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You've landed on this video because you're opening a boutique and you typed in how much

inventory do I need to start my boutique or some variation on that theme.

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And in this video, you're going to get exactly that.

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You're in the right place.

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Today, I'm going to walk you through the exact steps you need to figure out what to buy,

how much to spend, and how to make sure you profit from that very first order.

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So whether you're opening a brick and mortar, an online boutique or some sort of pop-up

shop,

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Let's talk about what are the right ways to figure out that first bit of inventory.

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You've been doing all this other research about starting a boutique.

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This is the part you want to get right.

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Guessing about your inventory is just gonna keep you broke and it will not set you up for

success.

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If we haven't met yet, hi, I'm Emily Benson.

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This is what I do every single day.

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I love helping boutique owners.

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Whether you have a women's store, a men's store, children's, just a product shop where you

sell gifts or...

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It doesn't really matter.

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If you're selling inventory, we need to make sure you're making money off that inventory

because why would you open otherwise?

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I've helped thousands of other boutique owners just like you start, grow, and scale their

boutique businesses.

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So this channel is for you and I would ask you to subscribe right now because this is all

I teach.

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So you want to learn professional level retail education, I'm your girl.

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I don't necessarily want to start with the mistakes, but I think it's important to do that

because you're coming to this video, probably have watched other videos, probably have

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done your research a little bit here and there, and you might have heard other advice.

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Now, again, I've been doing this for 20 plus years and I have seen the same mistakes over

and over and over with new boutique owners.

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So what I want to do first is walk you through what those mistakes are so that you just

don't do them.

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We just like kind of wipe the slate clean.

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I want to like...

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start you with a fresh start when I give you the strategy in a minute here.

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I'm gonna try to go through this quickly because I hate being negative, but I have to

educate you about the recurring issues I see, okay?

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So first off is buying what you think people will like rather than what you like or you

know that your demographic is going to buy.

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Too many people out there are looking outside themselves for inspiration for their store

and I need you to look inside.

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What do you love?

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What gets you excited?

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What can't you wait to buy?

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There is so much value that we can't quantify in your energy, your excitement, and your

love for a product.

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Like, I've had people say to me, I want to open a boutique, and I actually don't.

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I just want to because you get me excited about it.

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OK?

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And that's what it is.

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It is the energy behind what you're doing, who you're helping, that customers, I hate

saying that, but like,

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Customers that's what they want.

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They want the connection.

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They want to know that you're on they're on the same page as you So don't think that your

target market or your ideal customer is like so far off Honestly, a lot of the times I see

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that there are really like the boutique owner few and far between I'll see boutiques that

are very successful and it's it is a bit of a disconnect from the owner But the owner

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knows that and is aware of that and is really smart to navigate it

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There's a lot of FOMO in boutique land and I think that we see other boutiques and think

we have to be fully put together, fully stocked from day one.

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That is a huge mistake.

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To overbuy inventory is the cardinal sin of boutique ownership, okay?

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So from day one, we just want to say don't overbuy.

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Don't buy more than you think you need.

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It's okay to sell out.

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especially when you're just first starting.

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But most likely you're not going to, so that's why we want to prevent you from buying too

much right out the gate.

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As you grow and you develop the store and your demographic and see what they like and what

you like and how the market changes, you can always adjust.

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What you're doing today might not be what you're selling next year.

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That's fine.

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Let's just get you in the door and get your feet wet and figure out what that looks like.

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Because you're here and you have passion and you want to start this boutique, I think

there's a misconception that there isn't like science and data behind owning a store.

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Actually, the retail industry is a long and storied history that has actual education

pillars that I want to teach you.

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And the biggest part of being a good business owner is mixing intuition with data.

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A lot of boutique owners start out with incredible intuition, awesome taste, understanding

like what they love, what fabrics are great.

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The problem is that when they go to buy and spend money, there's no strategy to it.

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It's just like, I think I should order this.

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I think I should order that.

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And while there's nothing inherently wrong with that,

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I wouldn't suggest you do it.

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I think if we're going to try to make money and make this a business, it's really the

combination of intuition and data.

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So I'm here to give you the data part.

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Hopefully you have the intuition part.

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Hopefully you are good at picking out products, but all things considered, the data and

the numbers and the strategy is what's going to actually make you that money.

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Speaking of money.

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I see way too many boutique owners spending a ton of money on these first orders.

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Like truly, again, you don't need to have a full store.

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You don't need to spend your whole budget.

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You don't need to have an assortment that has every single size, every single color, every

like breadth versus depth, meaning a variety of products within a container rather than

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depth in products, meaning buying many units is always going to win when you're starting

out.

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because you have to see this as a test.

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When you're testing things, you wanna have a lot of like items to test against to see what

wins.

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How does it win by people buying it?

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That's the data that I'm talking about.

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A little secret too, just from Inside Boutique Land, if you are brand new to shopping on

places like Fashion Go or Fair or any online vendor, you have to read the fine print.

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Meaning, how much is that vendor's minimum order?

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What is their sizing like?

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Is it missy's?

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Is it junior?

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Is it contemporary?

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Is it children's?

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Is it tween?

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Like we have to get sizing right.

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And you want to make sure you can hit the vendor minimum and their reorder minimum.

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So you need to ask all these questions before hitting buy on anything.

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You've got to make sure what the requirements are and if that item is really going to fit

your people.

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I even made the mistake when I first started out, I bought a bunch of one shoulder dresses

that were junior size.

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They fit no one and they ended up at a fashion class that I taught for kids.

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So just don't make that mistake.

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Most new boutique owners like you, you're gonna go to a website, you're gonna put a bunch

of stuff in the cart that you love and you're gonna hit buy.

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But that is not the correct way to do it because we wanna figure out what our retail

prices are first.

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We wanna design into a plan and we want that plan to make a profit.

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Bottom line, please keep watching this video because we're gonna talk about how to buy

correctly for this first time out.

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If you came here looking for Google Sheets and very specific detailed instructions, I want

you to comment smart below and we'll give you the link to the mini course I've created.

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It's called the Smart Start Inventory Plan.

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This is the framework I've taught hundreds of boutique owners.

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All you need to do is comment smart below and we'll send you that link.

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All right, so how do we actually do this Emily?

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Let's get into the actual strategy.

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I've told you what not to do.

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This is what to do.

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and how to buy that initial inventory for your boutique business.

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So first and foremost, who is your customer?

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Where else are they shopping?

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What else are they paying for things?

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What are those stores featuring?

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You need to do a little bit of competitive shopping and ideal customer research, okay?

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So let's not be silly.

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We know that people shop everywhere and we know our ideal customer shops at other places,

but where is that?

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And it's not just gonna be Amazon.

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Like if you want to capture a boutique shopper, you wanna think about places like, let's

say you have a kid's store, Janie and Jack.

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You wanna think about Carter's.

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You wanna think about Old Navy.

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You wanna think about all of these other brands and even like smaller children's brands.

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You want to think about where that mom, that aunt is shopping and what are they paying for

things?

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Even with a women's boutique, we want to think about, they going to White House black

market?

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Are they more of an anthropology kind of person?

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That's a different customer, right?

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Those are different price points.

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And that's the nuance that I want you to come into boutique land with, understanding the

retail landscape a little bit more, because yes, you're going to have competition, but...

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No, you're not because you're going to do it differently.

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This competitive research is to understand the marketplace first and foremost.

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So you can now formulate your assortment and buying plan.

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So from this information, you're going to start to list out what you want to sell tops,

bottoms, denim, shoes.

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What does that look like for you?

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and I want you to put price points to it.

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What do you feel that people will pay at retail for these items?

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Now, if everything's $35, I'm gonna tell you to stop right now.

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Like that's, we don't live in that time anymore.

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If you know how much your customer will pay, then you are now informed about how much you

can spend.

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Get where I'm going with this?

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Based on what we know our competitors are charging, that's kind of what we think that that

market can handle in terms of pricing.

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So go to competitors' websites.

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What's their lowest price top?

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What's their highest price top?

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What's their lowest price dress?

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What's their highest price dress?

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And where do you want to fit in between that?

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You don't have to be the most expensive.

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You don't even have to cover what they cover.

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I'm not even saying that you need to compare to a bigger retailer, but those big retailers

have millions of dollars of research behind them.

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So why not leverage them as a place for you doing research to start your store?

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Once you've figured out those price point ranges, now you can work backwards and figure

out the wholesale cost that you need to spend to hit those retail prices.

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So talking about margins, margins is what makes us profitable.

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Most people out on the internet will tell you to just double the price.

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You're never gonna make money.

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You won't be profitable.

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I'm gonna tell you that right now.

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Math is math and we can't change math unfortunately.

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It is kind of what it is.

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If you decide to buy something at a wholesale cost of $20 and only charge $40 for it, you

might sell quickly through it, but the amount of profit you're going to make is going to

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be less.

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And if you don't sell it,

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you're screwed because you didn't build in any markdown dollars into your retail pricing

structure.

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So you need to think about being at least at a two and a half times or a three times

margin.

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Now I talk about margins versus markup.

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This is markup.

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So it's easier to communicate when we talk about markup.

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So I have since 2015, from when I wrote this book, I have been telling people to use a 3X

markup, okay?

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Which means,

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If it costs you at wholesale $10, you will then charge the customer at least $30 for that

item.

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Why?

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Well, number one, we have to account for inventory replacement and...

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We have to account for markdowns.

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Like we are building a plan that we want to be profitable for the total business and we

can only do that through the markup that we decide to create.

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So I'm going to tell you right now if you can't get products where you can charge 2.5 to

3X what the wholesale cost is, it's going to be harder for you to make money.

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And that's okay.

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We can figure it out.

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But I want you to try to use 2.5 to 3X so times as your initial guide.

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If you have trouble with that, come back.

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Let's talk about it in the comments.

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I want to hear more.

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Okay, so you know who you're selling to, your competitive stores that they're also

shopping at, what your retail price structure is going to be, and then what those

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wholesale costs are that you need to find.

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Now you get to go look.

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Okay, you get to go look and see what is it that you like with paying attention to the

departments you're buying into.

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So how many tops are you buying?

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How many bottoms are you buying?

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How many dresses are you buying to denim?

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Right?

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Like you want to make sure that you're building out an assortment so it looks interesting.

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So it looks like I, as the ideal customer, come in and I say, I want everything in here.

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Like, this is incredible.

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I want, like, you are...

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look like my closet, this is insane.

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That's the reaction we're going for when we start a boutique, okay?

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If you wanna start off with just a few departments, maybe you just sell tops and bottoms,

or maybe you're just a dress store out the gate, that's okay too.

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Again, you wanna be niche.

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The point is that you don't have it all figured out right now.

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I'm giving you strategy to try to get that first.

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experiment right without draining your bank account, right?

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Like I want you to have that really good first launch, but you also have to follow it up

after.

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like setting this formula up now is going to set us up for the future because we're

building our assortment and it's okay to start small.

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I'd rather you start small and have to build on top of then buy a ton of inventory, have a

lot of mistakes, then have to mark down and end up in debt.

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That's what I see most people do.

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As you start to search for products and build out this assortment, I'm hoping that you're

like keeping the photos.

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You're seeing how much you need to buy.

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You're doing some of those calculations to understand how this fits into your budget.

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So let's say you have a budget of a thousand dollars to spend on inventory.

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I really only want you to spend like 40 to 60 % of that.

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So 400 to $600.

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If you have more than that to spend, if you have $5,000 to spend.

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I still don't even know if I would recommend you spending like over $2,500.

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Like it's that's a lot of inventory.

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And while it might not, you might not think that's a lot, like it's a lot.

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You can start with a thousand dollars of really good inventory, assort it well, as I've

talked about here and make a profit right out the gate.

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Like make your money back plus more.

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Then as you reinvest, then we start to make some different decisions.

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But if you are really interested in getting into the nitty gritty weeds with me.

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I do have what I talked about before, that Smart Start Inventory Plan.

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I go into great detail for a women's boutique, a children's boutique, and also a product

shop, like a gift shop or an art store.

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I go in depth.

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I show you how I shop for things on fair.

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I show you how I mark up the prices.

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In 90 minutes, you're gonna know what to buy, how much to buy, what your ideal price

points are, what your margin is.

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I'm gonna give you those real vendor walkthroughs, shopping for product, and what I see,

that fine print I kinda talked about.

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And I'm even going to give you a template where you can build out that first order with

photos and descriptions and tracking information.

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Truly, if you're opening a boutique, you need this.

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As I said, I cover women's boutiques, children's boutiques, and any really product-based

stores within this inventory plan.

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This mini course is really going to give you the confidence to place that first order

without blowing your budget because we need to keep some money.

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All you have to do is comment smart below.

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and we'll send you the link to that.

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I hope that I've given you a lot of information that you can now take to create that first

buy.

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You don't have to guess, you don't have to overspend, you have a strategy now.

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If you want a more in-depth strategy, comment, start below, but everything that I've given

you in this video hopefully has given you more confidence on how to actually place that

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first order.

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And if you wanna know where to place those orders and you haven't found good sources,

click on this video that we've linked.

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It's gonna show you where to buy inventory if you haven't figured that out yet.

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So thanks so much for watching.

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Like and subscribe to my channel and I'll see you on the next one.