Posts filed under 'The Startup Phase'
I’ve had the same “how’s business” conversation with numerous people in the last week – and in all of those conversations, we’ve ended up talking about the difference between those boutiques that survived and those that didn’t survive over the last couple of years. I’ve also realized that I’ve learned from first hand experience why some boutiques do better than others, and I thought if I shared my thoughts, it might help a lot when you are first setting up your sure-to-be-gorgeous boutique.
Location, Location, Location
One of our first retailers to go out of business had an absolutely quaint boutique. It was setup in a little craftsman’s cottage, and each room had a unique theme, such as stationary, toys, baby clothes, etc. Great layout for the store itself. But, for it to be in a cottage pretty much put it in the middle of a neighborhood. The owner told me when she had decided to close up shop, that her foot traffic had gone from about 30 people a day to four or five people a day. when I paid her my first visit, I remember being somewhat shocked that shops existed in that area at all. And I’ve lived in the San Diego area for years!
The trend continued, those shops that were setup in “unique” areas were consistently some of the first to close. Hand-select your location, consider the reputation of the area – hang out and watch how much traffic comes by…”we thought we were in a great spot in this newer strip mall, but we are off in the corner and there is virtually NO traffic.” – from a boutique owner that mostly pulled through but just quit.
Keep it simple
People do not like to walk into an over-crowded boutique. People like to walk into a boutique that they know has hand-selected the best of the best for them already. Too many options and you start to overwhelm the senses, start to lean towards a more “discount store” type of atmosphere. I think that buyers start to think “if I offer more options that will save me”.
I think the opposite is true – offer fewer, absolutely perfect, options, and you’ll create a loyal following. We had a retailer in a very touristy area of town – as she got more desperate for sales, she kept piling more stuff in her store (adding to her costs too mind you – the more inventory you carry the more money you have that is just sitting around, not making money for you).
The last time I stopped by, she had added buckets of plastic $5 and under trinket toys – saying to me “this seems to be all people are willing to pay for in this area”. She couldn’t see that when people walked in, there was no rhyme or reason to her selection – there was nothing that said “THIS is the superb style you can count on finding here” – instead it said “we have a little of everything, search around and see if there is anything good”.
Your style
In the end, the selection offered by a boutique comes down a lot to the style preferences of the owner or buyer. As a buyer, you need to know your style, need to know that your customers look to you to tell them what is cool, beautiful, unique, the next “it” product. They want you to do the work for them. Make sure your boutique has a cohesive look and feel that matches the product selection, and says exactly who you are….trust that you went into this business because you have ideas about what people “are really looking for”, and then offer it to them.
Mind Set
In the end, the attitude of the owner is what makes the biggest difference between survival and giving up. When I was in the thick of doing sales, I got to the point where I could almost tell by the tone of voice when the buyer said “hello” whether it was a good avenue to pursue or not. You would not believe how many sob stories I would get right off the bat. Which isn’t to say that those with the “right” mind set weren’t realistic – it’s just that they always start with a positive note in their voice and end with an “but there’s no question, we’re making it through this.” I don’t care how cheezy it sounds, success starts (or ends) with your state-of-mind, your ability to visualize, and how much fight you have in your spirit.
Learn, learn, learn
I have learned so much just by visiting so many boutiques over the last few years. You should do this too – visit baby boutiques that you know have a great reputation, take note of how MUCH product they carry, their price points, how long they’ve been in business, their location. I bet the ones that have been around the longest have a relatively simple selection, are in the “hot shopping districts” in town, and have spent time building a reputation for excellent customer service and top-notch style and trend spotting.
Selling to boutiques
Because I was just starting out, I was more than happy to have our product in all the boutiques that I talked about above…but I really shouldn’t have been. What boutiques your products are spotted in matters a lot to your brand. It also matters a lot to your time and ROI. Focus on getting into established boutiques but don’t ignore the new ones either. Sometimes, a new boutique nails all of the necessary criteria to be the new “it” boutique in town. Just make sure it’s a boutique you’re proud to see your product in.
June 30th, 2010
I figure a good place to start talking about planning the Fall ’11 collection is to just start listing some of the things that I need to start getting together NOW and the things that I need to make sure stay on my radar the whole time.
Get it together
Literally – I want a collection that goes together. No matter how many styles I settle on for the final collection, they must be cohesive. Cohesiveness matters to more than just the look and feel of my collection- it matters to my overall brand building and my bottom line. If you are a small, just-starting-out business, then you are going to want to maximize your buying ability. You will want to use the same fabric in more than one style – this will help ensure you can ‘make the cut’ (meet the minimum yardage required by the supplier).
To get it together, I’m starting with a theme. I feel incredibly lucky to have been struck by a theme idea when I was doodling the other night. Right now, there is nothing solid behind my theme idea – but it gives me ideas for discovery. I’m starting with a combination of two keywords – those keywords are already inspiring me to look at fashions, cinema, movie posters, etc. from certain eras. They are basically a great starting point for exploring. Just an idea to kick-start your theme hunt – try random keywords together, jot down words that strike your fancy.
Plan, plan, plan
Right now – I’m gathering some discovery tools (sketchbooks, color books, reference books) and hashing out a broad time line for the production of my collection. From there, I can layer my marketing and sales plans on top of the production plan. To start your production plan, work backwards from your launch date (selling season for Fall collections is late Jan/early February through May; shipping starts end of July; of course, nothing is ever set in stone) and set at least the following milestone dates:
- Salesman’s samples complete
- Trade show booth (and/or marketing materials) complete
- Website/wholesale ordering information complete
- Sample (production or technical kits) dropped for assembly
- Sample fabrics ordered (I have a lot to share about sourcing in the next couple of weeks)
- Final patterns approved
- At least two cycles of: pattern design, test sample for fit, fit meetings, pattern edits, test sample for fit….etc.
- Technical Sketches complete
- Styles approved for pattern-making
- Final style meeting
- Fabrics sourced
- Logo, website, and stationary design underway
- Collection theme finalized
Keeping on my radar
So much goes into just developing a collection, that it’s easy for me to let a lot of the “launching a business” activities get pushed to the side. I will keep bookkeeping activities on my radar daily. Stay on top of your bookkeeping from the very beginning, if you can manage. In addition, I have to constantly and consistently work on your branding, pr, and marketing –>both the plans and implementation. We just wrapped up a new logo design today – I’ll need it on my hang tags and care labels, website and marketing materials, email signatures, social media site avatars, website, and on and on. This time around, I promise to keep the trade show booth design and trade show schedule on my radar from the beginning too. Also – supporting my sales rep by providing them with pre-launch information and sneak peeks at the collection.
Ok – enough to do right now and more than enough to keep on my radar, I think I just made myself dizzy!!
May 20th, 2010
Up, down, round ‘n round; wee heee loooptees on my daily roller coaster. Every day in this business there are fires (rush order for big important client is running late) and there are flowers (someone you know mentioning they saw your product featured in a national magazine).
Yesterday, I got final confirmation from this fantastic woman that she definitely wants to rep our baby line. This was particularly thrilling because I really feel right her, and right about bringing her on board; lord knows I’ve been praying for help in the sales department. And more importantly, I feel we are good for her too, we have so much room for growth. That was in the morning. That was a whole bouquet of blooming flowers.
The day was busy.
Late afternoon, I had an appointment with the blanket sewing contractor. They want to raise the prices on every single little aspect of the manufacturing process – to such exhorbant rates -, that I spent most of the appointment with either my jaw on the floor, or giggles of disbelief escaping my mouth. But I kept my cool, shared my perspective, and left saying I would look it over, price it out, and see what the helllllllllll we are going to do now. That’s was a three-alarm fire.
Did you know that there are some flowers that only bloom after a fire has heated their seed pods to a temperature high enough to makes them pop out their seeds? Maybe it’s plants, but flowers works better here…
So, that fire blew over me and honestly, I went from thinking it could be the death of a product line to discovering options I didn’t even know existed. Thank you crazy contractor for having such an extreme moment that it pushed me to look for a new way. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Things are going to get so much better…
Have fun on your roller coaster today (it’s a thrill ride we are on by choice), remember to stop and smell the flowers (sometimes we don’t pat ourselves enough on the back for how far we’ve come), and most importantly, keep a fire extinguisher buckled in the seat next to you!
February 10th, 2010
Oh crazy first month of 2009, I love you! This month was incredibly stressful scurrying to figure out CPSIA compliance, taking in some of our biggest orders to-date, and going on the roller coaster of having a best-selling product sell out (this is a fabric availability issue).
Ah, the CPSC has issued a one year stay on testing regulations for certain products. This was the news as of yesterday. Here is a link to the press release. Anyhow, what this does is let us go ahead with the testing we are doing and go ahead and keep selling the blankets. I think it’s important to note that you still have to comply – you can’t sell products with lead over the limits, but it seems you can decide how you’re going to do your due diligence and test your products, or accept certifications from suppliers (such as Michael Miller recently declaring all of their fabrics are CPSIA compliant).
We have new organic onesie designs and they are selling like mad. There was finally a noticable pick-up in January. We’ve seen so many boutiques go out of business in the last year, that it seems (cautiously optimistic) that those that have managed to stay in business are finally picking up some of the customer’s from the boutiques that are no longer around. For example, one boutique in the center of town just placed their biggest b*Fab order yet – they have watched no less than six competing boutiques go out of business in the last eight months (most of those were our customers too). At some point, even if all those businesses had less customers, one out of seven boutiques should now have more customers. This pendulum has to start swinging this way at some point, right? It seems to be for us.
We had a cute little poncho featured in the January issue of Pregnancy & Newborn magazine and that sucker
sold out almost immediately. Between the boutiques that managed to place wholesale orders and the online sales, it wasn’t even in stock for two weeks. The reason I’m bringing this up is because I ran into the good old fabric is now out-of-stock issue again. This time, we wanted to do another production run – it’s selling like mad, it will sell well through the Spring – but the fabric is no longer available. So, instead of being able to keep it available on the site, we are scurrying to replace the print fabric. The bright side is that now I know more about our potential and that informs me for ordering increased yardage and supplies for the next go round.
I can honestly say we’ve never worked as hard as we did in January. This could well be the year of the 16 hour days, but we’re up for it, because the business is growing up to it. I don’t let myself watch much news anymore either, it is seriously too depressing. I get it. I’m proceeding with more caution than I ever have before, I’ve learned a lot of lessons from the economy hitting the skids. But I have to focus on the positive and how I’m going to keep us going through this. It’s nice to be bringing in a great flow of business again – that definitely helps to see the bright side of things.
Here’s to the launch of a great February. And for me, a happy weekend when we’re actually doing some painting around the house.
January 31st, 2009
Ok, here we go ’round the mulberry bush. New regulations, new regulations, new regulations, we…all…fall…down. No, not really, but this stuff will make your head spin and that being the case, I’m not writing any advice about this – except for this one part:
**You must now issue a certificate of conformity with all of your shipments**
That should raise enough questions in your head. Start at fashion-incubator.com and keep your eyes there. I saw her sending out a request for more info from experts, so if we’re lucky, she’ll be posting even more information soon. Here’s the post to start on:
New product safety regulations that affect all manufacturers (fashion-incubator)
This is all due to the passing of the Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act.
Here’s the link to the Consumer Product Safety Commission page that deals with this topic.
Make sure you do your research on this one and that you have all your bases covered. Also note that there are extra special regulations for manufacturer’s of children’s products.
November 12th, 2008
Finally! A picture of our booth at the ABC Show. Takes me forever to get pictures off our camera and uploaded and even
this picture cut off the top of the booth. But that was our booth at the show.
I see so many things that I would change already. We’re not at the point of having a hardwall booth yet, which I would love. I don’t know how much of a difference that would make. It is definitely different to do a show that has low (3′) sidewalls, vs. a show that has full 8 ft sidewalls.
Someday I’m going to come up with the perfect way to display our blankets. They need to be spread out so the name is eye-catching, but I also want to show that there is a variety of options.
Like I said in a previous post, all we can do is get better each time. Can you tell that I don’t like this booth anymore? Almost sounds like I’m trying to make excuses, but it is HONESTLY leaps and bounds above our first trade show display booth.
But you know, it’s a reminder that you have to just start somewhere and go for it. No matter what, you’re always going to want to make it better; there is always a part of you that will feel like if you just change this or that, THEN you’ll be ready to launch; THEN you’ll be ready to show off. But really, you have to just leap, you have to give yourself permission to have room for improvement. Make sure you believe in the quality of your products before leaping, of course. Quality matters a lot.
Basically, if we expect it to be perfect before we go for it, we’ll never start, we’ll never meet our own expectations (=misery), and we’ll miss the whole journey. Someday I’ll have a great trade show booth – for now we’re doing the best we can and trying different things each time.
October 4th, 2007
I got an email last night from someone I met at that tradeshow. This is someone who made an appointment to see us at the show, interested in carrying our personalized baby blankets in their personalized gift boutique. They came, they critiqued, they balked that OUR LABEL WAS ON OUR PRODUCTS, and then they left.
I sent a follow-up email after the tradeshow, to say “great to meet you” and blah blah niceties. Two weeks go by and I get a response last night – telling me they won’t be carrying our blankets but to let them know when if we ever have new prints, oh and by the way – “I hope you got a chance to see what some of the other bedding companies are doing”.
And that was how it ended. Not even a period at the end of that sentence. At first I didn’t know why it bothered me. Besides the fact that we define ourselves as a trend-setting company and “copying” other companies is the last thing I’m into, what bothered me is that there was absolutely no reason for the snippiness. No reason at all.
So, I guess those are some of “those” people that you run into in this business. But all it does is confirm for me that I never want to become one of those people. All she did was leave a bad impression on me – and confirm that no, I will not be contacting her when we have new prints. Or ever. On the bright side, darn it if isn’t “those” people that light an extra fire, make me want to prove all the more how successful we’re going to be…so maybe we need a little snippiness here and there.
October 1st, 2007
I think that this question is the theme of the week. I received an email from a new reader yesterday, asking me if it would be worth it to go into the children’s clothing business at all. Today, I read this mom-entrepreneur’s blog post on how the entrepreneurial world is less-than-ideal.
As far as to whether it’s worth it to go into the children’s industry in particular – my main answer is that the decision is personal. Only you know what products you have in mind. You then have to do the research to find out if the market will take on your product. What is your niche? What will set you apart from the competition? How will you market your products and what price-point are you aiming for? Do you see yourself selling great designs at great prices or luxurious products for a higher price point? What sales and distribution channels will you use?
I definitely believe you have to have a niche. You have to have something unique and different enough to make people overlook your “newness” and take a risk on you.
As far as to whether it’s worth it to go into any kind of business for yourself, my answer is a hundred times over “yes”. Personally, I hate working for other people. Don’t get my wrong, I know how to play the game. I know how to hold a job and move up the rungs of the ladder. But I hated that life. I DO work a lot, a lot, a LOT harder now, but I get bigger rewards, and I see my kids about 800% more than I used to when I spent my days in an office building. And it’s humbling too!
I’ve made a zillion mistakes and have wasted a ton of money by starting my own business. But I’ve grown by leaps and bounds, and I’ve learned a zillion things from those zillion mistakes. I enjoy the journey, I enjoy challenging myself, and I’m starting to enjoy pushing myself outside of my comfort level.
All that being said, no business is worth going into if you don’t LOVE it. You have to love it to push yourself through years of hard work and little sleep.
August 20th, 2007
As I was sitting in my office / sewing room this morning, I remembered receiving a comment recently from a reader who mentioned she wished for her own sewing room. I never got around to replying (my apologies), but I had wanted to share with her that I haven’t always had a sewing room / working office either.
Everything, absolutely everything, is a building process when you’re starting a business. Including the office space. My first office was our dining room table. I remember having the sewing machine on one end of the table, and my sleeping baby (safely strapped in her bouncy seat) on the other end of the table. Stealing precious moments while she slept to dive head first into some crazy dream I had about becoming a fashion designer and selling my designs to stores. 
I’ve always been really aware of the passage of time, somewhat nostalgic too – and I’ve developed habits of marking times in my life. I know that I specifically took a picture of our dining room, overrun with sewing supplies and fabrics, so that, in the future, I could see how far we’ve REALLY come.
When you hear that people started their businesses out of their garages, I would bet that’s only half the truth. I’m sure they started on their dining room tables, or in the den, and grew to their garages. We outgrew each of our offices fast (dining room, then spare bedroom, then that + half of our living room), plus had another baby, so we had literally had to change houses. Our “offices” now take up a California room (enclosed patio) and a living room. So, soon, we’ll be bursting out of our garage.
We always have visions of our goals, and we’re envisioning grand offices at a this great new river business park nearby. I wonder how long it will take us to get there.
June 8th, 2007
Whenever I’m having “downtime” and surfing the internet, I read some articles on Entrepreneur.com. I just read this article on success secrets for starting a business. I found it interesting, and I think anyone who is considering starting a business, or who has started a business, would find it interesting; so I’m sharing.
I know that the article isn’t specific to starting a clothing line, but it provides some food for thought. Here are the seven “essential principles” to practice in order to be a successful entrepreneur:
- Clarity
- Competence
- Constraints
- Creativity
- Concentration
- Courage
- Continuous Action
As I read the article, I evaluated myself in each principle area. I’m stronger in some than others, but it made me consider focusing on building my strength in those areas where I’m weak.
I’ve been getting a lot of questions and I’m going to do my best to answer them over the next couple of weeks in these blog posts. I promise. So, if I haven’t responded immediately, I will soon!!!
June 7th, 2007
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