708: State of the Boutique Industry

2:05.3: The fundamentals of retail are the fundamentals of retail. They don't change over time. What does change sometimes is marketing or building a brand.2:44.3: I think it's important to take a step back and think about like, what about my business do I love? 5:51.5: So whether you're new or you are established, or however you see yourself in the scope of what boutique land looks like for you, I want you to know that there is always room to grow and there is always room to maintain and stabilize.16:36.4: Create an experience for your people, find them where they're at, whether that's social media, or online.22:01.8: I started to hear what was going on and I realized that boutique owners have very little genuine consistent support outside of potential friends and family. 23:57.2: And then combining it kind of with, with my experience in, in my own boutique, it was like people were doubling and tripling their sales numbers in three to 12 months. 24:25.2: I saw that scaling someone's business not only increased the boutique owner's personal income, like because it increased that, it also helped boutique owners feel safer. I felt that they had time, freedom, and they were able to do things with their kids.35:18.4: This year has been super weird and inflation on just straight up everything. And then shipping charges went up too. Because these corporations are charging more, they're taking advantage of small businesses. It just kind of all hit the fan this year in a really awkward way that it's just been difficult to navigate.35:52.9: I guess the question now is when outrageous growth slows down, so like outrageous growth of 2020 and 2021, like what is the result? 39:28.8: I think as established boutique owners we're just like really sick of new boutique owners coming in and just like trying to undercut everyone. It's just like, stop doing it. It's not cool. 41:53.0: We as boutique owners need better options to buy inventory in a leaner and more efficient way. 44:09.7: It's not okay for our industry as a whole to accept that boutiques are underpricing. If you have someone open up down the street and they're not charging enough, it is up to you established boutique owner. Go over there and be nice. Introduce yourself. Be like, Hey, listen, like I've been doing this a long time.44:32.3: As established boutique owners, we need to start becoming leaders in this industry and pushing back on new people.47:38.6: Boutiques are focused on what products make them the most money. Right? What works? Do what makes you more money based on your boutique? What are your top departments? 48:13.5: You've gotta know what are your top departments. What's really working? Start to analyze your sales, okay? This is like what I've been doing with so many people. This is part of my process, is I, I help people understand how you analyze sales by department, by price point, by color, and by size.51:22.2: I don't care if your buying plan is for your $ 2,000-a-month boutique or your $ 200,000-a-month boutique. I don't care. You need a buying plan, okay? You need to go to market. 53:55.4: Your buy plan is a hundred percent based on your sales plan and then your markup. That's how we get accurate and we understand our sales, we know our sales data, we know our top sellers, and we know how to protect them through the buying plan moving forward. 1:03.29: Having a launch day, having a day where you feature something, whether it's new