735: Stop with the January Negative Boutique Talk

Boost Your Boutique with Emily Benson

0:24.0 I want to show you why your January negative self talk and your negative, in general, self talk about the economy is, it's, it's putting your boutique out of business.

1:24.6 January is a trash month

1:31.8 In the retail world, it is trash, which means you get to take time off.

2:24.9 No, the economy is not bad, your product sucks. You have a bad product. No one wants it. People will buy products that they want.

2:24.1 If there's something you want, you will figure out how to buy it.

2:47.1 So if you have bad product and you're complaining that you don't have sales, you have bad product. Okay. It's not the economy. It's not inflation.

2:55.0 Are people spending less? Yeah. Are they being more thoughtful about their spends? Yeah. Are they going to more events and doing more things outside that are more experience based? Yes. So your product based business has to be.

3:13.3 Let's start to be more creative. Let's start to design our own stuff Let's get together with a friend and start making wholesale and having unique styles for our boutiques Like let's stop just selling bad stuff and wholesalers.

3:28.9 Talk to your customers, talk to boutique owners, do open pack sizing, like, you have to be freaking for real right now in boutique land, okay

4:03.0 I'm sitting here saying you need better products.

4:20.9 You gotta stop blaming the economy because I lived through retail and one of the biggest crashes

4:30.8 The concept still was working right after the 2008 crash.

4:44.8 You're going to feel like crap. You're not going to want to sell stuff. People aren't really going to want to buy stuff unless it's like cozy or candles.

5:45.3 Number one, it's not the economy. It's not inflation. It's that you have product that people don't want. I'm not going to say it's bad. I'm not going to like put too much negative stuff on it, but be serious about your product.

6:01.9 Don't be too cheap. Don't be too high. Be somewhere in the middle. And if you sell a lot of high end stuff, could you bring in lower end stuff, lower price stuff? If you sell lower price stuff, could you bring higher price stuff in?

6:33.7 January is for resting. It is for resting in retail. January is a rest month in retail.

6:45.9 Stop putting pressure on it. Go on vacation. Take times off. Do staycation. Count your inventory. Chill out, okay? You get to have a chill January. And then you can come back and have a Galentine's party for February.

7:16.7 So can we just stop complaining? Can we honestly strategy wise go back and see what were our best sellers last year? How are we going to repeat it this year? What's our sales plan for this year? What's our buying plan? What markets are we going to? What months are we going to be buying at those markets? Let's start to plan the year.

7:38.4 I want to be very clear. You could be flat to last year and that's incredible. Okay. If you want to grow, put in more effort, post more on social media, refine your product assortment, get a buying plan together and stick to the buying plan.

7:55.9 We know all these things that we need to do to grow, but we have to take care of ourselves first.

8:07.2 Right now is your time to ground down and look to the future, work on mindset, work on getting excited about next year coming.

8:15.5 Analyze your sales from last year. See what, what worked, see what didn't work. Because here's what I'll tell you. If you end up not having a good of year this year, it's because you didn't look at your history.

8:35.4 You're saying every month is a fresh month. It's not, it's not.

8:51.2 You're saying every month is a fresh month. It's not, it's not. If you're a boutique owner and you're not looking at your sales weekly, monthly, quarterly, You don't know what's going on. You need to be looking at your sales, looking at your inventory, looking at your turn, projecting a buying plan, projecting a sales plan.

Resources:

Visit Boutique Training Academy - If you want to make more money in your boutique or retail business you're in the right place. We'll guide you step by step in your journey through Boutiqueland. 🛍️

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