Hey everyone, my mom is opening a small, upscale (1100 sq.ft.) retail boutique. She's got a few questions about logistics. She's doing mainly shoes and bags with a few peripherals. How much inventory do you think is appropriate? How many employees do you think are necessary? Does anybody know anyone who has a shoe store? Do you have any advice? Thanks Joe
Is 1100 enough space to display and then store the boxes of shoes to have proper inventory? Has she ever been in business for herself before? Good Luck!
I went a measured the place... looks like she can have 600-700 pair in inventory plus display space for each brand/model (sounds like a car!).
My mom worked at a small boutique store for some 10 years or something. A girl I grew up with, mom started it while we were in elementary school. That store close last year I believe. Sales just weren't what they were, and the shopping center kept jacking rent to unethical prices. Good luck to your mom. Should be a fun endevour for her.
Hi, There are a lot of challenges that a small boutique store faces. One is that your volume is most likely going to be low so your markups must be very high per item in order to cover your costs. Because of how small the store is, she should only need one or two employees MAX and depending on their pay/commission structure she may only be able to afford to employ one or two. Advice for her: PLEASE write a business plan. Please. Cost everything and budget for every worst case scenario. The questions you are posing, with all due respect, are extremely elementary and she is setting herself up for failure if everything isn't properly planned. It's difficult to make decent margin on a boutique store. More information from you would be helpful too.
I knew someone who ran a boutique store. While the storefront brought in some money, she spent a lot of time making dollars as an ebay store.
I have a boutique retail store. It accounts for 30% of my business and 70% of my headaches. I sold Piloti driving shoes for about three years. We are now clearing them out. We aren't a shoe store and we had to hold way too much inventory to service that market. We had eight shoe choices split between four styles. $10-$15K minimum to make it work. If shoes are her focus I would expect her to have to triple that number to keep her customers happy. With that type of specialty store, she is going to need to be in a very, very high traffic area or spend a boatload on advertising. If she is smart, and lucky and lucky and smart, she can run the store with one staffer and herself. Based on the questions you posted, she isn't ready. Like Csever said, the business plan will answer what you are asking. My wife an I run our retail store, training center, e-commerce business and we manufacture our own line of chemicals which are sold through our store and through other retailers. We have a part time guy who works 12 hours a week. The level of complexity here is mind boggling. I don't want to get on a tirade about owning your own business, so I'll just say dealing and fixing the results of other companies innefficiencies is a full time job in-and-of itself. Never underestimate the stupidity and laziness of the other man.
Thanks all: The business plan is done. We are working on the actual logistics. My mom has been working with her friend who owns a similar store in another area, so she knows how to deal with the aggravation, but in reality she won't let much bother her because she is a) one of the best people-people you'll ever meet and b) she's not doing this to survive. Joe
Not to belabour the point, but those logistical questions ARE the business plan. At the very least, she needs to contact possible vendors and ask them for sales spread data. I really don't understand how she can have a business plan without even sales estimates. Maybe you mean part of the business plan is done and you are gathering data for the financials? a) Really irrelevant. Until she has spent an afternoon on the phone dealing with a city employee who clearly has no grasp on logic or common sense, she has not been tested. While this is happening, she needs to figure out why the trash wasn't picked up on Thursday, as she answers customer emails while she realizes the last invoice from her vendor charged her shipping on a 40lbs box which really weighed 15lbs. At this point she has to hang up with the city employee with the issues unresolved knowing that she will have to talk with someone new tomorrow and start the conversation over, because a customer just walked in who needs help and the other line is ringing. This is basically every minute of every day. b) That helps, but refer to point "a". It's all about dollars in and dollars out. Being financially secure doesn't mean you want to loose money and the above people are expensive. Just for clarification. At least in my world, the customer experience is the best part of the day. We deal with happy people who are shopping with us to support a hobby. I just don't get bad-attitude customers. And yes, I know how lucky I am.
