Female Disruptors: Jordan Dollard of Esther and Elsa Retail

I had the pleasure of interviewing Jordan Dollard Chief Retail Strategist of Esther and Elsa Retail, formerly Elsa Fine. Esther and Elsa Retail is a consultancy in Charlotte, NC working with communities and organizations around the region to assess and grow their retail programs.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! What is your “backstory”?

I’m just five years out of Appalachian State University in Boone, NC, where I studied Apparel Design and Marketing. My entire life I swore that I would be in the fashion industry and that I was good for nothing else.

After graduating, I moved back to Charlotte, NC where I worked for a year and a half at a small fashion brand representative firm, only to be laid off in a city where fashion has a minuscule footprint.

With my options for furthering my career in Charlotte very limited, I opened a small online boutique, which grew over three years to become a small, but mighty spot for women in Charlotte to shop affordably. In those three years, pop-up shops and markets became a norm in Charlotte and I fell into planning one, small tented market for local businesses, Front Porch Sundays.

I used the event to be a platform for the city’s local retailers to find opportunity, a consistent customer base, and…