I went down to LA for the day on Saturday (and just missed the bad weather, thank God!) for the Summer 2010 market. It’s been a long time since I’ve been to market, since I ordered a lot in small quantities last year via linesheets. Even if it’s a smaller market, compared to Fall or Spring, it was so nice to be at the industry trade shows again.

Transit
Our first stop was the Transit shoe show inside the California Market Center. Um, I like shoes, like most women, but the shoe show is always the most boring exhibit. There are so many vendors and they’re all selling the exact. same. thing. Same trendy strappy sandals, gladiators in every color, booties, and jeweled flats. *yawns* The only line that really stood out to me was LAMB. They have a pair of super high heeled sandals coming out that are REALLY unique looking; I can’t even explain what they look like, but you’ll know them when you see them. They’re also launching a line of leather thong sandals which are really cute, good prices too. But it looks like another boutique here in town has already snapped them up! Shoes would be great to have, but they’re such expensive inventory to carry with all the sizes and what not. Oh, and the fact that I don’t have any room for them might be a problem as well…

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Next weekend the LA fashion district will be gearing up for the Summer 2010 market, which I couldn’t be MORE excited about. I haven’t been to market in a while, since I didn’t buy ahead of time for Spring. Actually, I’ll be doing my Spring buying while I’m up there and taking a look at what’s in store for Summer. It sounds backwards, but since I’ve changed my business model a lot, and opening my retail location here in town is one of the reasons why.

As I mentioned a few months ago, opening up in a salon was such a last minute thing. I think I spoke with the owners a month or a month and a half before everything was up and running. We opened in November and the Spring ‘09 market took place in October. I ALMOST went to it and placed orders for a whole bunch of stuff, and honestly, I’m glad that I didn’t. Because now that I’ve gotten to know the clientèle here it’s definitely changed what things I would put in the shop (mainly price wise), and of course, buying for a brick and mortar location is much different than the web.

So my new model is to sell what I have BEFORE I buy more (and I recently learned that Banana Republic does this as well), and I plan to stick with it for a while. I’ve said before that depending on immediates is risky business, and it can be, but luckily I work with some pretty flexible lines. I’m also limiting my budget by a LOT, but considering how small my space is, a little bit goes a long way. So here’s what I’m planning on carrying…

Denim – finally! I found a great premium line that retails around $100 AND they get a ton of press.
Footwear – Okay, just flip flops. But it’s a start!
Maxi’s – Once again. But they’re such HOT sellers, and they’re inexpensive, easy to ship and hardly get returned.
Tops – I’m usually more cocktail dress focused but tops will definitely be a bigger selling point in the shop.

So I plan on bringing in at least two more lines, MAYBE 3 depending on how I can stretch my dollars. And on top of that I’m looking into jewelry, but I’ll talk more about that another time

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you all had fun yesterday and on NYE — I did, surprisingly; I caught up on all the movies I’ve been wanting to see (Avatar truly is amazing!) and got to go out to eat with family and friends. It’s so strange to be in 2010 with a new decade in front of us. If you’re my age, then you probably changed a LOT in the past 10 years and will do the same in the upcoming 10 years. For me, the next decade is crunch time because there are so many things I want to achieve career wise. And it’s probably quite obvious what my goals are for this year (I don’t do new years resolutions); to make my brick and mortar shop successful and keep up the momentum with my online shop.

The first positive change for the new year is my signs. I posted a couple of weeks ago about the decal I had made, and how it came out too small. Well, I put it up on the wall over my space and here’s how it looks:

Hmmm. It’s a little dinky, no? If it were about double that size it would look AWESOME. Well, actually in person it looks awesome too, but just on a much smaller scale. Dali decals does good work, and in a couple of months I’ll probably order one that’s a bit bigger. But this will have to work for now.

When I was putting my other decal in the window a couple of weeks ago I realized how much space we had in the back window for a banner. So I promptly ordered one from HalfPriceBanners.com (I think? It was either them or EmpireBanners.com, not sure) and they sent me back this wonderful 4′x2′ banner:

And it only cost $18 (plus $8 shipping). Let me tell you, that’s an AWESOME deal. All the local places I checked with wanted to charge $50-$100 for something similar. Of course it was a bit of a risk ordering something from the internet when you’re not familiar with what kind of work they do, but I took the risk and it paid off in a BIG way. The banner looks so pretty in person, it looks exactly like my business cards and they even got the gradient background in there perfectly. It’s also made of a durable fabric that can be used inside or out, and they gave me free grommets as well.

Actually, ordering the banner was the easy part — hanging that thing was a pain in the rear end! Mainly because I had to search all over town to find suction hooks to hang it on and it’s fallen down about three times. Each time I’ve had to drag this giant ladder out from the back, climb up it feeling like I’m going to topple over, lift up the blinds and get covered with dirt and dust. And on top of that the suction hooks from target don’t hold very well. But it’s been up for about 3 days, which is a new records. Fingers are crossed that it sticks….literally.

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.

Q: I would like to open [a boutique] at the end of summer 2010. Should I be purchasing clothing now? As I do not currently have a storefront I am concerned that it will be hard to get my inventory which is obviously so essential. I love the idea of immediates, but I realize I can’t count on them. When I try to get wholesale information online from certain labels, they seem to want a location, a website or even a photograph of the store. There was also a trade show I had looked into ( The Pool Trade Show) which wanted to see two completed invoices as part of the application. I do have a tax id number, but that’s about it at this point! Any help or advice you can give would be so appreciated! Best of luck to you this coming weekend as the holiday madness begins!!

A: If you’re opening at the end of summer, rest easy for now because the Fall collections (and even though it’s the end of Summer, you’ll want to have Fall merch at this time) start showing in February (at MAGIC in Las Vegas), and will continue to show into the next month in other cities like LA.

Pool isn’t a trade show I’d recommend going to for your first time. Try getting into the Brighte Enk, Designers & Agents and some of the other smaller ones (like Transit, etc) that happen in Los Angeles all at the same time. There’s also Market Tuesdays at the California Market Center. I was able to go to these shows (specifically Brighte) before I had a website or any invoices; they basically want to see your business license and business cards. Easy stuff! A lot of times you can use a deed as well.

If all else fails, I’d recommend securing your domain name and putting up a “coming soon” graphic of some sorts. And make it look nice and creative; have your web designer do it, and put your logo on it and maybe a fun, colorful background so the reps take it seriously.

Best of luck to you too!