Fourth Quarter Planning and Our Fourth Annual Pink Friday

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, and I can't wait to chat. Hey, guys, it's you and me, and I'm going to keep it short and sweet this week because I have just a few ideas and just a really simple invite for you as you plan what is quickly approaching as the fourth quarter. So many of you who've been around the hub in our community for a while may be familiar with what I'm about to share, but if you're new to this audience and new to the boutique world, I cannot wait for you to get this on your calendar. So you want to hear it? All right. We are gearing up for our fourth annual Pink Friday event. Now, what is Pink Friday? It is the biggest day in the fourth quarter for boutiques to celebrate what it means to be a boutique. So just like Black Friday, Pink Friday is a day for consumers to shop small first. Now, hear me out. I get it. Small Business Saturday is awesome. We all participate. But here's my beef with Small Business Saturday is that I feel like it's an afterthought. I feel like it comes after Black Friday. It's after everyone's already spent their money at the big box store and whatever they have left over, maybe they're gonna nickel and dime at a local shop. And that's great. It turns out to be a big day for many of you. But I really wanted to shift focus to create a worldwide annual event that you can count on, and that is meant just for independent retailers and local shops that might be in your community to team up and really tell the story of what it means to be a small business owner and to invite your community to shop with you first. So over the last several years, since we launched Pink Friday, it's again, completely free event. You don't have to pay anything. It's simply up to you to participate. But since we've launched Pink Friday, we've seen stores literally from around the world participate. Whether they were members of the boutique hub or not, whether they were clothing boutiques or salons or, you know, just a little mom and pop shop in your community. It's been a day for really celebrating what it means to Again, shop small first, but also live in community over competition. And the biggest thing I really want you to think about when it comes to Pink Friday and how you speak to your customers about Pink Friday is really to tell the story of why you're in business. What does it mean to be a small business owner that maybe has survived the pandemic that is now coming out of what that means living through an economy and growing and supporting your team in a local community. Whether you're an online shop with a warehouse or you sell out of your home or you have a local brick and mortar, tell your story as a small business owner on Pink Friday and then team up to help others do the same thing as well. Last year I was so excited, you guys. I think we had over 38 stores in New Orleans alone team up to participate. And it was like that in cities around the world. So ultimately the goal is drive traffic, drive awareness and just simply drive excitement to shop with you as a small business owner first. All right, so here's the skinny. If you want to participate in Pink Friday, you can simply go it alone, plan an event, team up with other business owners, or I want to send you a couple of quick tools. So I'm going to drop a link in the Show Notes that is going to give you more information. If you jump on the email list, a couple things are going to happen. Number one, we're going to send you all kinds of information on what it means to be a part of Pink Friday. A full media kit with press release templates you can use with your local media and marketing materials, event planning checklists and tip sheets. You're even going to see tons of pictures from stores around the world that have participated participated over the last couple of years. We're also going to invite you to be a part of the public Facebook events that we're going to set up. Also, several wholesale collections we're going to be sharing with you that we want to pass on from brands and vendors who want to share special opportunities just for you to stock your store for Pink Friday. So lots and lots coming if you just jump on that link in the show Notes. Now let me take this to the next level. Those of you who are also members of the Boutique Hub, of course, I've got even more for you. So a couple things, you are going to have access to even more exclusive discounts than ever on hubventory just for Pink Friday. So again, lots of brands wanting to participate and pass on free shipping, 5 or even 10% off in many cases, just for you. You also have access as a hub member to the shop the Best Boutiques Facebook group. Now, many of you know there's gosh, what is there, 35,000 shoppers inside that group just looking to shop boutiques. And you're welcome to post in there every day, but we have all kinds of special promotions we'll be putting in there and threads for you to participate on. As we gear up for Pink Friday, we'll also have several holiday specific trainings to help you plan for Pink Friday, but also the holiday season as a whole, including your Pink Friday education toolbox. Now here's one more thing. I know many of you as hub members love your Vista Print discount. Like you save buu bucks with that discount. It's exclusive to members. We have an entire Vista print shop set up for you guys. So it's got banners and signs and all kinds of things just for you to use for Pink Friday. And we're going to get you the link there as well. Now, finally, that Pink Friday marketing plan and calendar outline we're going to be sending your way. And as you guys know, in the past we've had our Pink Friday map. So we're going to be blasting social media and giving you links so that you can share with your customers how to find boutiques around the world that are participating. So we can encourage anyone and everyone we know, all consumers of all types, to simply shop small first. Whether it's with your store or with any other small business, it's our day to truly team up in community over competition to get all of this done. All right? So if you want to participate in Pink Friday again, you can totally set something up on your own or go ahead and grab that link in the show notes, drop your email address and I'm going to send you all of that information. Now. Last thing I want to mention, besides all the content, calendars and toolboxes and checklists and idea sheets, all of that, we're going to be talking a ton about Pink Friday as we gear up in the next several weeks. But fourth quarter is knock knock knocking at the old door. So the other thing we're going to be talking about across the next several weeks is just holiday marketing as a whole. I've got some podcast tips planned for you guys, some live training and Facebook lives planned for you guys. But just a quick reminder, if you have never been a part of our holiday marketing masterclass, we annually share this program, this course with you guys. It is a huge like jump start to planning the fourth quarter. So I'm going to drop the link to the holiday marketing masterclass in the show notes as well, so you can check that training out, because it's helped, My gosh, I think over a thousand boutiques, maybe even over 2,000 boutiques so far, plan a successful fourth quarter experience. And we have several boutiques tell us that they actually go through that training year after year with them and their entire staff, just to make sure they've covered all the bases and they've got collections planned and funnels planned and ads planned and promotions planned. So they're ready for the fourth quarter. Because here's really the big overarching goal for all of you when it comes to the fourth quarter is I know I'm gonna tell you this just like, straight from my mom heart. As a mom, one of the most important seasons of the year for me is being present over the holiday season. But I know as a business owner and for you guys as boutique owners, sometimes that's really hard because you are hustling in the busiest season of the year to really close your books strong at the end of the year. But here's the pitfall that often happens is we spend so much time planning promotions and sales and blanket sales, and you know that I hate that word. It's a bad word, blanket sales, that we're hustling. But then what happens is you look at your bank account at the end of the year and you go, oh, crap, maybe I sold a lot. Maybe I beat my goal from last year, but where's my money? There's no money in the bank, right? There's no margin left for me to pay myself, let alone my quarterly tax payment that's about to come out. So the biggest thing I want you to think about as you're planning Pink Friday and Black Friday and all the promotions is, please think more about a promotion that drives excitement, not a promotion that drives a sale. I would rather you set your sights on high margins this fourth quarter than record sales, because record sales can absolutely come at a cost. So at the end of the day, if you can at least build profit and you know you've got cash in the bank account and you've got more peace, right? You. You didn't have to hustle as hard. You got to spend time with your family. You got to have the experiences that you wanted to have in the fourth quarter. That's really what's important. So setting up a plan now, mapping out your content calendar, mapping out your collections, mapping out your product assortment and what you're going to have stocked. Mapping out all those things now just a little bit ahead of time is really going to put you in the driver's seat. Both plan for profit and for peace. And I think collaborating is also a really great way to also get there. Teaming up and using this entire community in the spirit of community over competition is just going to be the thing that is the cherry on top to drive traffic to your business this fourth quarter. All right, that was a lot, but it was short and sweet and to the point. The simple point is this. I want you to have more profit. I want you to have more peace. And I really want to invite you to think about participating in Pink Friday. So drop your ideas in our Facebook community or on our Facebook page or shoot us a message over on Instagram at the Boutique Hub. Let us know if you have any questions and if you're going to participate or how you plan to participate. We've got all kinds of things coming your way and we can't wait to reshare your content as well as soon as we get there. So check out the link in this week's show notes and let's go. Let's plan some awesome excitement, some awesome events, and definitely some profit and peace around Pink Friday. Hey guys, thank you so much for listening to this episode. We hope that you loved it. Don't forget to hit subscribe and leave a rating and review down below for a chance to be one of our featured listeners each and every week. For more information on our spirit of community over competition and how to access complete show notes and bonus downloads from our guests, head on over to the boutiquehub.com and join the community. We'll see you next week. Sam.