“You Could Try Sears”

“Head ‘em up and move ‘em out!”

…that’s a stock image, by the way.

So at the beginning of April I made the decision to make that month my last month of running my shop out of the salon. The reason why was pretty simple — when you’re selling young, high end lines, a salon with a clientèle of older, “price conscious” (to put it nicely) women isn’t exactly going to mesh. We were pretty much breaking even monthly (which isn’t hard to do considering the price of my clothes when rent is $350), and I didn’t see any potential in business increasing at that spot. To sum it all up, when they say “location, location, location” they REALLY mean it.

Overall, it was a good learning experience. I’m glad that I at least TRIED it instead of wondering if it would or wouldn’t work. It was a nice place to work too; all the stylists were awesome. And I wouldn’t be completely opposed to setting up shop in another salon, considering the demos were a better fit and the terms were based on consignment or something of the sort. But most likely, I’ll be online permanently until I start up my own boutique.

And this is the point where this blog turns into a bit of a passive-aggressive rant…

Probably the worst part of operating out of a salon with such a broad (and mismatched) demographic is the amount of people who simply don’t understand designer clothing and don’t understand quality. And it was really AMAZING the amount of customers who apparently have never seen or heard of designer clothes before; I mean, regardless of your budget, it’s not that hard to realize there’s a world of fashion outside of the mall where polos aren’t $12.99. And it’s not even because of where I live; my town is fairly small but we have more than a DOZEN high end contemporary boutiques, most of which are more expensive on average than the pieces I carry.

You get the classic customer who walks in, grabs dresses off of the rack without looking at the price tags, tries them on, loves them and then emerges from the dressing room to tell YOU that YOUR clothing is “overpriced” (because, you know, $130 for a designer silk cocktail dress is just unheard of), which of course is just a defensive way to avoid admitting that they can’t afford it. Or, even better, you have teenage boys with no education waltz into your store and tell you that all leather is the same quality and that luxury products aren’t about price theyre about “nice things” (yes, someone actually said this to me). I really do love it when people assume they know more about the garment industry and manufacturing than I do, and here I wasted time and money getting a degree in it. Dang.

So just a bit of advice to people who somehow end up in boutiques that are out of their price range and fail to actually read a price tag before falling in love with a dress — if you can’t afford it, simply smile and politely decline the sale to the sales associate (who very well may be the owner). No need to school him/her on products they’ve been trained to sell and that you’ve known of for about 15 minutes and make yourself look cheap while doing so. But if you don’t, please don’t be upset if we tell you to try Sears (four you if you know where that’s referenced from)

And I certainly can’t say I’m not enjoying the freedom and extra time that being back online are affording me! I have a MILLION new projects on the horizon — I’m doing freelance fashion/celebrity writing for a national magazine (more details later!), I’m planning a brand new blogging platform which I’m really excited about, and also my consulting business, which I’ll be posting about soon. I’m also mulling over the decision of whether my next big project should be a line or a brick and mortar shop. With the economy showing signs of recovery, about a year or two down the road is looking like the perfect time to launch one or the other!

Oh, there’s also those little summer shipments that are due in a couple of months!