Often the first thing people do is look you up online. So if you don’t have a website, odds are they will search for someone else. I might have gone somewhere other than Cynthia’s Tailor Shop if I wasn’t in need of a tailor to alter a pair of pants; somewhere that had a website. 

But it wasn’t easy to do because the tailors in Chapel Hill don’t have a website or even occupy space online where there is an opportunity to shape their brand. They leave it to their customers to fill in the vacuum and talk about them.

One tailor, according to a Yelp thread of comments, is “regimental and “militant” and “runs the place like a drill sergeant.”  This is her brand being shaped by her customers. Another tailor received 13 positive reviews way more than her competitors. So I figured she’s probably the best in her world at alterations.

But, why, I asked her when I gave her the pants, “why don’t you have a base in cyberspace?”

“It’s not possible to do everything,” she says as she takes my measurements. “It’s also expensive to get someone to create a website.”

I get it. She’s got to measure, cut, alter, sew, fit, iron and anything else tailors must do to get their garments ready before their customers return. She’s busy but she could run out of customers someday.

It’s easy to set up a website and secure your spot in cyberspace — inexpensively. So we did, for $24.99 a month (for the domain name). This doesn’t include my hourly rate to set up her website, upload the pictures I took and add the content I wrote.

But if I can do it, you can, too. Try Weebly.

If you do it yourself, it’s just .06 cents a day. This is almost nothing to have a website working for you 24/7, telling your customers that you can do X so they can do Y and Z.

So, meet Cynthia Lennon. She might be the first tailor ever with a website in our hometown–at least until the others catch on: www.cynthiastailorshop.org