JJ's Fashion manager Rhylan Streloff has become known as the "hot boss" on TikTok thanks to his employee Madi Dobie (right).
Image Credit: SUBMITTED/Rhylan Streloff
February 20, 2021 - 1:00 PM
A Trail clothing store manager who became known on TikTok as a “hot boss” says he’s riding the social media wave for as long as he can, with brand deals, a podcast and sponsorships in the works.
While JJ's Fashions’ TikTok has amassed 1.4 million followers, manager Rhylan Streloff said it’s the local clientele who remains “the bread and butter” of sales for the Kootenay clothing store, which has been in operation since 1973.
READ MORE: Kootenay clothing store's ‘hot boss’ amasses 1 million TikTok followers
The idea to feature Streloff as a “hot boss” on the social media platform came from employee Madi Dobie as the store needed to ramp up its online presence amid the pandemic. Dobie, along with other employees, can be seen swooning over Streloff as he features the store’s clothing.
“The sheer number of people we are interacting with because of this TikTok is ridiculous. If 1% of our TikTok following became a customer, we would more than double our annual revenue. The reach is staggering, and that’s the beauty of social media. It’s hard to compete with that, there’s no limit to the audience,” Streloff said.
And people are talking about the videos, which he said are free compared to other traditional forms of marketing.
“(It’s) been more effective than radio ads and billboards. If people are talking about us at the dinner table, that’s pretty crazy,” he said.
The storefront is currently driving the most business, but it’s too soon to see what will happen with online sales as it just launched in October, he said.
“We weren’t ready for this at all and we didn’t even have an online store so we rushed to get it done,” he said, adding the next few months will be a good time to test how effective the social media platform is since they’ve added more online stock for spring.
“But it’s by no means replacing our storefront,” Streloff said.
Streloff said they now consider themselves to be influencers. They’re getting paid to use certain TikTok sounds and have an influencer account.
“That music that we pick that they’re trying to promote, we get paid off how many views and likes that gets,” he said.
He said one video, posted mid-January, gathered more than 30 million likes, which had a snowball effect.
“We have a few brand deals in the works right now… and we’re just kind of rolling with it. Our TikTok live gets anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 people views at a time so we’re taking that and are going to turn it into a podcast which will then be recorded on YouTube so there’s a few title sponsors that we’re starting to work with to get that going. We’re just having a lot of fun,” he said.
“It’s fun to see how far it’ll go… You look at people that start these podcasts and YouTube channels and it looks like they already get started out of L.A. and Hollywood and they have an unfair advantage so I want to see (how far) a couple of nobodies from small-town B.C. will go.”
The media coverage of the store’s massive online following also transcribed into more foot traffic in the store, he said.
“It definitely had a big impact here locally... overall it was really good, we had a lot of foot traffic in here which was a direct result of the media attention we were getting,” Streloff said, adding that friends from Vancouver and Calgary were reading about the clothing store.
To see more of JJ's Fashions TikToks, go here.
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