I started at Bare Necessities the August before my A-levels finished. Folding jumpers, ringing up mismatched mugs, learning the rhythm of a Manchester thrift shop. Within a few months I'd been pulled off the floor and asked if I'd like to run the Instagram. I said yes before I really knew what that meant.
The first thing I learned was that "running the Instagram" is mostly not about Instagram. It's about looking at a rail of clothes the way someone scrolling at 11pm might look at it. What's funny? What's flattering? What feels like it belongs to a person, not a shop? I rearranged shelves, wrote captions on receipt paper, and filmed everything on my phone in the back room.
We grew. Slowly at first. Then in bursts.
It wasn't viral content that built the account. It was showing up the same way, every day, for a year.
In September 2023 I moved to Liverpool to start university, and the role had to change with me. I went remote: building a content calendar in advance, batching shoots when I came home for weekends, and trusting the team in store to send me the photos I couldn't take myself.
This was the harder period, honestly. Less spontaneous, more structured. But it taught me something I think I'll carry into every brand I work on: consistency reads as care. When the feed is steady, people trust you. When it goes quiet for two weeks, they wonder if you've closed.
By the time the role wound down in January 2024, the account had crossed 75,000 followers. The numbers matter, but what stuck with me more was the running list of small things: the captions that landed, the customers who messaged to ask if a piece was still in store, the single video that performed three times what we expected and quietly changed how I thought about pacing.
I'm still figuring out what to do with all of that. But it's the closest I've come, so far, to feeling like I actually understand what marketing is.