. At the beginning of 2020, we projected we would have our best year ever.
But then Covid.

In March 2020, our Chicago locations closed for business for the first time in 15 years. Our website had been a moderate success for years, but our product mix has always competed online with much larger retailers and ecommerce behemoths. But our retail locations drove the business—with repeat local customers who shopped with us for all their gift giving for whom “shopping small businesses” is a way of life.

Again, we asked ourselves… do people need what we sell? During a global pandemic!? We weren’t sure, but if customers wanted to buy something, we wanted to get it to them. By April 2020, our store employees had shifted to work from home website product entry and we made our now 10,000+ product catalog available online. Our loyal local customers supported us in record numbers online. They bought gift cards, they did curbside pickup outside of our stores and we facilitated personal neighborhood delivery, they sent gifts to friends and family across the country. They kept us going—both financially and kept our morale. Our local (now online) customers helped make up for the store closures and enabled us to keep our website facility staffed and open.

While doing some deep cleaning during the closures, we found, tucked away in a back storeroom, boxes we labeled “to deal with in January”. On a whim, Rebecca had pre-ordered some items she thought might be a good product for long Chicago winters—Jigsaw Puzzles. Suddenly, in the midst of a global shortage and viral demand, we had puzzles! For the first time in 15 years, we were outselling the big online retailers—and attracting new customers from all over the country. We had something people wanted and something for them to ENJOY, and maybe that’s what they needed most.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Our retail locations, ENJOY Andersonville and ENJOY Lincoln Square, are located in two amazing neighborhoods. I would recommend a perfect trip visiting the two neighborhoods walking up and down each of their “main street” Clark Street and Lincoln Avenue. Andersonville is known for its Swedish roots, historic architecture, and bustling urban main street, Clark Street. It is recognized as the “shop local capital of Chicago,” supporting the largest network of local and independent businesses in the area. It is also home to one of Chicago’s largest LGBTQ+ populations, Andersonville is a community full of pride and a commitment to equality.

Lincoln Square boasts a wide variety of independent shops, breweries, and a vibrant restaurant scene just minutes from downtown Chicago. With its European-style pedestrian plaza and walkable avenues, the Lincoln Square neighborhood is like a small town in the big city!

Andersonville must visits: First stop—ENJOY Andersonville on N. Clark Street, the across the street to get a snack of imported Black Truffle or Iberico Ham potato chips from Spain from Andale Market, a Vegan Chocolate Whoopie Pie from Defloured Gluten Free Bakery, attend a reading at Chicago’s feminist bookstore—Women & Children First, drink a Black Wall Street elevated cocktail from the James Beard Award Finalist Nobody’s Darling, eat a huge serving of mussels and frites with a Belgian Kwak Beer in its signature wooden serving stand.

Lincoln Square must visits: First stop—ENJOY Lincoln Square on N. Lincoln Avenue (of course), then next door to Cafe Selmarie for a slice of Sacher torte, housemade bratwurst and sauerkraut with a German beer on the rooftop of Gene’s Sausage Shop, the Second Half free community jam session at the Old Town School of Folk Music, a pre-movie specialty cocktail before a movie at the Davis Theatre, a Rye Flight at the Koval Distillery Tasting Room.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?

We dedicate our shoutout to our loyal customers. Since 2005, they have welcomed our business like a friend and supported us like family.

Following the temporary closures due to the Covid-10 pandemic, we are grateful to Shop In Place Chicago (https://shopinplacechi.com/) who promoted our business and referred customers from all over the city to our website. Snappy Printing + Graphics (https://www.snappypg.com/) who provided cash-strapped businesses like ours free banners to advertise websites and contact phone numbers to hang in hastily shuttered shop windows.

The small software provider that syncs our retail store and website product data, Accumula (https://accumula.com/), gave us substantial discounts to keep the store to online connection available. And our friends at Paradigm New Media Group (https://pnmg.com/) worked at a reduced rate to fully implement our Curbside Pickup program that we suspected (correctly) that we’d eventually rely on to stay in business.

Website: https://www.urbangeneralstore.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/urbangeneralstore

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/urban-general-store/

Twitter: https://www.facebook.com/urbangenstore

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/urbangeneralstore

Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/enjoy-an-urban-general-store-chicago-5

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/urbangeneralstore

Other: Tik Tok https://www.tiktok.com/@enjoyanurbangeneralstore Our Blog: https://urbangeneralstore.com/blogs/whats-in-store/the-year-that-was-2020-part-one-piecing-it-back-together

Image Credits
Rebecca Wood Jamie Kelter Davis stevenjohnsonphotography