The Inheritance Collective
Brand · Ecommerce · Content · Search
Anna McElhenny called me before her first market. She thought she needed help with social media. What she actually needed was a business that existed online at all. So that's where we started, and we kept going until she had one.
It started as "help with social"
That was the ask. But you can't post your way into a brand that doesn't have a foundation under it yet. There was no website to send people to, no product photos to post, no through-line tying any of it together. Social was the symptom. The real job was everything underneath it.
The ecommerce foundation
We built the whole thing from the ground up: the brand itself, a brand style guide so it stayed consistent everywhere, product photography, inventory, and the website to sell it on. Then the systems to actually run that website day to day, so it wasn't just live, it was manageable. This is the unglamorous part nobody tells you about, and it's the part that makes everything else possible.
The marketing layer
Once there was a brand to represent, we made it real in the world too: email campaigns, print marketing, business cards, banners. Online and in person, it all looked like the same company. That's the whole point of a brand. It shows up the same everywhere.
What we built
- Brand identity + brand style guide
- Product photography
- Inventory system
- Website + the systems to run it
- Email campaigns
- Print marketing materials
- Business cards
- Banners
- SEO blog
- AI search optimization
SEO and the blog
Then we went after being found. We started a blog to pull traffic through Google to her site, so The Inheritance Collective wasn't waiting around to be discovered. It was giving search engines reasons to send people her way.
Then AI changed the rules
Search shifted. People stopped only Googling and started asking AI, and AI took over as the way things get found. So we went back in and optimized for that too, the same way we'd optimized for Google. The goal never changed. Be the answer when someone goes looking. The places they look just multiplied, and we kept up.
Selling where her people are
A brand that lives online has to sell in more than one place. We run story sales straight from Instagram, where the right piece can find its person in an afternoon. And as the collection grows, we're opening the channels built for estate work: 1stDibs for the collectors who hunt there, and Whatnot for live auctions where the bidding is half the fun. Every new channel is one more place a piece meets the person it was waiting for.
Where it stands
It started as social media. It became a brand, a storefront, a marketing engine, and a search strategy that keeps current as the internet changes underneath it. I'm still in it with Anna as TIC grows.
Why TIC is the example
This is exactly why I don't call myself a social media guy. I'm the show-up-online guy. The elevate-your-brand guy. The get-talked-about guy. Social media was the door Anna walked in through. What she got was a whole business that lives online and gets found. If that's the kind of help you're after, let's talk.
Follow The Inheritance Collective on Instagram. Find them on Facebook and TikTok too.
