JJ's Fashions manager Rhylan Streloff has become known as the "hot boss" on TikTok thanks to his employee Madi Dobie (right).
Image Credit: SUBMITTED/Rhylan Streloff
January 31, 2021 - 10:11 AM
A Trail clothing store has successfully attracted more than a million fans after it started featuring its "hot boss" on TikTok.
Rhylan Streloff, manager of JJ's Fashions, which has been in business since 1973, said the idea came from an employee Madi Dobie to feature him on the social media platform as the store needed to ramp up its online presence amid the pandemic.
Dobie can be seen swooning over Streloff in the videos and thinking of clever ways to get him to notice her, referring to him as her "hot boss."
“We were brainstorming how to grow our Instagram following and she said ‘you should let me make a TikTok of you’ and I did. I wanted to take it down really badly, the first one. I kind of hated it, but I didn’t and I guess the rest is history,” Streloff said.
“She’s pretty talented so we’re pretty lucky.”
The TikTok account has significantly helped launch their online sales, he said.
“We’re a pretty small area and most of the people know the businesses around here, but some of the younger crowd didn’t know we were here. One of the girls we ended up hiring didn’t know that JJ’s was even around until she saw her TikTok,” Streloff said.
“It helped us push our store online. We didn’t have an online shoppable store (when the pandemic) happened and all of a sudden there’s literally millions of people coming across our social media platform so we raced to get that going.”
They launched the TikTok around the same time that they launched their online store, which was back in roughly October 2020.
So far, at least 90% of their online shoppers are from TikTok. “Most of the email correspondence is ‘I found you guys on TikTok,’” Streloff said.
Being known as the “hot boss” is strange for Streloff, but he said he's enjoyed it.
“I try to be a humble person I guess, so it’s a little bit weird… It’s just funny, I got to get my coffees now and people write ‘hot boss’ on my coffee cup and stuff like that,” he said.
Streloff‘s grandfather opened the clothing store roughly 47 years ago. Streloff worked in the oil and gas for the last 10 years, but stepped into the role as his dad who was looking after the store is ready to retire.
“I bet if it wasn’t for the pandemic, (my family) have a little bit of a different view (of the TikTok), but our big push was to get online. We were pretty worried about getting shut down again… so that was the force behind all this stuff in the first place, was to get online and get a social media following and hopefully be protected that way so we could keep having some revenue come in. I’m sure my mom doesn’t love it. She doesn’t love lots of the comments on there,” he said.
“I talked to my family and everyone agrees to just not read the comments. They’re pretty savage some of them.”
His next plan is to grow the brand and to showcase more of the product and what they do for customers, not just himself.
“We’re appreciative of all the support,” he said.
“I never thought I would have anything to do with a social media account that had a million followers. So I’m pretty amazed. It’s exciting to be a part of something like that.”
Find JJ's Fashions for yourself on TikTok.
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