July is one of those months where you can feel it in your bones before you even look at the numbers.

Slow foot traffic. Quiet inbox. That creeping feeling that everyone has just disappeared for the summer.

Most store owners sit with it. They wait. They hope August picks up.

Jesse McNaughton decided to do something different. She is the co-founder of Lift Bridge Yarns in Fairport, New York, a shop she opened four months before the pandemic with a six-month-old baby at home and a community of customers who had followed her from a previous shop. She has been building something real in that little Erie Canal town for six years now.

This past July, instead of waiting, she ran a four-day Anti-Prime Days campaign. Timed right alongside Amazon’s own event. With a marketing budget of fifty dollars.

She came out with a 286% sales increase.

I wanted her on the podcast so she could tell you herself, because hearing it from me is one thing. Hearing it from the store owner who was scared, who almost talked herself out of some of the deals, and who came out the other side with her best July ever? That is worth your time.

The Strategy: What Anti-Prime Days Actually Is

Amazon runs Prime Days every July. It is a multi-day sales event that pulls a significant amount of consumer spending away from independent retailers.

The Anti-Prime Days strategy is simple. Instead of sitting on the sidelines while your customers send their money to Jeff Bezos, you run your own sale. Same week. Your deals. Your people. Your community.

You know your customers better than Amazon ever will. You know what they love, what they have been waiting for, and what will get them off the couch and into your store. Anti-Prime Days is just giving them the moment to do it.

We have a whole playbook for this at RETAILMavens. Jesse followed it, added her own personality, and the numbers speak for themselves.

The lesson: Amazon does not know your customers. You do. That is your advantage, and a well-timed sale is how you use it. 

Watch the Full Episode here:

The Deals She Ran

Jesse ran four days of promotions with a different offer each day.

Her best single day was a percentage off all knitting needles and crochet hooks. The timing was sharp. The major needle company had just announced a price increase because of tariffs, and her customers already knew about it. She framed the sale around that directly: get them now, before the price goes up. She did not have to create urgency. It was already there. She just gave it a home.

The second deal was buy one, get one 70% off. This is the one that scares store owners most, and I want to address that directly. When you run a BOGO 70% deal, the average discount across all transactions works out to about 29 to 31 percent. Jesse’s came in at 27%. You are not giving 70% off everything. You are giving 70% off one item when someone buys a second at full price. The headline gets people in the door. The math protects your margin. One day only. That is all it takes.

The third deal was a bounce back coupon. Every purchase, regardless of the amount, came with a $15 coupon for a future visit. No minimum. Someone could spend $3 and still walk out with that $15 coupon. Yes, a few people did exactly that. Jesse said the same thing I always say: that gets completely absorbed by everyone else. The people who come in to spend their $15 coupon almost never spend just $15.

Her barometer for every deal was simple. She asked herself: would my mom think this is a good deal? If the answer was yes, she ran it. I love that. Hold onto it.

The lesson: A deal that sounds big to your customer does not have to cost you what it sounds like. Know your math, trust the structure, and run it for one day. That is all it takes. 

The Marketing Budget Was Fifty Dollars

Jesse’s total paid marketing spend for the entire campaign was $50 in boosted Facebook and Instagram posts. Everything else was email and organic social, following the schedule we teach.

Her social media person took the concept and ran with it completely in her own style. The whole team made videos. Everyone was genuinely excited and that came through in the content.

And then there was the humor. One of Jesse’s emails had a subject line that read: “Jeff Bezos sucks, but we don’t.”

Her customers loved it. It was completely on brand for Lift Bridge Yarns. Jesse said her community expected that kind of personality from them, and when you market in a way that actually sounds like you, people share it. They talk about it. They show up.

The campaign worked because it felt like Jesse and her team, not like a corporate promotion with a discount attached.

The lesson: You do not need a big budget to run a campaign that works. You need a plan, a clear message, and content that actually sounds like you. The personality is free. 

The Deal That Scares You Is Usually the One That Works

Jesse said something I want every store owner to hear. She said one of the biggest lessons from Anti-Prime Days was learning to trust the deals that feel a little scary. The ones where you look at them and think, how am I going to make money on this?

Those are often the ones that work best.

I shared a story in this episode about a client I have worked with for 12 years. Tough October. I suggested she do 31% off the entire store on Halloween. She pushed back hard. She asked me 17 questions, which she later admitted was her strategy to make me forget I had suggested it. She texted me three times.

She did it anyway. Her markdowns still came in lower than the year before. And she had more money.

I would never recommend something I did not know was proven. But I also understand what it feels like to stand in your store on a slow afternoon and be asked to take a risk. That takes courage. And it pays.

The lesson: Fear is not a signal to stop. It is usually a signal that you are about to do something that actually moves the register. Check the math, trust the strategy, and do it anyway. 

What Jesse Has Actually Built

Here is the reason Anti-Prime Days worked so well for Lift Bridge Yarns. Jesse and her co-founder Dawn did not just open a store. They built a community, and they did it from the very beginning.

Five days a week, anyone can walk in for a free sit-and-stitch event. It does not matter where you bought your yarn. You come in, sit down with other people, and work on your project. No charge. Jesse put it perfectly: if we have 30 people sitting around a table staring at walls full of yarn and we cannot get any of them to buy something, we are doing something wrong. They never have that problem.

She also hosted a community fundraiser where customers donated finished knit items they no longer wanted. Jesse and her team priced everything, set it up at the coffee shop and craft beer bar across the street, turned it into a party, and gave every dollar to the local food pantry. They raised almost $5,000. Jesse said she was crying by the end of the night.

No profit on that event. Just an enormous amount of goodwill and the kind of loyalty that shows up later when you run an Anti-Prime Days campaign and your customers choose you over Amazon without a second thought.

The lesson: The seeds you plant in your community on the days you are not asking for anything are exactly what bloom when you finally do. You cannot shortcut that. But you also do not have to wait years to start planting. 

What You Are Really Selling

Jesse made an offhand comment during our conversation about selling something that requires disposable income. I pushed back on that, lovingly, because I think it undersells what she has actually built.

What Lift Bridge Yarns sells is not just yarn. It is belonging. Creativity. The feeling of being part of something bigger than a transaction. When her customers shop there, they are also supporting the six or seven local dyers whose hand-dyed yarns stock the shelves. Women in the community doing creative work they love, whose livelihoods depend in part on Jesse’s shop being there.

That story is Jesse’s real marketing. Not the $50 in boosted posts.

People drove from Pennsylvania to shop there. Two sisters on a road trip from Michigan to Vermont detoured through Fairport just to stop in. The bike shop owner down the street jokes about all the “yarn husbands” who wander in while their partners are inside picking out fiber.

Jesse and Dawn started the whole shop because of one customer named Barb, their adopted grandma, who had been coming to sit-and-stitch at their old shop and needed somewhere to go when it closed. Jesse said they still talk about how the shop is really just there for Barb.

Every person listening has a Barb. Someone you do it for. And that is the whole point.

Your Millie Moment

Pick one slow week on your calendar and block it out for your own Anti-Prime Days campaign. You do not need a big budget. You need four days, a few well-planned deals, and the willingness to be a little bold about it. Here is where to start:

  1. Look at your calendar right now and find your slowest week. Circle it. That is your Anti-Prime Days week.
  2. Write down three deals you could run, one per day. Put each one through Jesse’s barometer: would my mom think this is a good deal? If yes, it makes the list.
  3. Check your math on each deal before you commit. The BOGO 70% off sounds scary until you run the numbers and see that your actual average discount lands around 27 to 31 percent.
  4. Plan your bounce back coupon. Pick an amount, keep the restrictions minimal, and let it bring people back for a second visit.
  5. Write your emails and social posts in your own voice. Be yourself. Be a little cheeky if that is who you are. Your personality is your biggest competitive advantage over Amazon.
  6. Send the emails. Boost a post or two if you want. Then get out of the way and let your community show up for you.

Jesse ran her campaign with $50 in paid posts and an email list. She followed the plan, trusted the deals even when they scared her, and ended up with a 286% sales increase in her slowest month. The plan works. You just have to do it.

Resources & Links

💚 Remember: Your community wants to support you. They just need you to give them a reason and show them how. That is what Anti-Prime Days does. And now you know exactly how to run it.