How Small Businesses Turn Curiosity Into Growth: Lessons from an NYC Original
There’s something uniquely energizing about talking to a small business owner who has their finger not just on the pulse of culture, but on the pulse of their customers. During a recent conversation with NYC-based designer and entrepreneur Julie Mollo, I was reminded again why small businesses are some of the sharpest innovators in the market.
Julie’s brand is known for its high-energy personality: iconic clutches, sparkly silhouettes, playful textures, and a kind of creative optimism you can spot across a room. But like many small business owners, Julie doesn’t innovate by locking herself away and dreaming up new ideas in isolation. She innovates by listening. Watching. Testing. Responding. And repeating.
And her approach mirrors something we talk about a lot at System1: great innovation isn’t a lightning bolt, it’s a loop.
Innovation Starts in the Real World, Not the Boardroom
One of the most striking things about Julie’s process is how deeply tuned-in she is to micro-trends, platform signals, and customer behaviors.
“If I’m on Etsy and something is blowing up, martini motifs, olives, charms, I’m asking myself: how do I build from that? How do I turn that moment into something my customers can personalize, play with, and make their own?”
This is innovation in motion. Not waiting for a perfect idea, but identifying emerging cues and turning them into sellable concepts quickly. For Julie, that meant shrinking her bags, dreaming up new silhouettes, and moving into bag charms, all because her customer base was telling her, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, that small was in.
She pairs this with in-person market research that rivals most formal corporate processes. Months of pop-ups, daily conversations with shoppers, real-time product feedback… for Julie, these aren’t events to drive sales. They’re experiments. They’re data collection. They’re her version of an innovation test bed.
This blend of instinct and customer input is exactly what drives the most successful product development cycles today.
Small Shifts Become Big Wins
As Julie shared how trends evolve across her customer base, classic clutch → midi → keychain-sized, it was a masterclass in incremental innovation. You don’t always need to reinvent your category. Sometimes you just need to reinterpret it.
She also has a deep understanding of brand consistency, something we measure constantly at System1 because it has a profound emotional impact on how people perceive, choose, and stay loyal to brands.
“My product has changed astronomically over 17 years. But my branding? It’s always been consistent.”
That consistency becomes an anchor for customers, even as the product line evolves into new shapes, materials, and even categories (her shift back toward denim and apparel is a perfect example). When a brand stays emotionally recognizable, customers are far more willing to follow it somewhere new.
The Golden Ticket: Innovation as Relationship Building
One of my favorite things Julie shared was an idea she brought to life a few years ago: a Golden Friday promotion, where every Black Friday–Cyber Monday customer could win a “golden ticket” to co-design a bag with her. That bag then became part of her line, with proceeds donated to the customer’s chosen nonprofit.
It wasn’t a gimmick. It was relational.
It helped customers feel part of the creative process. It infused philanthropy into an already emotional shopping holiday. And it gave Julie insights into what customers want, sometimes even before they know how to articulate it.
It’s a reminder that innovation isn’t just about the product. It’s about finding ways to bring people closer to your brand story.
Where System1 Fits In: Turning Insight Into Action
While Julie gathers her innovation signals through pop-ups, social cues, and direct customer conversations, many small businesses are looking for a way to scale that kind of feedback, especially when time and resources are tight.
That’s where tools like System1’s Test Your Innovation can serve as a quiet superpower. It takes the kind of instinctive, emotional reactions Julie sees in her markets and quantifies them at scale, helping brands understand:
- Which ideas evoke strong positive emotional response
- Which concepts feel consistent with their brand
- What has the highest potential to drive long-term growth
- How smaller tweaks compare to bigger leaps
It’s not meant to replace instinct (small businesses have that in spades). It’s designed to amplify it, to catch blind spots, reveal unexpected winners, and increase confidence in the next move.
For businesses who don’t have time to do six months of pop-up testing or track TikTok microtrends daily, tools like this can provide the same clarity Julie gets from her customer conversations, just faster, and with broader input.
The Heart of Innovation: Curiosity + Courage
Talking to Julie underscored something I see in the strongest innovators, from startups to global brands: a mix of curiosity, creativity, and courage.
The courage to pivot a product line.
The creativity to interpret a trend in your own visual language.
The curiosity to ask why this? why now? why them?
Small Business Saturday is a moment to celebrate not just the shops we love, but the ingenuity behind them. And supporting that ingenuity, whether through real-world conversations, community-driven promotions, or tools like Test Your Innovation, is how small businesses continue to grow while keeping their magic intact.
Because at the end of the day, innovation isn’t about being the biggest.
It’s about being the most connected.
And no one embodies that more than business owners like Julie.
Create With Confidence
Test Your Innovation captures real emotional and behavioral responses to your ideas, using proven methods to predict commercial success. Backed by System1’s expert guidance, you’ll get the clarity you need to refine, prioritize, and invest in ideas with confidence. Discover how Test Your Innovation can help you predict and improve the real-world impact of your innovations.