#321: Tips to Boost Sales During Summer Slowdowns

Hey, it's episode number 221 with yours.

Truly with a quick update for you.

On all of your summer selling tips happening right now.

Welcome to Boutique Chat.

Let's talk about your business strategy and the juicy details of what actually works, from mainstream fashion to fashion on Main street and the entire ecosystem behind it. How do we scale your company and do it with the balance and the happiness that we all seek? Let's hear from those insiders, experts and strategists that actually make it happen. I'm your host, Ashley Alderson from the Boutique Hub, and I can't wait to chat.

Hey, should we add a giveaway just for fun this week? Because you're here who would love to join us for the Boutique Summit? I'm going to give away a free ticket today to somebody who leaves a review, subscribes to the podcast, and then heads on over to Instagram. We have a post already waiting just for you that says Boutique Chat. Boutique Summit giveaway. Drop your Apple username below that post once you've subscribed and left a review on the podcast and then I'll come back and I'll announce the winner next week. In case you're not yet familiar, the Boutique Summit is the largest boutique conference for boutique owners in the world. So you can attend our one day in Person conference in Atlanta on August 2nd with our awesome keynote speakers, our digital access and full digital workshop day that takes place then on August 17th. So there's two days of opportunities to learn, plus our physical workbook lunch at the Boutique Summit, a complimentary cocktail during our private trade show, and sip and shop. An opportunity to, of course meet all the wholesale brands and buy before Atlanta market even opens.

Plus a swag bag.

And if you guys have been to our event before, the swag bags, they're pretty badass, so I hope you love them. Guys, if you want to enter the giveaway and join us at the Boutique Summit again, just subscribe to the podcast, leave a review, and then head over to Instagram. And just let us know your Apple username under our post so that we know you're entered and I'll be back next week and we'll tell you the winner.

Hey guys, it is good to talk to you today. Hey, I am coming to you in the flesh. Just got done packing the camper. I feel totally sweaty and gross in the true summer rush of trying to, like herd our family, which is like herding cats out the door to get to a quick summer vacation. So rather than coming to you today, With a full on podcast and a guest, it's just you and me and I want to bring you a couple of really quick tips to finish the month of July strong and roll you into a strong end to your summer. I know I had the opportunity to meet with several of you a few weeks back for our Forex challenge, which was four days we spent together totally free, just to hang out and talk about strategies including what in the heck is going on with Facebook, how to beat the J months, how to get ready for the summer months, and all the things you know to grow your business right now. Well, let's talk specifically about growing it in July. Cause I think there's a lot to say about finishing the summer strong and finishing the J month strong. So a lot of you are in the middle of selling shorts and tank tops and all the things that are right in the peak of the summer season. But as you know, plants toward the end of July, as Ricky Bobby would say it, if you ain't first, you're last. And when all the big box stores start to bring in all their back to school merchandise, which some of them have started to do already, which is a little scary, I know that means your customer is already in the mood for back to school. So I just want to plant the seed right now at the beginning of July to remind you to be thinking about not being overstocked in summer goods toward the end of July and start thinking about what can you use that's either on the shelf now to or that's on order that you can transition into that back to school season. Start getting your graphics ready, your photo shoots ready, your homepage is ready. So at the end of July you're ready to run. And if you have some summer clearance items, great. It's always a great time for a fill the bag sale or some type of charitable give back like a backpack promotion or a where to work promotion where you're encouraging your customers to clean out those summer closets, bring them to the warehouse, bring them to the store and do something good for your community. Just in time to start back to school shopping. So think about what does the month of July mean for you in terms of inventory transition and how can you capitalize on it. A couple other quick tips related to that. I know those of you in the States that have fourth of July goods. You're probably wondering, okay, do I start to clearance out the red, white and blue after the 4th of July? Well, you could. I know a dollar is definitely better in your pocket than sitting in a box or on the shelf or on a hanger, Right? But if you have some great merch that's red, white and blue that you know is going to transition and sell just as well next season, keep it. If you feel like you have to take a loss on the product, keep it and market right up as a new arrival as it launches next season. Because I promise your customers are not going to remember what red, white and blue was new this year versus next year. And with that idea, what you have that's red, white and blue, whether it's really any summer tank top or shorts or really like bright summer colors, how can you start to restyle, reshoot and repost merchandise right now? Now in a transitional season? So is it something that you can layer with other pieces? Is it something you can layer with a more muted tone? Is it something you can layer with fall new arrivals? Then how can you start to use the things you have now that really do feel like summer and make them feel more like a transition piece that they can still wear for a couple of months, depending on where they live in the country and what their weather is? Weather what their weather is. Right now, I truly have summer on the brain, you guys. Oh my gosh. Oh, sweaty face and all. If you are catching this live video, so I hope those couple of inventory quick tips for the month of July help you. I also wanted to do this. So many of you have our marketing bundle, our 2021 marketing bundle, which was such a hit for you guys. It includes what to buy, collection ideas, marketing ideas for every single day, all the social media ideas, tracking, engagement questions. If you're catching the video, this little sucker is packed with ideas for every single month of the year. But I wanted to highlight a couple of ideas that for the month of July just to be thinking about when it talks about what to buy. Obviously no more tanks, starting 3/4, sleeves at least, or tees, lightweight cardigans, kimonos, different things that you can transition and pair together. Collection ideas, Dog days of summer, all things Americana, travel in style, glamping. There's still plenty of glamping and beach time, festival fashion, all those pieces. Christmas in July. As we start to think about events and promotions happening in July, Christmas in July is a huge one where we're doing all the blowouts, the clearance items at the end of the month. Shark Week. Those of you that enjoy celebrating Shark Week with just some fun, there's National Ice Cream Day as well during the month of July. Those of you that have warehouses and welcome people to your warehouse or those of you that have storefronts, that's a really good way to get people through the door. And obviously fourth of July, we all know about that.

Me just bump ahead to August and.

Give you a couple of ideas as well. So we all know Back to School is huge throughout the entire month of August and then we have our tax free weekend in many states to start thinking about game day. Fashion comes back huge in the month of August. Also our fall previews, our Sundays of summer and our fall festival season. Fall Festival season I've actually seen inside of the Boutique Hub and I'm sure you guys have too. Lots of our wholesale brands already marketing Christmas items and Halloween items. So you guys better buckle up. We're always a season ahead and things do seem to go really fast. So a couple of quick tips for events for buying for collections happening throughout July and into August and I hope you guys have amazing sales for the next couple of months. A couple other updates I wanted to give you on this short podcast today is what else is happening at the Hub. For those of you who are members or maybe you're not members yet. If you're members, you should have an email from me highlighting our July bundle for all of our members. In case you you didn't know it, your membership at the Boutique Hub comes with live mentorship from guest experts, including myself and our entire team, but also boutique owners who have been there, done that every single month and you have the opportunity to ask them questions as well. So this month we have the topic of live selling. Those of you that are into live sales, that is our topic all month long every single Tuesday with our live guest mentors. Mindy Switzer, who you guys know from Mindy's Boutique, is just huge in the space. She's always been a huge mentor inside of the Hub, so welcoming her back with a session on live sales. Leah Keller is going to be joining us talking about traditional live selling without any type of app included. Just old school live selling. And also Mandy Mae is going to be with us as well, talking about her live sales strategies and overcoming some of those initial fears to really having a great presence on video. So I look forward to bringing you more of that for all of our members inside of the Boutique Hub. Plus some cool updates we're making that you may or may not know about yet. Actually, for the past gosh, probably eight months we've been working with a team of developers to update everything you see@the boutiquehub.com so we're just about ready to reveal it to you. We probably have a couple weeks left for all of our final branding updates, but you'll have a brand new training library, engagement library, your entire membership area will be brand new. Plus all the pages on the boutiquehub.com are going to be revamped. So I'm excited to bring that to you very, very soon. And finally, two more quick updates. So many of you have tickets to our 2021 Boutique Summit happening August 2nd in Atlanta right before Atlanta Apparel Market and our trade show in conjunction with Atlanta Apparel Market happening at that same time. We're so excited to see you. We've got some amazing guests coming to speak and I just want to remind you this is your very last week to snag a ticket if you're coming in person. And we also have digital tickets available. So this is a full one day event plus all of our workshops and breakout sessions this year. Rather than make it a two day event with in person workshops, we're making it a one day in person event with one day of digital workshops. So August 2nd is our boutique summit day and August 17th is our digital workshop day. So after you're back from Magic and all the events you're going to be attending in August, you can catch our digital workshop day on August 17th. Now included in that we've got about 35 speakers, some of my very favorites. I cannot wait to hear from number one, one of my personal mentors, Bo Eason, who is a speaking coach, a camera coach. He's going to be working with you guys on live sales strategy and being in front of the camera and how to handle that. He is a total game changer. I promise you you're going to love hearing from him. Also, Ezra Firestone, who is the number one E commerce expert in the world is going to be in person to join us. And Allison Faulkner of the Allison show is going to be in person to join us as well. She's a branding and marketing expert that I know you're going to love. I'm going to be bringing you some latest in social media and marketing strategy. Sarah on our team will be bringing you a merchandising panel from a group of boutique owners talking about merchandising, photo shoots, live sales and your storefronts. That should be really helpful. And then on our workshop day we have a ton coming on our workshop day. Everything from how to sell as a children's boutique, strategies for plus size selling, tax and accounting strategies, inventory management strategies, the latest in Facebook ads and SEO from our friend Jeff Fenn plus a live team training for training your managers and so much more. So if you want more information on that, I've linked it up in the show notes. Again, it's the Boutique Summit and this is your last week to decide if you want to come in person or snag a digital ticket. All right, last update as you're listening to this. Also happening this week is our last week to get inside of Retail Bootcamp. Retail Bootcamp opens two times a year in January and in June, and it is your opportunity for college for boutique owners. This is a 12 week live group coaching program. It's our highest level program currently at the boutique hub for boutique owners who are ready for serious growth or you've been through serious growth and you're ready to sustain it and take it to the next level. So we have all types of stores that have taken this program from brick and mortar stores to mobile boutiques to huge e commerce brands. You guys, I'm talking everything from brand new boutique owners to multimillion dollar a month boutique owners have been through this program.

There is truly something for everyone because.

It'S 12 weeks of live group coaching plus 12 modules packed with all the information from our team and over 40 guest experts that we've brought in to help coach Retail Bootcamp. The time commitment, we get asked that question a lot is we go live every single week on Wednesdays to give updates to whatever you've learned inside of your module that week. The modules are all self study. Go at your own pace. But we try to knock out a module a week for 12 weeks, 12 modules long. We cover everything from the foundations of your business to customer surveys, branding, Facebook, Facebook ads, SEO, e commerce, merchandising, team training, inventory management, financial management, investing. Oh my gosh, you guys.

What else?

Operations, plans, CEO mindset and productivity and everything in between. Everything but the kitchen sink. Right? So that happens for 12 weeks. Again, we're live on Wednesday's coaching for any updates happening to the modules and then we bring in guest experts every single Thursday to help add to that lesson as well. You also have a live group Facebook group where you can ask myself, Sarah Burks and our entire coaching team questions every single week. And to top it all off, we take a private trip to LA to shop some of our favorite vendors and have a retreat together in LA in September this year. So that is only available to Retail Bootcamp students as well. All right, so those were a couple of additional educational opportunities. Whether Boutique Summit is more your style or you're ready to like Go all in, get a mentor, find coaching that is retail boot camp for everything else. You guys know where to find me. I will be here every single week, I promise. I've got a couple more solo episodes planned for you on just strategy and quick tips. Nothing that's longer than 15 to 20 minutes that you can listen each week, download, take a couple of notes and implement. I'm all about an implement girl. Like being an implementation type of person versus just motivation. I feel like one hour of action trumps 100 hours of motivation. And sometimes it's easy for us to get in the trap of listening to podcasts and watching videos or taking courses, but never implementing what we learn. And that doesn't work for me and I don't think it's going to work for you. So I just want to be here to be a light to you, an inspiration every week, but an encourager to actually take action on what you work on every single week. You know the other thing I want to mention to you this week, just to kind of wrap it up and tell you where my head's at, something I've been sitting with a lot lately that I feel like it's important to bring back to you and to share, is that we have to ask ourselves this question. Especially now, especially during the summer, during a J month. J months have huge opportunity. I know many people who are having record breaking months right now that I know some who aren't. And so I just want to leave you with this. I want to ask are you playing to win or are you playing not to lose? Because it's easy to let overwhelm and mind games and all the things that can happen during the summer months slow us down. And I want to encourage you rather than putting focus and effort on what everyone else is doing and what is maybe not happening for you or maybe what's not working for you. I want you to encourage to move from playing defense to get back to playing offense and focus on what is working for you right now. What is your plan to finish July strong? What is your plan to move into the fall and the two biggest quarters of the year strong? What is the offense you could be preparing right now when times are slow for many people so that you are ready to crush the two strongest quarters of the year, that is playing to win versus playing not to lose? If we're scrolling on Instagram, if we're worried about what Susie down the street's doing or whoever is doing, it is so easy to sit on defense and never learn how to Score. So guys, I hope you have a wonderful rest of the month of July and just sit with that. I hope you have grace for the season that you're in right now and the thing that you are working on right now, as I'm sweaty and I'm going to go back to packing the camper so I can enjoy a little time with my family, I'm reminding myself of that same thing this week, that it's okay to have some time away to remember why we're doing this all in the first place. To enjoy the season that we're in and to come back and prepare an offensive strategy and not just defense and worry and rush. Right? You guys have got this and I am here to make sure you got this. I'm here to hold you accountable every week and I cannot wait to see what comes next. You guys, if this resonated with you today and if you want more quick short updates from me or some short quick tips on solo episodes, let me know. Hit me up this week. I'll still be on the Gram in my stories at A.J. alderson or the Boutique Hub. I always love it when you guys send me messages and we can video chat back and forth. And if you're on vacation, I hope you enjoy it. I hope you have an awesome week, you guys. If you're in the States, happy fourth of July. If you're in Canada, happy belated Canada Day. I hope you guys have a wonderful week and month ahead and I'll be back next week with a guest. I'll see you soon. Have a have a great one.

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