My wife and I opened our own High End Fashion Boutique last week and despite marketing our shop in the local newspaper, sending text messages on their cellphones, setting up a Page and Group on Facebook and inviting almost the whole town – people are still not visiting our boutique…
People who do come to visit our shop are amazed and stunned to see how beautiful it looks and how affordable our items are…but still we aren’t generating efficient funds.
The boutique is situated in a room of our house and our house is quite a central point of town…
We currently stock jewellery, accessories, clothes, handbags, purses, shoes and other smaller items, of which the most are brand names: Prada, Louis Vuitton, Versace, Ed Hardy, Dolce&Gabbana etc…But it really is much cheaper than any other store in a 500km+ area…
Our products are exactly what the classy people are looking for…we live in a wealthy farming community, where the women love to dress up and “beautify” themselves. We can also attract youths from the college as our items are affordable enough for everyone…
What can we do to get more people to our store? Do you have any ideas to raise “awareness”? I even want to offer a Louis Vuitton Handbag valued at thousands of Rands for a competition, if it will generate enough funds…
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Jay’s Answer: A simple addition (if you don’t already have it) would be a website that’s SEO optimized for your region. Since everything is one-of-a-kind, you may not wish to make the website a catalog of items that people can order from (worldwide) but you do want people to be able to get a sense from your website the experience that’s “in store” for them.
Before you try to get more people to your store, focus on the people who have already visited. Did they purchase things or not? If not, then having more people come through may not yet be a good idea – you want people to come, buy, tell their friends, and repeat. If people did purchase, then you need to give them a reason to return (regularly). Perhaps a VIP preview of new purses in one month, outerwear another month, shoes etc. Or, give them coupons to gift to their friends.
Have you contacted local clubs whose members might be prospective customers? For example: Mothers’ club, Women entrepreneurs, etc.?