It may seem an overwhelming job to consider opening your own clothing boutique. And while it does not come without lots of hard work, I know that anybody can do it!
At age 32, I decided to pursue opening my own shop and being proud of what I realized in the end. When I first started, I had no one to direct me and no one I could ask questions to determine if I was doing something correctly or not. Overall it was lots of mistakes and a big learning curve.
I decided to go ahead and put together five steps that can help you begin to open your retail store. Check out these Quill coupons to save on retail store displays and shelves. This is for those of you who have the notion in your mind but haven’t started anything yet because perhaps you just don’t understand where to start.
1) CREATE YOUR VISION
The very first thing I did when I decided to open my clothes boutique was to make my vision. In case you’ve got no vision, you don’t have any result. What I did that I found instrumental was to make my boutique lookbook. I found pictures (from magazines and online) of the colors I liked for the interior of the shop, what my target client liked or looked like, new merchandising ideas, etc. This fashion book helped me to see my vision clearer. If you understand just what the last look and feel of your boutique should be, it is going to be much easier to make decisions during the process of opening your shop as you will know precisely what you want the final product to be.
2) DEVELOP YOUR BOUTIQUE’S BRAND
When considering your boutique’s brand, bear in mind how you’ll stick out alongside all the other clothes boutiques or shops. Have this in mind when picking a name for your store and when designing your own logo. When developing my shop’s brand, I wanted to center around the fact that all of the clothing and things I was going to be selling could be from Los Angeles based designers and brands. I wanted to provide Wisconsin all that Los Angeles had offered me at the shopping experience. I then developed everything with that thought, including my shop name, appearance, and ambiance.
3) BEGIN YOUR BUSINESS PLAN
My business plan was possibly the hardest thing about opening a boutique for me. I bought a book about how to write a business plan, and in the long run, I’d hardly looked at the thing. What I found most useful was discovering examples online of business programs. BPlans.com is an excellent site which has a great deal of information on business plans. You can produce your business plan there, and they even have very particular business plan examples for clothes boutiques. While I believed my business plan was complete, I took it to the lender to apply for a business loan. The banker suggested a few times, to revise the plan before submitting. So, you don’t have to become discouraged if you must change it a couple of times! In the end, you will have a brilliant map for your company.
4) RESEARCH THAT LINES YOU WILL CARRY
It is probably easiest to store stores much like your boutique and see what lines they have when deciding what product to carry. Compile a list of brands that you are interested in selling and start to get in touch with the sales reps for these lines. Sometimes it takes time to be accepted to carry specific brands or a few you won’t have the ability to get whatsoever. It just depends on how discerning the name is when picking what stores will carry their line. You might also go to a place like the Cal Mart in Los Angeles to get ideas and see the fashions of different lines that you might choose to carry on your boutique.
5) START YOUR SITE
I ended up opening my site before I opened the doors to my physical location. I started with a shop on Ebay and then made an ecommerce site through Yahoo. Yahoo has a website builder that as soon as you learn the fundamentals — you can create a reasonably beautiful ecommerce site all by yourself. I had been trying to do everything at as low a price as possible. I have a buddy that just spent nearly $5,000 on their e-commerce website which I think is entirely unnecessary. Even once I wanted a better-designed site I just paid $400. I put an advertisement on Craigslist, and the person I found was seeking to improve their portfolio and expertise and did an exceptional job on my website. Starting your site, Facebook page, and Twitter will help you to get your name out there even before you start!
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About the Author:
Marsha Kelly sold her first business for more than a million dollars. She has shared hard-won experiences as a successful serial entrepreneur on her Best4Businesses blog http://best4businesses.com. Marsha also regularly posts business tips, ideas, and suggestions as well as product reviews for business readers. As a serial entrepreneur who has done “time” in corporate America, Marsha has learned what products and services really work well in business today. You can learn from her experiences from shopping the internet for tools, supplies, and information to build your businesses and improve lives financially.
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