Emily Benson (00:00)

If you're ready for your boutique to be more profitable in 2025, this is the video for you. I believe that 2025 is going to be a make it or break it year for a lot of people. And I hate to say this, but I've been doing it forever. I just think this is the year you need a plan. If there's any other year before that, yeah, like great. But now having a plan is a must have. I'm Emily Benson and I'm a retail consultant.

specializing in boutique businesses. We've had a lot of retail people commenting on our stuff lately and I'm so happy about that because retail is retail is retail. I've helped thousands of retail owners, boutique owners, start, grow and scale their boutique businesses. So you're in the right place. I'm giving you my best of best of advice and I want you to be up to date on the 2025-ness of everything. And so in this video, I'm gonna walk you through what specific changes I see.

happening in 2025 and what you can do to address them, prevent them, avoid them, or use them as opportunities. If you're new around here, then you might not have heard my mantra, which is mindset, margins, and marketing. In my world of boutique land, I like to think that everything goes back to either your mindset, the margins in your business, meaning money, or your marketing. That's it. Like, it's not about algorithms. It's not about traffic. It's about what you can control. And those three things

are things you can control. Let's talk about the boutique trends that are specific to 2025. I want to start there. So in terms of customer shifts that we're seeing in 2025, the biggest thing is customers are more interested in quality over quantity. Across the board, I don't care what price point you're selling in.

People are being conscious about how they're spending their money. And this is why you as a boutique owner are going to be in so much trouble by the end of the year if you're not very careful about how much inventory you buy. Remember, there's always a way to buy more inventory. So please, please, if you don't have a plan, make sure you have one. The big piece of understanding your customer is also

being niche, like this is not the time to be everything to everyone. I know I've talked about this for 10 years now, but now is the time to actually take my advice seriously and say, I'm going to niche down. I'm gonna be so particular about who I sell to, what I sell to them, what my messaging is, what my brand looks and feels like, and what I stand for. In terms of sustainability, I'll just wrap that part up by saying consignment, resale, and anything that feels eco-friendly.

is in. Remember, more people have become aware of climate change and sustainability and how fashion is kind of one of the biggest contributors to waste on our planet. So here's the thing. If you want to sell boutique items, that's fine, but buy the inventory correctly. Make sure you're not part of the problem, right? You're not going to be an H or a Sheen or a Zara, but I do think it's important to understand that we have a part to play in

how much inventory we buy and present and making sure that we are being as eco-conscious as possible while still hitting our sales goals, that's possible. Now marketing, algorithms, everyone will complain about the algorithms in the small business community, but here's the thing, they're always changing. Views are always down, things are always down, but right now video is a must, like a must. Five years ago, 10 years, like even eight years ago, I was saying, you gotta do video, you gotta do video.

Now it's not even you've got to do it. It's you must do it. You must get comfortable in front of the camera or you must get good at putting clothes in front of the camera. I don't care what you do. OK, but video is a must. It's always going to be the most engaging. It's going to find you those new customers that you're looking for. And honestly, like it's not that hard. I need you to just figure out how to do it. And I need you to get brave and just do it. And if you're already doing it, try to do more.

try to be more niche, try to be more specific. The thing is, a lot of you guys are focused on getting new customers, which is always important, and that's where video is gonna play a part. But remember, you might have existing customers, so please do not forget about them. Send those emails, talk to them, make them feel like they're VIPs. It's much less expensive to sell to an existing customer than to go out and find a new one and sell to them.

So don't forget both pools. Let's talk about online versus in-person because I was just in a store the other day and she said, if we want online, I think there's like the sky's the limit. That's not true. Here's the thing. Hybrid does work being online and in-person, but the deal is, that both online boutiques and in-person boutiques are thriving right now. So whether you just have one or you have both, you should be able to maximize whatever you're doing. Like,

Boutiques are still profitable in 2025. And I think that too much pressure and too many people are out there saying like, go online, run Facebook ads, do all this stuff. When in reality, online is doing great, but brick and mortar is doing really well. A majority of my clients are brick and mortars and they are doing really well. If they're down from sales, what do we do? We just adjust their inventory. We make sure they're not buying too much. We make sure that they're buying their inventory to hit their sales goals and not otherwise. But

Overall, I would say people are still shopping brick and mortar. They still want that in-person experience. So don't think that one is better than the other. It's really just how you play it. And it's really what makes sense to you in your life. Okay, your mindset, we have to talk about growth. Whether you're new or starting out, your mindset is for sure the thing that's going to make or break you. Because listen, if you're talking negatively to yourself all day about how you're not doing this well, you're not good at this, you don't know what you're doing, stop.

You need a plan, you need some education, you're in the right place. Okay? So like you're here with me. But 2025 is the year to stop treating your business like a hobby if you've been in business for a while. This is the year to start to take it seriously. What if you could make more money with your boutique business? This is the time to consider how you're going to do that and what steps you need to take.

This is a year where you get to decide to set some smart goals for yourself. Gone are the days when you could say, I want to make $300 a day. That's silly. It's not realistic. And it's just setting you up to fail. You could have a $5,000 day one day and have a zero dollar the next day. Like stop beating yourself up about zero dollar days or low sales days because you don't know what could happen tomorrow. And here's the thing. Indicators with sales revenue are directly tied to the performance of your inventory and the effectiveness of

marketing. So if you're not making sales, there are concrete things you can start to look at. And again, I will remind you, the first thing to look at is how do you feel about these goals? Are they a stretch? Are they based in reality? Are you just whipping things out of nowhere? Your buys are always based on your sales. And so we have to figure out how to get you steadily selling in a way that feels good and aligned for you. It's really important also to just be adaptable and think of this business as a daily experiment. Like we

are always making our best guesstimates, whether it's trends, whether it's money, it really doesn't matter. I think you've got to understand that adopting flexibility and adaptability is probably one of the key things for growth and having a long-term business. It's important to understand that you're going to have to pivot maybe all year, depending on what happens. And pivoting can be a good thing. You didn't start this small business to be bored, right? So let's just make it more exciting and keep pivoting all year and be okay with it.

The only thing wrong with the way you might be thinking about your business is that you're not thinking positively. You're not thinking like this could be great. I find too many people are just scared of the unknown when in reality, if you look at this as an experiment, then you have the opportunity every single day to try something new.

stretch your limit and see what works and what doesn't. And that's what it all is. It's I'm learning that YouTube is working for me. We learned that anything with 2025 on it has been popping right now. So guess what? I'm sitting here filming more videos about 2025. So take my advice, put it out there, learn from it and move on, okay? Don't get stuck in mistakes or, you I don't even wanna say failures, cause like nothing's really a failure. It's just something that didn't work. Keep going.

put one foot in front of the other and make sure that you understand that building this business might take a while, but what you do this year, if you can do it smartly and sustainably, then you'll be okay for a number of years after. All right, so give me a comment below, like what in terms of your own mindset do you see as being a block? I wanna hear what you think is holding you back so that we can talk about it and I can help you get through it because listen, again, I've been doing this for 20 years, retail's not going away.

And small retail is thriving in 2025. So I want to remind you of that and help you move through and past any of the challenges that you feel like your brain is telling you. All right, margins. What do I say when I mean margins? Well, the only way that we make money in a retail business is the difference between our wholesale cost and our retail price. So you have to understand your numbers. Sales don't really matter if there's no money in your bank account. And the amount of times that I have heard people say and

Listen, they're not proud of it. Like they're, they're coming to me for help, but they'll say things like, you know, we made a half a million dollars last year. made a million dollars last year in my business, but like, I don't have any money in the bank account. Like where did it all go? That's okay. But also in 25, 25, it's like not okay at all. Like we have to fix the numbers of your business. And I need you to zero in on profitability. Again, I don't care what that Shopify number says in terms of sales. If you have too much inventory bought, if your margins are too low,

It really doesn't matter. So how are you using your data to guide what you're doing this year? Have you looked at last year? Do you understand what happened? Do you know your mistakes? Do you see where you might have ordered too late or too early? How do you fix that this year? This is the time to be on time with your deliveries, be on point with the styles you decide to purchase, and know that taking certain risks will actually grow your business if they're based in data.

Once you start to understand the data, you'll also understand what works in your business and what doesn't. Now, for me, I love looking at sales by department. So tops versus bottoms, dresses versus jackets. A lot of people will try to figure out like square footage, like sales per square footage in a store or sales per how many items you have, things like that. There's a lot of like AOV, KPIs, these things. Listen, I'm very simple. I think math.

freaks a lot of people out. And so I try to make the data analysis really easy. Basically, let's go back and look at what worked, what categories worked, what did well, what are opportunities we may have missed on and let's fix it for this year. Let's improve it. I I had a client where in the course of a year, we cut her by plan down by $50,000 because just too much inventory. She didn't need it. And now she's paid off her debt. She's going to be profitable this year. It's taking her two years to kind of like get going.

but she paid down a ton of debt, sold her a ton of inventory that was in her basement, all because we looked at the data. That's it. If you're nodding along and you're like, my gosh, this sounds like me, like this video, subscribe to my channel, and I'm gonna keep giving you more of this information so that you don't feel like you're making mistakes. You do feel like you're mastering the craft and the art and the intuition of boutique.

and retail businesses. Like this is something that I nerd out about and I kind of want you to too. So make sure to like and subscribe so that we can keep hanging out. Okay. Okay. My third topic is marketing, marketing, marketing. Now let's be really clear. What am I talking about with marketing? I mean any outward facing promotions that you're doing. So any way that you are presenting your business, your brand to the public. So that could mean billboards, that could mean emails, that could be your logo.

That could be social media, of course, right? All of these things contribute to marketing. The question is, how do we leverage marketing to get more eyes in our boutique? Because as you know, the more eyes we get on our boutique, the more clicks we get to our site or the more people walk in our door and eventually the more sales we make. It's a funnel. We have to work within that funnel. So you have to be consistent. Obviously, that's the boring part about marketing yourself. But I think it's also important nowadays to be intentional. So using short

form video like Instagram reels or TikToks. Those are the things that actually are moving the needle for a lot of people. They're getting that exposure. They're gaining a wider audience and therefore that wider audience were able to funnel down into sales. And if you haven't started that email list or you haven't been sending out weekly emails and now is your time, there's no marks uses. Email marketing is a no brainer. Please send it has the highest return on investment. It always has.

I don't know when it won't, but you own your people, you own your list, go use it. All right, in terms of marketing, I want you to think about promotions, markdowns, how are you gonna manage them in spring? I just need you not to be a boutique who's like, we're gonna do a sale this weekend. The revenue's down a little bit, so we're gonna just run a sale.

Please don't be that boutique owner. Running a sale, meaning like a promotional markdown, that is not a good way to get sales. And I like hate you. I hate the word sale and sell and sells, but the deal is truly is too many new boutique owners, especially rely on saying, Oh, we're doing 30 % off this weekend to

boost their sales. When in actuality, it's just devaluing their brand and it's making them look like very promotion-y and you're gonna get customers that like a discount, that like a promotion and frankly, like those aren't great customers. So be careful and...

And again, have a plan. When do you want to do a refresh? When are you going to get some new deliveries in? Maybe you plan markdowns and sales before you get those new deliveries. Make sure that those promotions are planned smartly. Again, we want to move through inventory as quickly as possible. And our marketing is what backs that up. Our promotions are what backs that up. If you haven't yet heard about my boutique calendar, it's really a one of a kind in the industry. It's a wall calendar that I created that has affirmations, overview of the month each month.

And then within the calendar, it actually tells you when to bring in seasonal items, when to mark them down. And it helps you really plan those markdowns and sales. If you'd like more information about the calendar or a link to grab it, just comment calendar below. We'll comment back with that link. All right, the easiest way to market is to build a community. The craziest part about marketing is when you get a sale from someone you don't know and they say, oh, well, I heard about you from so-and-so.

You need more advocates and you can only get good advocates if you start to build a community. How do you build this community? Like especially if you're an introvert, it doesn't mean you have to be so bubbly and crazy on camera. It can mean personal reach outs. It can mean text message marketing. I think that building relationships with customers is one of the biggest parts of running a boutique business. I always say make lots of friends and make lots of money. And I think that's the big piece of it here is we have a loneliness epidemic right now.

If you have a brick and mortar, I really want to encourage you to host events or do clothing drives or do something to just get people together. think that understanding that your brick and mortar has the potential to be a community hub is really kind of cool. mean, honestly, I'm ready to open like a kid's play space with a consignment store in it just so, you know, we could kind of kill two birds with one stone. But really thinking about the idea that like we don't have many third spaces to get together our boutiques that new space, they definitely.

If you're online, obviously it's not as easy, but I do want you to think about where is that central place where everyone can find you? They can talk to you. Is it Instagram? Is it a Facebook group? Where are you choosing to build that community? Because the hard part is with community is it can't be built over the course of like a lot of different places. So I just recently had a customer who leverages her app for people to shop on. And I said, listen, why don't you just focus on the app? Like that is where you do most of your work, most of your sales. Why don't we just...

promote on Instagram and get people to download the app and then they'll get to interact with you. You can comment, you'll be able to do your live streams on there. You've gotta remember that people don't wanna look hard for community. They wanna say, my God, it's right here, great. Let me join it, this is cool and let me stay in it because the engagement is good and the people that you've joined are fun.

Will it take a little bit longer online? Yeah, it might, but that's where you get to shine. That's where you get to show your personality. That's where you get to teach your styling tips. Even if it's as simple as posting questions on your Instagram story, posting a this or that, asking for feedback about styles, asking for feedback about events or things that they're interested in. I think that when we put energy into our community and building them up and making them feel good, it's really just what boutiques do. I think 2025 is such a great opportunity for

boutiques to become a hub for women. Remember, we can be a resource for both getting dressed and living life, right? I think that that's where influencers and boutique owners kind of cross over sometimes or some weird crossover. But I think that even if you're not an influencer, the fact that you're showing up, the fact that you're living your dream, you're selling things you love, there's a lot to celebrate about that. And I think that other people want to celebrate with you.

Remember, most women want to support other women, right? And so I think that it's really important for you to remember that and put yourself out there in the way that makes you feel best and the way that makes you feel the most inclusive for whoever your community is. Okay, so 2025, what are you going to do? What's your plan? Do you have one? Do you need help? Tell me below.

I'd like to invite you to watch my State of the Boutique Industry webinar. It's specific to 2025. All you have to do is comment 2025 below. We'll send you over the link to register for it. It's on demand, free training, and it gets rave reviews. So I'd love to send that to you. And as always, here's to making lots of friends and lots of money in 2025. See you guys on the next one. Bye.