Episode #234 All Things #BoutiqueStyle with Nikki Casey Director of Style at The Boutique Hub

Hey, guys, get ready for episode number 234 with Nikki Casey, the director of Boutique Style. 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. Today. I'm so excited that you guys have the opportunity to meet my dear friend and member of the Boutique Hub team.

Nikki Casey, who is the director of Boutique Style. Nikki has been with our team for over a year now, and since she came on our team, this has always been her vision. To completely update the way that shoppers discover boutiques on the Boutique Hub, to separate the two platforms and to build an all encompassing place where women and shoppers can come and feel empowered and beautiful and unique and special and discover really cool boutiques from all over the world on one single platform. She has worked day in and day out to make this dream a reality. And not only that, not only has she worked hard and built something really special, but I just think she is such a cool individual. I think you're gonna get a chance to know her a little bit better.

Today. I'm so excited.

We're gonna talk about all the things that are happening on Boutique Style, the growth that's been going on, the collaborations we have happening over the hol, how we're featuring so many boutiques in holiday gift guides, and also some of the neat collaborations that we have right now with Sezzle, helping people shop your site or your storefront over the holiday season, and also some of the plans that we have coming for this site in the future. So today I'm so excited. I hope you love this chat that Nikki and I got to have. We're really pumped to get to bring it to you. Please welcome Nikki Casey, the director of Boutique Style.

This week we are going internal. Internal inside of the hub, that is.

I'm so excited for you to meet.

My friend, Nikki Casey, who is our director of style at the Boutique Hub and Boutique Style, and we're going to talk about all things Boutique style today. So, Nikki, welcome to the podcast.

Hello.

Hello.

Thank you so much. I'm excited.

It's your first podcast ever.

Yes. First podcast ever. I'm a little nervous. I'm one of those people that like, hears My voice on a recording and just wants to die.

You know what? Can I tell you a true story? All these podcasts, however many of them we've recorded, I don't listen to them ever.

Really?

Yeah. No, I don't. It freaks me out. And so sometimes people come up to me, like, at markets and stuff. They'll be like, hey, I fell asleep listening to your voice last night.

I'm like, that is so creepy.

So don't worry. We'll record this thing, we'll pass it on, and then we go on with our lives and pretend like it was awesome and just believe it that way, right?

Yep.

Yep.

I don't know if I'll be able to go back and listen, so.

Well, you're going to do awesome because this is going to be just a conversation about the two things that we love and the things that we deal with every single day. Fashion and boutiques.

Yep, I'm in.

Perfect.

So let's start here.

Talk to me about. Obviously, I already know this, but nobody else listening knows. Talk to me about what your position is at the Boutique Hub and what you do on a daily basis.

So I am currently the director of Style. I came on about a year and a half ago. My degree initially is in international communication and writing, and I was working in marketing before, and I was also doing freelance copywriting when I met Ashley at a conference, actually, in San Diego, where I just moved to. And we just kind of became friends. And I came on with the Hub a few months later, I think, after we met. And so a lot of people think that because I'm director of Style, it means I'm some sort of stylist, but actually I'm basically just the head of the style platform, so anything related to boutique style kind of goes through me.

You have such a cool background, though. When you and I met, I think this goes to show, number one, wherever you are in business or life, continuing education matters. So find conferences, events, go. And don't just go for the education, but go to network and meet people. You and I randomly met through our friend Nick and sat by each other. We were the only Americans, I think, in our group of people, too, weren't we?

Yeah, I'm pretty sure we were the only Americans. I felt so out of sorts because I was in a transitional period of what I was going to be doing with my career, and we just kind of gravitated towards each other, and we actually became accountability buddies through the conference.

Which we don't ever talk about anymore. I don't even Know what we're holding each other accountable to? Other than making something of ourselves, we never did perfect. But before that. So you have kind of a background in fashion. You want to talk about that?

I was a fashion model for about 10 years or so. I worked mostly in Runway. I lived in Miami and Milan and Sydney in LA, doing that for a while. I'm 5 11, so it's kind of hard not to get in that when you're so slender and thin like I am. And, I mean, it was just kind of a natural thing.

If you guys have a chance to meet Nikki in person, you're going to be like, who's the goddess that just walked into the room?

She's absolutely stunning.

But you know what's so cool about that? Nikki is, I think, as women, like, we see other beautiful women, and it's easy to be intimidated sometimes. Like, gosh, I don't know if I should talk to that person, because they do intimidate me. And you're so stunning. Like, I could see that. But when people get to know you, you're so genuine and real and kind that, I mean, it just, like, blows all those stupid stereotypes out of the water. I wish as women, we could break down those walls even more.

Oh, well, thank you. Yeah, I'm naturally more introverted too. So whenever we do hub events, I always try to drop in our groups, like, hey, I'm gonna be there. Someone come talk to me. Because I just don't naturally gravitate towards people that way. But, yeah, I love going and meeting everybody when we're at our events. And please don't be intimidated.

Find Nikki. She'll be in the corner sipping on. So tell us about the boutique style platform and kind of its relaunch and where that whole concept came from.

The style platform was kind of, I believe, your initial brainchild. And then the boutique hub kind of grew the business side first. So boutique style is our new online platform that's consumer facing. So it's for our shoppers that allows them to discover our boutiques that they might not otherwise be able to find. Yes. So essentially, it's just a discovery platform that we connect everybody on.

So we often get this question. So talk to everyone about the difference in the style platform as it is and the discovery profiles versus a marketplace.

So a marketplace, from what I think that you're saying is going to be more like you're searching for products, and I don't know the best way to describe it, you might be better at that one than me.

I mean, to Piggyback on what you're saying. So to me, a marketplace would be more product driven, where a consumer can come and actually shop on the platform and the checkout happens there. Like with Boutique Style, that's not how we wanted it. So there's no E commerce that takes place on Boutique Style because we wanted the sale to originate with the boutique itself. Like, I guess in my opinion, it's always better for the boutique owner and that's always a question our team asks, like what truly is best for the boutique owner. And in my opinion, the. The thing that's best is that they get the customer relationship. Like the customer knows, hey, I'm clicking onto Blush Boutique's website and I'm buying these products from Blush Boutique, not a marketplace like Amazon or Boutique Style, because it's all about building personal relationships between boutiques and their customers. So this is more like a discovery platform than lands the customer with a boutique they can build a relationship with.

Exactly. Yeah. So we're more like the middleman that connects everybody. We don't take any sort of commission. All the sales, like you said, get directed to that boutique's website. So we're just trying to get eyes on our boutique members websites by connecting the shoppers there.

Can you talk about the search features that are on the site and then more of the search features that we have coming?

Of course, yeah. So right now you can search on style by location, store type, by store style, or store specialty. So if you're visiting a certain place and you want to see the boutiques in that area, you can search that way. If you're looking for a specialty, kind of like Western fashion, you can search like that. And then you can also filter with all the winners from our boutique awards. So if you wanted to see certain people that have won global Boutique of the year or best boutique in Florida, you can search that way too. In the future, we'll have other search options. We've always been playing around with product based searches, but right now we'd like to keep it more focused on the type of things that you're looking for. And the location is a big one for a lot of people.

The other thing I want to mention too, use of the product based searches, I think is huge. We've got a lot of shoppers that have asked that we do that. One dream I cannot wait to have this feature done is the style quiz. Like so many women come to the community and to the site and they're like, gosh, I love to shop boutiques, but how do I describe my style. How do I find more stores that really fit who I am? And I think the style quiz, that's our goal, is that a woman can fill out that quiz and then immediately have 20 boutiques suggested for her that might really fit her style.

Yeah, exactly. That's one that we've been looking forward to launching, is just giving them that option to kind of help them find those boutiques ahead of time. Because you're just going in and searching kind of blindly, it can be a little overwhelming. We have quite a few boutiques on there right now. So to do the style quiz in the beginning, when you create your account and get matched, I think will be really helpful for a lot of people.

Can you talk about how shoppers follow boutiques and save products on the site?

Basically, what happens is when you first come to the site, you're going to create a profile. And then after you create your shopper profile, that's when you can right away start discovering and following boutiques. There's a little heart that you'll be able to click on on anybody's profile, and then they will show up on your personal feed. You can also do the same with saving products. So all of the profiles will have products that you could go purchase right now, but if you wanted to save it for inspiration later or you weren't ready to make a purchase, you'll just star that item and then that pops up on feed as well. So then anytime that you go back to your personal feed, all of those things will be saved for you and for our members when they upload new products, that automatically gets linked to anybody who saved the boutique. So then everything should be fresh every time someone's logging in.

That's so huge, isn't it? Think about social media. It's so easy that with the algorithm, to lose all the favorite boutiques that we follow. I think about that on Instagram, too. Like, I follow all these stores and I'm like, oh, my gosh, that's so cute. And I can't remember where they are and the Instagram algorithm isn't showing them to me and they just get lost.

I do the same thing, or I end up taking screenshots of stores or products, and then I have a million shots in my phone and it takes forever to try to filter through and find something. So to have it all in one place was kind of our goal to make it easy for everyone.

Absolutely. Do you ever wonder, like, when you're taking a screenshot, am I actually going to come back and look at this.

Oh, I do it all the time and I know the answer is no.

Oh, but you feel good. Like, oh, I'm so organized because I just took this screenshot. No, not true. Not true. I think that's a really cool part, though. One of my favorite features of the site is that you can follow and save those stores and then you do have that, like, automatic feed, in case anyone's wondering how that works. So we built a Shopify app. So if you install. If you're a member of the Boutique Hub and you install the Shopify app, it just like allows our site to just automatically pull in. Right now, is it pulling your best sellers or your 12 newest arrivals? What do we have it set on?

You actually should be able to decide, but it will automatically default to your best sellers if you don't change it to pull your newest.

Can you talk about some of the new features and releases that we have come in for the site?

Yes. So we just launched notifications for members, which is really exciting. It was kind of a big project for us. So the notifications, essentially when you log into your member dashboard, you will have this little pink dot next to the little link that says my dashboard, and that's telling you that you have a new notification. So right now it's going to notify you of things like you have a new follower or a certain number of products that have been saved. But eventually it'll also show things like upcoming events, it'll show course updates, and one day it'll show how many sales you've made through Boutique Style. And I know that's something that everybody's really asking for. So it'd be really cool to log into your dashboard and say, you know, you have $500 from boutique style in sales, so that's a big one.

So many times online we come across these sites that like this completely done for you platform that you log in and test out and maybe it works and maybe it doesn't. The thing about style is our mission's always been to build this with our community. I mean, the whole platform is still a beta site. It's still a test site. So to us, we wanted to get it up and running as best as we could and get member feedback as quickly as we could and grow it with our members along the way based on what works for them. Just like notifications, right. Some people might log in and have a lot of notifications, some people might not have any. Like, maybe you have a profile on Boutique Art Style and you haven't even shared it with your social media followers yet. So there's still so much opportunity for growth because the whole platform is basically brand new. And I'm excited to build out some of those features, especially the notification per sale feature, which we thought we had had kind of ironed out, I would say. But turns out we found a couple glitches that we're going to fix along the way and we'd also like to build that out for other platforms like Comment Sold as well, which we've been talking to their team about, because right now it just fully integrates with Shopify.

Yeah, and like you said, we're still in the beta testing period, kind of rolling everything out and working out all the kinks. So style is completely free for our members. So there's really no reason why no boutique member shouldn't be involved right now. There's. There's only things to gain and there's nothing to lose at this point. So why not test it out, try to gain visibility with new customers and new shoppers and then go from there?

Yeah, absolutely. We want to make sure that we build something that's 100% the best it can be for our members with their feedback. So pretty soon as you have new followers, you'll have notifications, but soon your profile will be like a social media profile where it'll show how many followers you have on the site. And I think that's kind of another level, in my opinion, of where shoppers can gain comfort in doing business with boutiques. Like knowing this is a legitimate business versus all these knockoff sites and copycat boutiques that we see online. And we literally vet every boutique hub member, so it's only going to be quality boutiques that make it on boutique style. I hope that's like a huge vote of confidence for shoppers along the way.

Totally. You hear all the time people asking, oh, have you heard about this website? Do you know if it's legit? I mean, my mom just texted me the other day asking if a certain website was legitimate and if she should order from it. And the good thing about ordering or going through style is you know that everything has been vetted through us.

Yeah, absolutely. Anything else members should know about how to set up style if they don't already have a profile?

Yes. So all of our members, you automatically create a profile when you get your hub membership. And so it used to all be housed on just the boutique hub site, but since we've split them now, the profile is visible on style, but you have to have at least four Things for it to pop up, you'll need to have your business name filled in the location of your store. Even if you're just web based, you still need to put in a location just so it can pop up. That way you'll do a short description of your store and then you either have to have at least one feature image uploaded or connect your Shopify. That way something pops up on the profile and then I encourage everybody to go to their profile on style to see what it looks like and then you can make adjustments from there. But those are the four basic things that you need to even show up.

So one thing I want to talk about with you is because this podcast is airing in November and we have a huge promotion going on in November, let's talk about our new collaboration with Sezzle. And also for those of you who offer Sezzle, there's like this, I'll say it's like a cult following of shoppers that are obsessed with using Sezzle. So talk about the feature we just enabled as well.

Yes. So many people are obsessed with Sezzle. So we're so excited for our partnership. So on the actual website, you'll be able to see which boutiques offer Sezzle. There's a button now that pops up so you'll know that that payment plan is there as an option, which is something that in our group shop the best boutiques, we get a lot of people in search of items and then they always mention like, please let me know if you have a payment plan. So now it'll just pop up. If a boutique offers Sezzle on boutique.

Style, there'll be a little button they can find. So do you want to talk about the Sezzle Holiday Shop Small promotion? Yes.

So we are partnering with Sezzle for a shop small giveaway, kind of in honor of shopsmall Saturday, but we are making it the full month of November. So right now, if you make a purchase with a boutique dot style boutique that offers Sezzle, we can link all of this information up. But there is a little form that you'll fill out just saying which boutique you purchased with and then you'll show the proof of receipt and then you're entered into the giveaway. So it's a $5,000 giveaway partnered with Sezzle and five shoppers will each win $500 and five boutique members actually will also win $500. So we are so, so excited to have this collaboration with them.

Yeah.

I think the cool part is I've always thought about small business Saturday. It's a day for awareness for boutiques. So I know we just did a whole podcast on things you guys could do in your business to do small business Saturday. But more than the promotion, I think it's such a day for conversation around the importance of shopping small that you employ local families, that you pay local.

Taxes, which is huge.

Amazon does not pay local taxes. So, you know, if you need a new park in your community, or roads or fire or police protection, that only comes from people that pay local taxes, AKA you. So having that conversation, sponsoring local ball teams, all of those things like that is why small businesses matter. And I think Sesil recognizes that too. We've had that conversation with them a number of times, so they wanted to say, hey, how do we put more cash back in those pockets versus just making it a fancy tagline on social media, but, like, let's put our money where our mouth is. So the way that boutiques are entered to piggyback on what you said, Nikki, is when the shopper makes a purchase with Sezzle and they fill out that form, they say the boutique that they shopped with. So if that's your boutique, then you are entered with your shopper. When we announce the winners, the shopper goes with the boutique they shopped with. That's how the winners will be announced. So the best thing you could do if you want to be a part of this collaboration, is to share the link. It's the boutiquehub.com shop small with sezzle, I believe is what it is. But again, we'll link it up. But share that on your social media. Invite your shoppers to enter people who do business with you and to nominate you along with themselves when they enter the giveaway.

Yes. And the only boutiques that can participate, they have to be a member of the Hub. So it's not just everybody. And then all of the winners will be announced on December 2nd. So it's running through the full month of November. Shoppers can enter as many times as they want to, too. It's not just one one time. It's just going to be one entry per purchase.

We've got so many different things going on for the holidays. Talk to me about the other gift guides and the big promotions that we're doing on boutique style with all of our member boutiques.

We have always had weekly blogs go out that we have our members contribute to, but now that we're in the holiday season, we also have our gift guides, which is a great opportunity for boutiques to get their products seen as well. It's A big with the shoppers. Essentially we just post threads in our members only group and also in our shop the Best boutiques group asking for certain themes could be something from gifts, gifts for your young daughter or whatever it is. And then all of our boutiques will drop their products and we pull from there. So it's a great opportunity to be featured for the gift guides. And it's the same process for our blog post all year round. And then we also are always doing little giveaways on the side on Instagram or Facebook. And so we look for our members to collaborate on those too. So if anybody's ever interested in any of that or has any other ideas on what they might want to collaborate with us, they can always shoot you a message or shoot me an email. I'm just Nikki. Boutique Style Perfect.

Yeah. So easy to get involved there. Talk to me more about the Shop the Best Boutiques group because I know we pull a lot of content from the threads in that group, but talk to me about how that group's grown, kind of the feedback you get from shoppers in that group and how boutiques can best utilize it.

I know at the Hub we have what seems like a million Facebook groups for our members, but Shop the Best Boutiques is actually the largest one. I believe we have almost 21,000 members in there. And it's just another place that we connect shoppers with our boutique owners. So shoppers go in there and they get to post their in search of posts, whether it be I'm searching for outfits to wear to Vegas or it could be a specific photo that they've seen and then our boutique can comment on that with the products that fit into that request. And then we also allow our boutique members to make their posts so they can post if they have new arrivals or a sale, they can post about their own email lists or Facebook groups as long as they're also mentioning products that can actually be purchased. So it's another discovery kind of platform that we connect with boutique style where people are finding new boutiques and connecting directly with them.

Perfect. Yeah, it's definitely a super active group. One of the largest for boutique owners. So definitely a lot going on there. Anything else as far as Instagram and the takeovers that we do or anything else that people should know about how to utilize boutique style?

Yeah. So we always ask our boutiques if they're ever posting anything on their own accounts that's fashion or style related. They can always tag us and then we can re tag and reshare from There. So right now, Style's account, which I know a lot of people get confused about and we will probably be changing it at some point. But this Style Instagram account is Heboutique Hub. If you ever want to be featured, if you just tag us, we can run through those and maybe pop up and feature you on our account as well. And then we also do Instagram takeovers with our advertisers. So we are finishing our first round of advertisers with Boutique Style. We received a lot of good feedback and the next round will actually launch on the 1st of December. So I'll be sending out all details through email and in the members only group if anybody is interested in becoming an advertiser for the next round.

That's good to mention. Everything on Boutique Style is completely free at this point. But for those of you who do want to do things like Instagram takeovers or have ads on the site or be featured in other ways, we do have a couple of those options as well. Awesome. Anything else you want to mention about the platform today or anything you think people should know about you with the platform?

I just think the biggest thing to remember is we do everything with two groups in mind. The shoppers that actually use it, but then of course our members as well. So we always want feedback. If anybody has any questions or suggestions or anything that might come up Style related, I would love to hear about it. Or the whole point is to make it the best platform that it can be. So while we're in this beta period, we would love to hear from anybody. I just want to say thank you to you too. I'm so grateful to be a part of this team and I love everybody that's a part of our hub family. I think working with small businesses like we do, there's nothing better than that. Everybody puts their heart and soul into their work and it shows. And so I'm just so happy to be part of the community.

I appreciate that you do such an awesome job, Nikki. We were just talking about like our team and we're having a team retreat this month. Like all these things happening and I just think our team is one in a million. Like you said, everyone truly does put their heart and soul into it. And the fact that you've taken this whole project and really owned it yourself and built it, and I feel like I'm torn in so many other directions that this truly is your baby. You've done an awesome job and you should be so proud of what you've accomplished with Boutique Style. And I know that this is just the beginning. There's so much more to go.

Yes. Thank you. Thank you. It definitely has become my baby.

Perfect. Well, Nikki, thanks so much for joining me on the show today. I really appreciate it.

Thanks so much, Ashley.

Hey, guys, thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I hope that you're inspired to update your profiles on style to collaborate with us completely for free to help reach more consumers for your boutiques. And I hope that you're really excited about the future of what we're building together. Trying to help spread the shop small movement and get everyone excited about shopping.

Boutiques over big box stores.

If you haven't had a chance yet to participate in any of our holiday promotions, we've linked up how to do that in the show notes and we've also linked up the information about our collaboration and shop small giveaway with Sezzle. Guys, if you have questions anytime on how to maximize this platform, please reach out to Nikki, please reach out to myself or anyone on the team. Give us your thoughts, your feedback, your suggestions. This is still such an early concept of what we're building. We have much more to come and we can't wait to see where it grows with your input, your direction and your daily inspiration so that we can build something that is truly what is best for our entire industry. Guys, thanks again for listening and I can't wait to talk to you next week.

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