It’s tempting to want to put all your time and effort into launching so that you can finally start an online boutique business, especially if you’ve been dreaming about it for a while!
But jumping in with both feet is far riskier than working the business on the side while you hang onto the income and security of your day job.
Having a full-time job might make the process longer, but it will also give you the financial support and stability you need to be successful in the long run.
Starting your online boutique business
If you’re going start an online boutique, you’ll need starter capital to pay for initial business expenses. These can include filing your LLC or other business entity, getting any necessary permits, buying your initial inventory and putting something away for marketing every month.
You can start an online boutique with as little as $5,000—and some elbow grease. You can decide whether you want to save up the full amount or if you want to dedicate a portion of every paycheck to your business. But make sure to keep the funds in a separate bank account that is only for those business-related expenses. It will save you a lot of headaches when tax time comes around and you need to easily gather records of your transactions.
To get started, you’ll want to read these helpful blog posts:
- Starting an Online Clothing Boutique
- Choosing a Name
- Identifying Your Target Customer
- Creating a Business Plan
- How to Purchase Clothes for Your Boutique.
Stay lean but know when to invest
It takes money to make money.
And that’s an added benefit to starting your business while you still have a steady paycheck coming in. Take any extra money you have and invest it in your boutique business.
You can also supplement your savings by building business credit. Having additional funding helps you move quicker, take advantage of opportunities and be able to spend more in marketing to get your boutique out there.
Make wise business investments for faster growth
Whether you save money or use business credit, you want to ensure you’re making sound investments in your online boutique with the money that you will use to launch and grow your business.
A good investment gets your business moving faster— anything such as generating more revenue or getting good legal or business counsel sets the stage for your boutique to be viable and support you and your dreams!
Good investments: Anything that helps you get your idea to market quickly & grow your customer base
- coaching and training like my group coaching program Online Boutique Success®
- Buying a domain name
- Creating a website
- Hiring a virtual assistant to help with tedious tasks
- Marketing that brings in interested customers (using paid ads or influencer marketing and building an email list)
Unnecessary investments: Most things that you can defer, redirect, do yourself or completely avoid
- Overhead like rent (instead you can ship packages out of your house)
- Trade show travel (instead you can buy from trustworthy wholesale vendors online)
- Expensive graphics created by a designer
- Expensive branding and logo package
- Expensive custom packaging (instead you can try plain colored packaging, or custom-inspired packaging)
- Ad agency
- Email marketing agency
- Influencer marketing agency
Time management
Using your time wisely during this period in your life will be the best thing you can do for yourself. Spending 40+ hours/week at your day job leaves less time to devote to your business.
You may have to wake up early, work during your lunch break or even use your vacation days. It might also help to cut out TV.
Write out a schedule of your weekly commitments. Then decide what you can delegate, or remove to give yourself more time.
Self care as a boutique owner & full time employee
With that being said, it’s still important to avoid burning out… which is easy to do if you start an online boutique by yourself!
So pace yourself and give yourself some grace.
In addition to your job & business responsibilities you may have a partner and children that need your attention. I recommend setting goals for both your business and your personal life and STICKING TO THEM!
Set small and realistic objectives for your business: send out 15 influencer pitches this week, spend one hour everyday on marketing my business, create my Business Instagram account today.
Do the same for your personal goals: spend 30 minutes reading a book for leisure, spend 15 minutes journaling, have a family picnic this Saturday. It’s integral to hold yourself accountable, while still feeling accomplished along the way.
Hire some help
Once you start growing your boutique, you’ll need to start outsourcing some help in order to make the best use of your time. You can hire a virtual assistant to help with any of the following:
- Customer Service: Answering emails and phone calls from customers.
- Social Media Management: Curating content, replying to comments, and other community management tasks.
- Research: Looking for a list of bloggers/influencers to reach out to or creating graphics you can use in a piece of content.
- Store Management: Order fulfillment, inventory management, running sales for you (you can find VAs that have experience specifically with the eCommerce platform you choose to use).
Quit at the right time
Leaving a job is never an easy decision. But the first step is to have a clear picture of your lifestyle costs.
I suggest reviewing your monthly expenses and making cuts to things that are unnecessary during this building phase (cable, ordering food daily vs cooking & meal planning).
Then take some time to estimate how long it will take to be profitable. You can only pay yourself a livable salary is the business is making enough profit. That way, you’ll be able to reinvest in business growth and get paid.
When you have a number in mind, you’ll know what business goals you need to meet consistently before quitting.
I recommend giving yourself 6-12 months to plan your exit. That will give you time to save up as much as possible and also pay off any urgent debts you might have.
You should also consider important costs like having emergency savings and health insurance coverage.
You want to maintain or improve your quality of life.
What’s Next
You can confidently launch your online boutique this year… even if you’ve never sold anything online before!
In fact, you can do it in the next 3 months— without a fancy business degree, years of retail experience, or a huge following on social media.
Ready to go after your dream? Keep scrolling to take the first step!
