NEW ORLEANS – From Pilot and Powell:
New Orleans-based luxury women’s clothing boutique Pilot and Powell (3901 Magazine St.) is running a giveaway they’re calling Fabric of the Front Line where they will be selecting 30 women who will each receive a $2,000 gift card to shop at Pilot and Powell. Through this Wednesday, May 6, nominations are being accepted for women serving as front line workers — including as health care workers, law enforcement, mail carriers, sanitation workers, transportation workers and grocery store clerks. Nominations can be submitted at www.pilotandpowell.com/pages/ffl. Winners will be selected at random by a third party and notified within three days. Gift cards will be issued to winners within four to six weeks.
The giveaway launched April 16 and received over 100 nominations in its first week. Co-owers Coeli Hilferty Boron and Kathryn Bullock Joyner — who opened Pilot and Powell on Dec. 1, 2016 — said a generous donation from one of their clients made the giveaway possible.
“We’re so excited to be able to offer this opportunity for women to come in and work one-on-one with a stylist in an experience that we hope is really empowering,” said Hilferty Boron. “This is what we do — we dress women in a way that makes them feel good about themselves.”
Pilot and Powell features luxury American and European designers of clothing, shoes, bags and accessories. The store has been closed since March 17, but Hilferty Boron and Bullock Joyner said the company has still been selling via social media and the web.
“Eighty percent of our revenue was through in-store purchases,” said Hilferty Boron, “And that’s where our customers have always received that one-on-one attention they’ve come to expect. “What this change has done is forced us to focus on our web presence — which we honestly had pushed to the back — and pushed us to pivot a little, for example making our Instagram shoppable.”
The women say they’ve been fortunate to have loyal customers that have continued to support them, but, like the rest of their industry, are nervous about what is to come.
“We’re seeing big stores like Nieman Marcus struggling and we know that many of the designers we work with rely on these stores for the bulk of their sales,” said Bullock Joyner. “What happens to them if those sales are lost? It’s concerning, but right now we’re just taking things day by day.”
