A Look at Bridal Boutique Business
This post offers a quick look into a bridal boutique. You’ll also find links to other pages, like researching a bridal boutique, the steps for starting one, and a page offering marketing tips to promote your bridal boutique in the early stages of operation as well as when it’s up and running.
The rest of this article offers an overview and a few considerations you need to think about before getting into this type of business.
An Overview of a Bridal Boutique
As a bridal boutique owner, your main focus should be on the customer’s experience. Weddings are stressful. Many brides want the perfect day and having the right dress and looking good for that day is a must, so in addition to offering the right look for your customers, you want to give them the best experience while choosing their wedding dress.
Choosing a dress and accessories is one of the stressful parts of a wedding for a bride, so during that time, you want to use your expertise to make the process enjoyable.
When you become an expert in putting together the perfect dress and ensemble for every bride that walks through your doors, it helps build a strong reputation in the industry. Customers will start coming to you because of word of mouth. So you have to put the customer first and focus on their special day as if the bride is one of your family members, and you will do well in this business.
Customer Focus
When you understand your customers, you can set up your business to cater to their needs. You’ll also be able to market to them effectively.
One important factor in succeeding with a bridal boutique is understanding your customers and supplying the right products.
It makes no sense to carry a large selection of dresses that your customers don’t want. Therefore before anything, you have to understand your customers and their desires to stock the right inventory.
For example, if you’re focused on young brides, it will be easier to choose the appropriate dresses. However, if you’re focused on older brides, your inventory will differ.
Who are Your Customers?
Imagine people coming through the doors of your bridal boutique. Are they younger brides or older brides? What type of dresses are they interested in? Do they have disposable incomes, or are they on a budget? Etc.
Understanding your customers will also help you design your bridal boutique. You can’t please everyone, so please those that you can.
When serving your customers, focus on what they want, not your profits. Naturally, you want to make money in your business.
For example, a bride shows up for an appointment, and you have many dresses to show her.
Your options are:
1. You could push the dress with the most profit for your business.
or
2. Focus on what the bride wants and put profits aside.
With option one, you make more money for your business, but operating like this long term will catch up with you, and it will be tough to grow your business.
Choosing option number 2 could leave you with less profit but a happier customer. Happy customers refer others to your boutique, including the bride’s maids.
Contributing to every one of your brides’ special day is the key to success in this business.
Products
The inventory you carry will be your highest expense because you have to stock dresses in various styles and shades of colors and sizes.
For a simple example, if you chose 15 different styles of dresses and had to stock five variations of each, that’s carrying a stock of 75 dresses. Using an average of $1200 per dress, your stock alone is worth around $90,000. Of course, you may have the option of carrying some samples and ordering dresses as needed, but you will need dresses on hand for your customers to try on.
You still have other clothing to consider, such as bridesmaids and eveningwear for guests. Then you have to think about the accessories etc.
The key is finding the style your customers want and having the right sizes in stock, or quickly ordering what’s needed.
There will also be products that you order. For example, the bridesmaids’ dresses don’t make sense to have them in stock, but you can have samples and then order the rest.
Decor
When it comes to bridal boutiques, the look and feel of your boutique are an important factor in creating the optimal customer experience.
You want it to look elegant rather than looking like your regular department store.
Conventional weddings are often high-class events. A boutique designed according to the crowd you’re attracting will make a difference in the bride’s feelings when shopping for her wedding dress.
Add-ons
You can focus on dress and ensembles as your main business, but you also have the opportunity to offer other products and services to your customers. You don’t even have to do the work yourself. You can subcontract or profit from referrals and joint ventures. Some people will appreciate your recommendations and added services. Others will already have made arrangements. Either way, it can’t hurt to have contacts and people you are confident recommending.
Some of these additional services may include the following:
- Makeup and hairdressing
- Wedding Photography
- Wedding Video Services
- Wedding Planning
- Wedding Venues
- Limousine services
- Catering
- Floral Services
- Bachlorrette Party Services
- etc.
Skillset For Running a Bridal Boutique
Next, lets’ go over a few of the skills you may need to run your boutique.
Excellent People skills
You must have great people skills to deal with brides-to-be. As mentioned earlier, it’s all about the experience and understanding what they’re going through. Using your people skills, you need to make their experience a pleasant one.
An Eye for Design
It may start with the dress, but it’s not that alone. You have to think of the bride’s appearance as a complete package. You must know what goes well together and what doesn’t to make suggestions for the bride’s wedding day a very special day.
Color Coordination
When you think of weddings, you think of the color white. But there are different shades of white, and not all brides choose the traditional colors. So your skills in color coordination will impact the bride’s overall appearance.
Meet Strict Deadlines
When it comes to weddings, there are no makeovers regarding deadlines. Miss one deadline and your reputation is tarnished. You must plan accordingly with suppliers, customers, your alterations department, or personnel. Everything must be on time, or it’s game over.
Patience
You need to be patient because weddings are stressful, and brides-to-be are under pressure to make their special day perfect. So they may change their mind a lot, come in for multiple appointments, etc. If you don’t have patience, it will be difficult to deal with your customers effectively.
Good Decision-Making Skills
One of the most important skills you’ll need as a new business owner is making good decisions. When you take your time to consider the decision you are making and ask for advice when you don’t know the right path to take, you will avoid many mistakes. For more, see 8 Simple Tips to Make Better Decisions Starting Now. It’s a quick read with a lot of tips!
Business Skills to Consider
There are a variety of business skills to consider. However, as a small business owner, you will need the basics. Such as managing your finances, balancing your budget, keeping excellent records, managing your staff, scheduling, etc.
You must have or develop the skills needed to run a successful business. If you don’t have them, the good news is you can learn them by gaining experience or, even better, taking a small business course and building on that with experience.
If running the business isn’t your cup of tea, you do have the option of hiring a manager while you take care of your customers.
For more details on the skills, you’ll need to run a business, see our post on Business skills to consider.
Employee Considerations:
In the early stages of operation, you may be considering doing everything yourself. If it doesn’t affect your customer service and growth, that’s a good idea. However, once your business starts to expand, you may need to hire employees. Some of the positions you may need to fill may include the following.
- General Assistant
- Wedding gown seamstress
- Wedding Dress Consultants
- Manager
- Office assistant/scheduler
- Common staff positions are needed to run some businesses.
Is Owning A Business The Right Move For you?
It’s important to get into a business for the right reasons. Many want to improve their lifestyle through financial benefits. Others want to be their own boss. You have those that hate the idea of having a job and want to work for themselves, and then you have those who are passionate about their business.
The above are valid reasons for starting a business, but passion is my top pick. When you’re passionate about your business, then you have the drive and determination you’ll need when problems appear. You’ll be looking for solutions to problems instead of looking at ways to get out of your business.
To identify how passionate you are about your business, answer the following question. If you have all the money you would need for the rest of your life, and you are free to do whatever you want, would you open a bridal boutique?
If you answered no, then what would you be doing? And should you be focusing on that instead? On the other hand, you would be on track and passionate about owning a bridal boutique if you answered yes.
Also see, Reasons to start a business: Here are the top ones to consider
Business Ownership Isn’t Easy
Running a business isn’t the easiest thing to do. It takes time, effort, hard work, and perseverance. You may sacrifice a lot of your free time to make your business work. Before you get started, you have to commit and do what it takes. See what to expect during your first year of being a business owner for more on this topic.
Surviving as a Business Owner
In addition to starting your bridal boutique, have you given any thought to how you will pay yourself? Many new business owners can go months without seeing a steady paycheck, and you need to have your living expenses covered, so you can focus on your running your bridal boutique. For more on this topic see, How to pay yourself as a small business owner.