I'm willing to pay, why won't she let me shop?
The most common complaint I get about my store: Why is your stuff soooo expensive?
I get it — $275 on a dress sounds like a lot. Ditto $85 for a tween’s everyday top. But that’s only until you know what goes into running a successful clothing store. There’s the cost of the premises. The monthly bills. Employees’ salaries. The inventory itself, the shipping, the displays, the unsold stock at the end of the season…
And then there’s the advertising, the branding, and the marketing. I used to run ads in all the circulars, and that added up pretty quickly. But when I figured maybe it was time to pay an influencer to promote my line on Instagram, it cost even more. It took a few years before I was even making a profit.
Baruch Hashem, my clothing line — Tiara Boutique — has a great name now, but that comes at a cost, too — hours upon hours upon hours of research, constantly trying to stay ahead of the trends and get the best inventory for the upcoming season. It’s constant communications and negotiations with suppliers, while running the store’s full-time operations, while insisting on impeccable customer service, while handling the millions of technical aspects of running a business.
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