Tinkering a bit.

While I have been away I have been doing my internet marketing plan for the boutique. At this point it's pretty much going to be spread the word at every moment you see. What I have come to realize in my findings is that as a business owner, you really don't just mingle without a cause at any event or gathering because not only will you be able to gain a new customer but you also never know who you may meet that will benefit your business as well. Of course you will never do business unlawfully but it will always be a I scratch your back you mine type of a deal. Which also brought me to think about one my favorite shows "The Real Housewives" the season of Atlanta Housewives. I very much related to the character "Lisa". Her personality was very outgoing, always having more that one project to keep her busy and of course first a mother before anything else. I will never forget what she mentioned on the show when going into an event. She stated that she never attends any event without networking, "if ya don't network 24/7 your not doing anything with your business" which leads to my very simple thought above.
These next couple of weeks will be family orientated with thought of the boutique on hold for 2 weeks or so. I am a firm believer in separting your family from your work and getting that breather once in a while. Speaking of breather I am excited about our upcoming trips... 2 in feb which will be to The Magic Tradeshow in Vegas and Puerto Rico to visit some family as well as our trip to San Fransisco in April for our one year wedding anniversary. So as you can see my life definitly needs a balance.
Oh I hope you like... I played with a little polyvore and I have my creations here. I will definitly use this tool as marketing networking and admin so I hope you likey!

fashionably romantic by annmarie050

Haute Holiday by annmarie050

ta ta for now!
Annmarie

Book Reviews....

Alright so I read a book from Entreprenuer Magazine's "Design and Launch an Online Boutique in a Week". So the "Design" part I really don't get because there wasn't much about designing in the book. Overall the book is meant to target up and coming luxury boutique owners, which I won't be... but it was a good read in terms of finding out all of the steps you need to get through to get started and how to manage your business once it is running, that was the information that was pretty universal to me. The book was forewarded by the CMO of Bluefly.com Bradford Matson. For some who may not know bluefly.com sells luxury apparel, we're talking about 200.00+ for a really trendy designer dress and they were also featured in the hit reality show "Project Runway"...my fav!! They had some keypoints about internet marketing which found very informative and they talked about tracking your customers to find out what may be hot items on your site as well as inventory fullfilment and much more. How to obtain funding was another important portion although they really only talked about amounts over 100,000 and people who financed their own comapnies out of their own pocket with larger amounts of money.............uh ..ya... no.
Realistically my partner and I are talking 5,000 or even less depending on what is needed. The book also talked about website features more than the aspect of designing with html codes which was what I was hoping for. They also had some good resources that I looked up after I was done reading. I mean it wasn't bad for someone who has not done some research before reading, but all of the questions I had, seems as though they had been answered by my internet research already. I guess what am trying to say is, I was hoping to be surprised with something really new.
Speaking of books, I highly recomend picking up "Ladies Who Launch" excellent book about ditching the road to un-happiness and following your dreams and launching what you really want to do... whatever that is. I consider it to be like "The Secret" but only for women... it is like my bible. One thing that always gets me about it is how they talk about how to make yourself happy regardless of wether you want to move up the corporate ladder, make money off of a hobby or becoming the best mom or wife you could be without thinking that you must give all of your dreams to do so.

I did have one enlightnement after I reading the first book. I thought about possibly having some type of designer collection, I mean afterall we would like to appeal to everyone. Although we would like for things to be affordable at the same token, would it be a conflict if we had a few designers on there like Lauren Conrad or Beau Boise in addition to our more affordable collection. Would that be like drinking a beer out of the bottle in a 5 star restaurant??? I guess it would depend on the quality and price of our other items. Then I thought some more... what about cosmetics?? for now I guess we would just have to take it one step at a time but it could be a great idea... time to add that to my agenda!
On my final note.. you know how I mentioned I started a new job part time... well it is a landmark for business professionals.... wednesday I had the pleasure to meet the owner of all of the Love Culture juniors apparel store, usually located inside of a mall, kind of like Forever 21. I was able to speak to him for a little while and got some really good information and resources...yay! I have had a long week in training but monday-friday I will finally get a little break. I was a little scared about cutting my paycheck in half and giving up my job at corporate america. But by working at this place, I now can clearly see that I have full control of my life. I finally will have time to finish my degree, I have twice as much time now to spend with my family and since my husband has been a big support I now only work partime 2-3 days a week I have more time to focus on getting this venture going. So as the ladies who launch say,
"There are many people who give up successsful careers to sort mail in the mailroom. Why? because launching for them means doing whatever it takes to get moving in the right direction; even if it means starting at the bottom of the food chain"!

ta ta for now!
-Annmarie

And the holiday season begins......

Well now that Thanksgiving is over, my family and I are just getting ready to pt up our tree....wait did i just say tree...OMG I can't believe this year is almost over! well if you are like me, this year has been insane. I have gone through school, getting married, a new venture and now a new job. I really hope this new year to really follow my resolutions, but I will be sure to stay away from saying that I will be going to the gym and eating healthy because that is the first thing I fail at. This time I will just do, no need to mention..It's a given right? So Thanksgiving was good as usual and say that literally. Yes it was great to spend time with the family and all but I was really hoping to make my own turkey this year. After all I have made the ham and other fixing 8 years in a row already, I think I am all hammed out! My husband and I were thinking of possibly doing Thanksgiving on our own this year and maybe going "family house hoping" instead of going to our same spot all day. But he made a valid point I must admit. since we will be moving about 4 hours away within the next two years it only makes sense to spend it with family as much as we can, because once we move they won't be around the corner anymore and sadly we may have to spend majority of holidays by ourselves. I slightly agree with that because I don't think that 4 hour drive will stop family from coming to visit...lol!

Okay so long story short, my husband can't keep secrets... I got my Christmas gift early this year. My new SLR camera!!! So excited... this is what is going to help me get those really crisp photos onto our online boutique. I am thinking we may just have someone take the product photos once, and then have them show us how to do it ourselves after that. It just seems very expensive to hire a product photographer all the time, I mean we are talking 10=-20 bucks an item and we have 30-40 products that's over 800 dollars every few months to update our gallery. Overall I am so excited about my new camera, I have been taking photos of everything! So my girlfriend and I haven't meet up yet because of the holidays but we will soon to collaborate our final ideas and get this show on the road. It's hard for both of us to get together mainly because she is a full time student and I am a full time mom, but when we get together we have the best of times.
Narrowing down a few web designers is where we are at right now, It's hard because with owning a business you have have to be a savvy shopper. Being able to have a really good looking website while keeping it affordable is what's important. Yes having a business means taking risks but you don't have to have a hard hit when thins get tough, they have special gear for that and in my world I call it "research".
Ideas just don't fly out of thin air. Every thought is composed of something that has been said or seen before, so my game plan is to scout the competition in the meanwhile. I like to see what ideas other people have come up with for their sites. So far we would really like to have a lookbook . I love event planning so I wanted to incorporate that somehow also. I have also been looking into lighting equipment for the product photos as well as body forms and jewelry displays all together totalling a little over 300 dollars. Packaging is also very important. Although we will have an online store we would like our packaging to speak to our customers when they open our products and also for our ground clients as well. That's looking around 150+ with a custom logo.
So trade shows... yay! so excited but sad I may miss the Magic Trade show beginning of next year. It is only the biggest bestest apparel trade show ever...lol! they have 100's and 100's of booths and vendors ready for retailers. But... I may be in Puerto Rico that same week. I think they have another one in August we can make. LA has a few I would like to attend as well as Chicago and New York but for the most part I have seen a few good online wholesaler sites that would eliminate the cost of the trip.
My new part time job starts tomorrow, I am sooo excited about my new schedule and hopefully I will have some more time to show this venture some love.

ta ta for now!
~A

Quick tips

Get yourself out there!

want people to find your website, blog, etc.... try this
http://www.submitdomainname.com/ or/and https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools


It is where you can submit your domain name to all search engines and all they ask is to do what I just did add their link...lol! I just tried it so I hope it works!

ta ta!

Not much progress yet.....

Although I am posting later in the day.. I am just thinking about the progress we have made so far..... not much. Well we havent decide on a name yet, Although I really did have a dream about a concept. I woke up the next morning and said to myself this could be it. I even conjured up a story behind it. Attention grabber is the key. Even though I have resigned from my job... I picked up alot of good things like marketing and sales. We are a team though so we must agree on something, an I know "Tiffy" has something good stored in her secret place too. For right now I have just been searching the web to see what is out there in terms of wholesalers. Computers are like crack... I can't get off! No but really I found a few good one's out there, but we are really going to have to attend some tradeshows.

Wholesalers usually make you buy in bulk.. One that I have been eyeing has 2 of each size in a package: 2sm,2m,2L.... sort of thing. Decent prices, but it all falls into what target customers we would be aiming for. That night at my kitchen table.. we had'nt come up with a business plan officially yet but we spoke about not getting too cheap like a "Forever 21" or anthing like that ...but more along the price lines of "Express". I thnk our choice in this case is quality over quantity. Our vision is style for the everyday women and that trends are really just trends! fashion is reflection of who a person is.. it is a legacy and being fashionable doesn't have to mean being trendy. I consider myself to have personal style... Once in a while a will follow a trend but only because I make it look good not the other way around. Our target market should be 20 somethings. Other options out there are dropshipping, which is basically a service where you purchase directly from a supplier and they ship the products for you...instead of placing orders and shipping from home yourself. I really haven't found any drop shippers but I think we prefer seeing the merchandise first before we send it out to our customers. Later on as inventory builds we may choose to have our inventory shipped to a fullfillment service, where it is to be considered somewhat of a storage warehouse and they ship for you instead of actually selling items from their warehouse. It's a good way to take less stress off of your hands when you get really busy with the business

Our first order of business is to get some merchandise to get a feel of what we will be dealing with so that we can move foreward. But we need a Business License and Tax ID.. So I guess that won't be the first order of businesss then...lol!

ta ta for now,

Annmarie-

The "To Do List" for the "Not To Do" girl.

Okay so now that I have pretty much told everyone and their mother that we were starting this whole e-commerce clothing boutique biz, so it's time to have a plan of action. Where do we start??? as my girlfriend and I are brainstorming ideas at my kitchen table, we literally laughed at ourselves because we just really can't believe that we are going through with this. It seems almost like a joke. Mainly because of the thought of how the economy is and starting the business during the middle of a recession... great timing huh? But as we brainstormed a bit more we realized that people are still shopping!!! the thought of "recession" is thrown out the window once you step foot in the mall. I guess it's our way of dealing with it. For a shopaholic it's even worse. We are capable of getting evicted for a new pair of shoes.. well not to that extent hopefully.. but we have got it bad, you know who you are!

I though a lot, or shall I say I have been googling a lot.. about how to start a boutique biz. I really couldn't find much. Luckily I have close family member that had already been in the biz. She actually started of with a "brick and mortar" store and then progressed to online, So I was able to get a lot of info from her. I was really discouraged though. The more searching I do the less I find on the Internet. I think I may have saved about 3-5 links in my favorites on starting an online boutique.. I think that's pretty sad for the world wide web. As far a s literature I mean yeah, there are a few things out there like http://www.openaboutique.com/ and http://www.entrepreneur.com/ just to mention. I have narrowed my choices down to two or three so I will update you on a book review once I am done. But if you guys have any suggestions let me know!

So far this is what I know for sure we will need to start off with...

A name- Corporation- which I will talk about in another post

Resale License

Logo design and marketing materials.

A Business Plan..very very important

Money..lol! also very important

Business supplies- bags with logo, hand tags, printer, mannequin or dress form for inventory images, clothing rack etc... (quiet area for me to call an office is most important.)

Planning a trip to a trade show to see different vendors.

Website and fixings..(shopping cart,hosting)- also very important! especially when you do business solely online.

A big mouth.

Account with USPS/FEDEX/UPS for shipping packages.

Our Launch Party!!

There is probably a lot more but I am sure I will touch on them throughout the blog.

Now I am not known for being the most organized chick I the world so a to do list will be a challenge. I am what people like to call a procrastinator... I can't help it I work better under pressure! But It's gotta get done, and we are going to do it.... on time.

ta ta for now,

Annmarie

My first post yay!

Okay so I guess I should just jump right in...

So my BFF and soon to be boutique partner and I are hanging out at my house one day after I was explaining to her how a co-worker was thinking about starting a clothing boutique herself and had asked me to partner with her. You know, there are just some people in this world that you can be friends with but some you know that you just won't work well with.. so sadly I declined. As I had already been starting my own business in the beginning of the summer I knew somewhat of the beginning stages as I had already been doing a lot of research on how to start a business. So I am not trying to be a copycat here... but I really thought this would be a great idea!! So wagreed, what the hay. The idea behind the title of the blog is simple. I read a book called "ladies who launch", great book about women who are ready to go out on their own, whether being a WAHM (work at home mom), or becoming a CEO and launching a company the moral is to take action and live a better quality of life.
So this blog is almost like a portal to success.. I mean if you can blog about anything why not about something positive. This will be like my journal to you, giving you the inside scoop of what's gong on with our venture...why we do it, how we do it, and what happens when we got it, and yes I believe we will get there!
My original business venture was dealing with home staging. For some who may not know, it involves decorating a home to prepare for a sale so that it is more appealing to buyers. But unfortunately this particular area has been seeing it's down side because of the drop in home sales lately. I also was working at a company that I just really wasn't happy at and wanted to do something from home so that I could spend more time with my two kids. I still plan on staying in the interior design field though.... currently in school... my dream is to one day become an interior designer or start my own firm. But for now my love for shopping will just have to do! Who knows maybe this little idea will work..maybe it won't.. but we won't know unless we take a risk. Isn't that what starting a business is about?
My girlfriend "Tiffy" is just about the most hard working girl I know whether or not she likes what she does... and I know that she will be the perfect business partner.. hell she has been the perfect friend! Needless to say that her fashion sense is amazing.. us two at the mall together.. is dangerous. But it goes beyond really just shopping. It has to do with marketing, sales, finance..OMG! what the heck are we thinking!!!!..lol! I am definitely looking forward to your comments and especially your advice as we head down the road to "?" as I like to call it.

ta ta for now,
Annmarie