How to Start Online Boutique Business: A Step-by-Step Guide

The eCommerce fashion industry is tipped to increase at a CAGR of 14.2% by 2025 with the fashion industry expected to hit a $1501 billion valuation by 2027. The revenue from apparel, footwear, and accessories continuously increasing and is estimated to hit $295.7 billion by 2025 in the US alone.

The notable growth showcases the increasing smartphone penetration and online access, growing middle-class people with disposable income, and enhancement of influencer culture. The plethora of opportunities highlight that if you have an eye for style or a passion for fashion, starting an online boutique is a good move.

Plus, a boutique is defined by stylish products complemented with personalized services, wherein small boutique stores excel as they are known for selling specialized products for a specific segment of customers. Starting an online clothing boutique business is a good opportunity for small stores to become a brand over time.

As an entrepreneur, if you are wanted to recreate the in-person experience of a boutique virtually with online boutique store development or have an online boutique idea, then reading the guide would justify your time investment. Here’s the checklist for entrepreneurs on how to start an online boutique business.

10 Steps to follow for Starting an Online Boutique Business

Identify Your Product Niche

Before starting an online boutique and clothing business, it’s essential to identify what you wanted to sell through the store because the boutique includes a wide variety of items to sell. As you are targeting a specific segment of users, you need to sell a particular range of products that appeal to them. First of all, decide your target audience, then the products you are going to sell so that identifying the source and supplier of products becomes easier.

When you have started selling a range of products, enhance the product range that’s closely related to what you are selling. For instance, when you are selling women’s athletics shoes, then it doesn’t make sense to begin selling men’s athletics jackets, socks, and shirts.

Create a Business Plan

When you have identified a product niche, the next thing is to source products from online boutique suppliers, which requires you to invest a lot of money. For additional financial needs, as an entrepreneur, the businesses need to be ready with the plan to convince the banks or investors for financial assistance. Here’s how to create a business plan.

Perform necessary research that includes- creating a buyer persona where target audience information is collected from everywhere, market analysis to identify market size, product growth, and gaps, and SWOT analysis to size up competition.

Post-research, select the business model to acquire a specific type of license. The business fall under the following categories- dropshipping, selling products with private label, and custom sewing products. Entrepreneurs can go through this guide that helps them know the types of eCommerce business models and how to select the business model.

After business model selection, the next come is financial planning where it’s decided how much investment from outside sources is required after adding all the expenses to the product price tag.

The last part of the business plan is to create a marketing strategy that helps in spreading the word about the product and increasing user outreach. You can leverage social media, seo, PPC, press releases, influencer marketing, and other channels depending on your product type and target audience.

Meet legal requirements

Before starting your online boutique business, you need to fulfill legal requirements that are rolled out by the region’s government. You need to get your online business registered followed by applying for trademarks for logo and domain protection.

At first, you need to decide the business structure, that’s if you are going to run the business as sole proprietary ownership, limited liability company, or corporation depending on the business size and type. Afterward, get the business name registered with the state government to get a license to sell in a state. Obtaining sales tax permits and federal tax ID numbers according to state rules.

When you are choosing a brand name, make sure it’s original and memorable and personifies your brand. Once decided, make the brand name and logo patented so that you don’t end up with copyright cases.

Make products stand out

Despite having the most curated range of products to sell, if you won’t make the products steal the show, you cannot achieve desired success. You need to make the products stand out with high-quality photos with good background and lighting that appeals to the target audience. You can photograph the product with a DIY approach or hire a professional photographer based on your budget and skills.

The DIY route provides flexibility but entry costs are a little higher but pay off in the long run. Hiring a professional photographer help you get the best images that capture users’ attention at first sight. What’s more? The strategies for the best eCommerce UI design and how they benefit boutique businesses are fairly described in the guide that you should consider.

Identify Suppliers to source products

The products to sell on a particular eCommerce platform with a business plan are now ready. It’s time to locate and vet suppliers to strike a balance between budget and profits. When you are looking for suppliers, you must ensure product quality that meets the boutique’s standards and you can request a sample for the same as well.

Identify the person who will remain a point of contact every time you want to connect with the supplier to source products. You can check the reviews and ratings of suppliers or reach out to network clients to know how they are providing products.

Plan product shipping

The plan for shipping products to the customers is important as high shipping costs or delayed deliveries take away the users to the competition. The entrepreneurs should create a shipping plan to plan for the delivery span for different geographic locations and the variation in shipping cost based on delivery options such as one-day delivery, two-day delivery, and others.

Partnering with third-party shipping solutions relieves the entrepreneur from the headache of product shipment as they take care of shipping completely. Not to forget, the returns are best managed by these shipping service providers operating in different nations.

Build your Online Store

Finally, you come to the stage to launch your boutique store online. With brand name, logo, colors, and brand images ready, website development becomes a breeze. There are many ways to start an online boutique- either boutique can take the advantage of an eCommerce marketplace like- Amazon or Etsy, and start selling their products online. If you want to know how to start an online boutique with no money or little money, then the eCommerce marketplace is the best option.

Also, businesses can opt for building an eCommerce platform from scratch that gives you more control over the store’s layout, customize storefront, and products to sell. IT companies that provide a range of eCommerce development services that help you get an online boutique store built under one roof.

Additionally, you can consider eCommerce platform options such as Shopify, BigCommerce, or WooCommerce to get a space and sell the product under your brand name. The Ecommerce platforms act as online website builders which provides a range of themes or templates that businesses can choose and add products and their description. Later, rules for checkout policies are defined, shipping options are set up, and payment providers are selected that go well with target boutique users.

Launch and market your boutique store

When the website is built, it’s time to launch your online boutique business that requires setting up transactional emails, creating social media presence, getting google analytics, and testing to ensure everything works as expected.

Post-launch, begin with mass marketing that includes social media marketing, email marketing, content marketing, and more to increase user acquisition and retention at scale. Also, keep revising and renewing the marketing campaigns with data analytics to fix things that are not working to keep the customers coming and buying products online.

Last but not least, the bottom line when surpasses the cost of developing an eCommerce app signals that the boutique store is in profitable mode. Get a quote from a reliable development company to know the eCommerce app development cost for planning the marketing budget accordingly and keeping the store financially stable.

Get Ready to Start an Online Boutique

Starting an online boutique business is not an easy endeavor, but becomes a plain-sailing job when you move ahead step by step following this guide. It’s actually the work behind the scenes that can help you go the extra mile if you go further strategically. First decides what to sell, create a business plan, find out reliable suppliers, get the business registered, choose the eCommerce platform, and build and launch the boutique store with a marketing plan beforehand.

Later, to build an eCommerce boutique store, you should know how to build an eCommerce website and at the same time, you need the help of an expert eCommerce team.

Find an Ecommerce development company that has experience in building different types of boutique stores for clothing, accessories, apparel, and more.

Ashish Parmar

He is the Co-Founder and CEO of Prismetric . An enthusiastic entrepreneur, interested to discuss new app ideas, rich gadget tricks and trends, and admires signature tech business styles to readily embrace. He enjoys learning most modern app crafting methods, exploring smart technologies and passionate about writing his thoughts too. Inventions related to mobile and software technology inspire Ashish and he likes to inspire the like-minded community through the finesse of his work.