Opening a boutique is a dream for many designers who want to stand on their own feet, experience the joy of owning their own business in a field that they are passionate about.
As you may already know A Boutique is a retail store selling fabrics/clothes/bags/accessories and other things to a specific target market. It is simple to start and can be managed quite easily by even just one person provided you are passionate about your dream and love exploring new creative outlooks. All these elements put together along with a little start-up money often leads to a well-run boutique.
Now get to the specifics of how you can actually start your own boutique? Here are some decisions you have to make even before you start your boutique.
1. The Type of Boutique You Want to Start
There are 4 models of boutiques that you can look at:
a) Your own retail outlet: Here, you get complete control; what materials to get, how to design the collection, the pricing, everything!
b) Buy and sell: In this model you buy your entire range at a lesser cost from wholesalers or manufacturers and then sell it further at a marked-up price.
c) Franchising: Here you operate under the name of a (well established) brand and exclusively sell their clothes. You will have to pay the parent brand a fee for using their logo, brand name, etc. before you can start selling their range.
d) Consignment Boutique: Stock clothes made by various other designers/manufacturers and pay them a percentage from the sales that you make.
Once you decide on the model you can move on to the next step.
2. The Purpose of Your Business (USP)
There are already 100 boutiques that exist. You will have to give the customers a unique reason for them to pick you over all your competition. A USP is a Unique Selling Point that will give you the upper edge, it can be great customer service, faster deliveries, excellent quality or anything that will set you apart.
3. Your Target Audience, The Location and The Collection.
You need to decide who your customer is going to be. Identify a problem in that market that you can solve. Check your customers purchasing preferences.
Where you open your boutique is very important. You have to be where you customer shops!
The styles, color and fit should meet the preference of your target market.
4. The Source of Funding for The Business
To give you a few of the expenses the store rents, designing the interiors, employees salary, money for inventory, etc. it is a good idea to plan your finances way before you start. Ideally you should be able to carry on your business for 6 months without any profits. Arranging enough money in advance will help you.
5. Your Suppliers i.e. Where Will You Get The Clothes/Fabric From
Getting the right, good quality fabrics for your boutique is very crucial as your brand will depend on it.
6. The Price Range
Once you have finalized your target audience and have an idea of how much your raw supplies are going to cost you should start deciding the price range for your products.
7. Finalizing the Legalities of The Business
Get all your permits, licenses sorted before you start your boutique. Set up a bank account also for customers that want to pay online. Doing all before starting the boutique will help you focus on your customers once the store starts.
8. Hire Good Employees
You will need help around your boutique and hiring people with the right experience will make your life easier!
9. Buy Everything You Need
There are lot of things that you will need to stock before the opening:
· Printing Stationery (bills and receipts)
· Racks, Hangers
· Shopping Bags
· Clothing Labels
Are just somethings that you cannot be short on, in your boutique.
10. Plan A Grand Opening
Once everything we mentioned above is in place, the only thing left to do is plan a big opening of your boutique so that people in the area know there is a new boutique!
Now that your boutique is set up, let us take you through a few tricks to increase your customers.
1) Participate in Local Events
It is important to form relations with people in your local community. Participate in all local events, host your own events as things like these give a chance to interact with your customers one on one. If they feel like they know you, they are more likely to become a consistent customer.
2) Offer Deals on a Regular Basis
Nowadays almost every place keeps offering discounts all year round. They have special offers, seasonal discounts, great deals just for the sake of it. If you do not offer special prices you will lose out of customers as they will find similar products at a lesser cost elsewhere.
3) Create a Loyalty Program
It is very important for the success of any business to keep pulling their customers back to them and in order to do that you will have to give them some incentive. You can design a rewards program that will keep them coming back to you. Plus, the customers will be more willing to stop at your boutique if they know they get some benefit.
4) Try out Direct Mail Marketing
As your store is in a physical location you can use the direct mail to your advantage. You can use flyers, descriptive content and discount coupons to get people to visit your store. The best strategy here would be to research the newspapers in your area and find the best spot for you to advertise in.
5) Use the Print Media (bags, flyers, uniforms)
Have the staff wear t-shirts, get bags printed; all these are things that other people (potential customers) can see when they walk around, printing your boutique details here could be a great way to advertise to the locals.
The above are ideas that will help you get customers from in and around your area. If you want to further increase your customer base, it is best to take your marketing online. And we at DigiSWOT are experts at that, so here are few tips to digitally market for your boutique:
1) Create Your Social Media Handles
The foremost thing you should be doing is creating a presence online. Make your account on platforms like Facebook and Instagram. These are the easiest tools to help you build awareness.
2) Contact Bloggers about your Range.
Do an online survey of who is the best blogger in the fashion industry. Decide how much you want to spend on the blogger and then pick the one who has the maximum followers and fits your budget.
3) Branch Out with your Social Media Options
Building a social media profile takes time. Depending on how much time you have you can try making accounts on following sites or you can just have DigiSWOT take care of it for you.
· Youtube
· Quora
4) Highlight your Best Collection/Design on Social Media
Only when people like what they see online will they want to come to your boutique and buy clothes or have you design their clothes for you, so it is very important to showcase the best of your collection and designs online.
5) Run Contests on Social Media
Like we already told you people love discounts and free things, so you could run contests on your social media which would then give the winner some gratification like one of your pieces could be given to them for free or if that is too much you can simply offer some percent of discount.
6) Try Paid Advertising
Every Social Media site has an option to run paid ads. If you target your ads appropriately, it will not only reach more people but also get you more leads. It is crucial to select the right parameters before you run the ad.
7) Try PPC
Pay Per Click ads on sites like Google can be a great way to generate traffic, as more people see your ads, the awareness increases and this increases your chances of making a sale as well.
8) Offer Video Tutorials
Once your Social Media is in place you can also start posting video tutorials where you can tell your audience how they can style for various occasions using your clothes. This also helps the customer know exactly what you have to offer and how they can wear it, thus making their decision-making process very easy.
9) Get Customer Feedback
Always ask your clients for feedback, if it is positive you will know that you are working in the right direction and continue your efforts and even if it is negative will know what you can do to improve to increase customer satisfaction.
10) Start a Referral Program
The best way to ensure that your customers spread the good word is to start a referral program. You can give your customer discounts every time a new customer uses their referral. There are many ways to do this like discounts, free gifts, points system and many more. Figure out a program that works best for you and use your existing customers to bring in new ones.
Starting your own business can be troublesome at first, but the happiness you get from working towards your dream makes all the efforts worth the trouble. Now that DigiSWOT has given you all the information you need to start your boutique business, it’s time to get to work and when you need online-marketing assistance you can always get in touch with us!
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