Building the Boutique

The graphic says through Friday but I’m going to extend the sale through Saturday, which USPS says is the last day to ensure priority shipping for Christmas. SO if you’re looking for a Love Quotes Scarf (especially metallic!) or a linea pelle bag or wallet, just use code XMAS and save 40%!

Q: I want to start an online store and I also was thinking about selling on Ebay, to have mulitple online prescene. I thought since Ebay has such a huge following, than I do currently, it may prove beneficial. Would you reccommend selling on Ebay in addition to having an e-commerce store, why/why not?

I would only recommend Ebay for clearance merchandise you absolutely have to get rid of. People on ebay are one step above the “yard sale” crowd, meaning they’re dirt cheap. Most things won’t even sell for the wholesale price on there, and once you factor in fees it’s even worse.

Q: I was wondering how long someone just starting their business can expect to wait before they see a return? Would it be best to keep your career and begin working on starting an online boutique at the same time? And do you feel that it is best to take some form of fashion courses or would any business/marketing background be helpful?

They usually say it takes 3-5 years before your business starts to make a profit. I would definitely advise keeping your job while you’re working on your online store. Once it’s up and running, it won’t take a ton of time to manage outside of shipping on a daily basis.

You should absolutely take business/entreprenuer classes, it will help you avoid a lot of mistakes nad it should help with your businesss planning. If you can take classes in buying, planning, retail math and retail enviroment, I would highly suggest that as well.

I love it when my favorite celebs wear clothing from my store! Julianne Hough was always my favorite dancer on DWTS, and now she’s embarking on a movie career. Last week she was spotted out in NYC wearing the Linea Pelle Zip Tote in Cognac, which we have in stock in that color and three other colors. Use code LPWALLET and get a free wallet with any bag purchase!

So I ordered a vinyl decal of my logo from DaliDecals.com a couple of weeks ago (which took at least two weeks to arrive, yikes). It will eventually go on the wall over my clothes, after the wreath is taken down. They ended up sending me two since my logo has two colors; one in purple and one in pink. This confused the heck out of me at first, and I was wondering why it didn’t come ready to paste on the wall (it also ended up being a bit smaller than I had hoped). But this worked out to my advantage and I was able to put the other colors to good use…

The salon owners had a whole roll of black sticky paper (I have no I idea what the stuff is called but it works with vinyl and it’s for making signs) in the back that they let me use. They actually make all the signs the same way, by mounting vinyl letters on it. It came out kind of crooked and a few of the letters aren’t spaced as well as I would really want, but from a distance, it’s fine.

So now I finally have a sign thats visible from outside…..even if it’s only about 2 feet wide. Better than nothing, right?

I actually spent a couple of weeks sourcing prices for banners (the big ones, we’re talking 6ft or so); I had planned on putting one in the back, but banner stand we have is an odd size and it would’ve cost about $150 to have one made. Then one of the salon owners mentioned hanging one in the back window….WHY didn’t I think of this sooner? I pass that banner every day and never thought twice about it. I ended up ordering a 4′x2′ custom banner (it matches my business cards perfectly; score!) from EmpireBanners.com for only about $27, and that’s including shipping. Keep your fingers crossed that it comes out looking great!

My boutique has been open inside of Envy Salon for an entire month now, and every week I make sure to change the floor set each week. Even though I’m not getting much new merchandise in stock, I can still rotate everything to keep it fresh. This is fashion, people; attention spans are short.

My first set up started with the Voom Basque Halter as the featured piece. I did this simply because it was quick and easy to throw it over the mannequinn while we were setting everything up initially. And then I decided to keep it for the week.

And I completely forgot to take pictures of the second floorset, but it had the Voom Antionette Dress (which is black, white and red) with the red Voom Vogue Jacket over it. And on the racks I draped the white metallic Love Quotes scarf (yoga) in front, so it was this really pretty white & red color pallette.

I pretty much keep the table set up the same. One of the salon owners has actually been working in retail for 20 years and gave me SO many good tips on doing floorsets. It was his idea to put the Line Pelle Medium Tote inside of the leather box, which I got from target for about $20. It has plaid on the inside, which helps the contents stand out. And on top of that, I have my picture frames which show all the celebs who have worn Love Quotes scarves.

Another thing he showed me is how to paper fold; the piece of paper on the inside of the Gypsy 05 hoodie is what makes it pop up like that. If you look closely, you’ll see that the draw strings form an “O” and an “L” (*hint* those are my store name’s initials!).

Here’s our Christmas set up. The salon owners made the wreath themselves, isn’t it pretty? Love the colors, and it fills in the empty space above my clothes nicely. I also ordered a vinyl decal of my logo from DaliDecals.com. It should be here any day now….

Oh and the feature piece is the brand new Voom by Joy Han Eyelet Dress. Pretty much everyone drools over it, including me. The color is SO perfectly festive, I might leave it up longer than a week.

And lastly, the display case where I keep all my Linea Pelle bags and one of the Onna Ehrlich clutches. The bottom, with the Dylan Zip Totes got pretty squished. But I love the middle shelf with the purple/black/gold color scheme. And, once again, a picture frame showing all the celebrities who wear them.