Pulling Back The Curtain on Hubventory

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 guys, guess what? It's you and me and we are having a chat about something that I think has been a long time coming and that is a big project we've been working on here at the Boutique Hub, a new wholesale platform called Hubventory. So a little backstory. Today I want to take you behind the scenes of building this monster project. What I think it will be impactful for, for your business as a retailer and also those of you who sell wholesale, your business as a wholesaler and where I see this type of thing going in our. So a little backstory. For the last two years, our team has silently been building this monster of a platform. It's something that we've been asked about for a long time because I think one of the biggest values inside of the Boutique Hub is we rely heavily on trust. We rely heavily inside of the Boutique Hub on community over competition and really making sure you're doing business with people that you know like and trust. And that community feel has really lent itself to the wholesale side of our industry as well. So. So we've been asked again and again and again, hey, I love finding wholesale brands inside of the Hub, but I would really love it if you had a full on wholesale marketplace for me to shop. So we ventured down this path and I am telling you here, business owner to business owner, Ashley Alderson personally and her big squirrel brain ideas totally underestimated what it was going to take to build something like this. I could give you all the pretty. I had a business plan and I did this and I had it all mapped out. But you know what big wild idea and once we got into it, we found out just how big and wild it really was. But I have to say this, I am incredibly proud of the fact that our team, our cto Ben, who I know many of you have had the opportunity to meet and work with along the way giving feedback on Hubventory, was so eager to say, you know what, it's crazy, but let's do it and let's figure it out as we go. Let's build the plane as we fly it. We knew what we wanted to create. We wanted to do it with member feedback, with real time boutique owner and retailer feedback and wholesale business owner feedback every step of the way and build something that was really built by the industry, for the industry with the creative inventory planning features you wanted, but also just the trust and the curation that makes your life a lot easier in this business. And so we went for it. So today I'm so pumped to just be able to share this behind the scenes on the podcast and also invite you formally to the official grand opening of hubventory.com, which is coming September 12th through the 16th again@hubventory.com so a little bit about the platform. In case you aren't familiar, you haven't had a chance to have a sneak peek yet. We started to do an early rollout of Hubventory in about June. Actually, we started to invite people way back in January, around Christmas time. One at a time, we started to invite them to give their feedback and to help us build little piece by little piece. And then finally by June, we were able to start inviting people to the back end of hubventory.com to build first wholesale brand profiles. And then we started to invite some of our boutique friends to test it out along the way. Now, today we're up, we're running. We have several hundred brands, we have several thousand boutiques and over 30,000 products recently added to launch this brand new wholesale platform. All right, so let's talk about this from the boutique side of things. What is Hubventory? Why is it different? Why would I shop on hubventory.com? well, the first thing is this. As someone who coaches boutique owners on a daily basis, one thing that makes me crazy is seeing how much cash can be tied up and lost in unsold inventory. Or to see boutiques not have a great plan when it comes to going to market or buying online and really fully merchandising and stocking their stores with the right assortments. So we wanted to make sure that Hubventory was the planner or was the platform that was built with inventory plans just for you as a boutique owner. So we've got this really cool feature on Hubventory. Not only can you find all the products that you want, but we have this feature called Creative Inventory Planning Boards. And it's kind of like Pinterest, but for wholesale shopping. So when you first log on to Hubventory as a retailer, you're going to do a few things. First, you're going to start to follow with the follow button. Brands that you know you, you love, right, or that you're interested in, you want to learn more about. You want to see their new arrivals on a regular basis. The more brands that you follow, the more our algorithm and our smart technology is going to be able to understand who you are, what you're looking for, and recommend more products just for you. As you're following brands and you're starting to see products on hubventory.com, the next opportunity you have is there's a little tiny star button down below every product, and that's your pin button where you can start to save all of your products to creative boards. Now, when it comes to building boards, this is how I see it. Traditionally, when you're buying online, you add everything to your cart, just like I do when I buy online. And then you start to delete things as you go, like, I'll save that for later. Oh, I'll come back to it. But I'm gonna put it all in the cart so I save it for now. Well, I want to make that process a lot easier for you. So with the boards, you can start to plan out in a few different ways. You can plan inventory by collection. So I know this is going to be my Halloween collection, my Valentine's Day collection, my back to school collection. Or I could plan it by launch date. Those of you who are live sellers, this is going to be my 421 collection. This is going to be my, you know, two weeks out collection. And I can start to fill by what I want my new arrivals to look like. Or those of you who are great with your merchandise plans and your open to buy plans, you can plan by SKU or category or budget. So if you know you have $5,000 to spend in denim, you can start to build boards, buy denim, buy a specific timeline and buy a budget. Now, not only will you be pinning these products and saving products to the boards that you create on Hubventory, but soon one of the features I'm so excited to roll out is built in open to buy planning. So you can actually go in, say, this is what my budget is, this is what I plan to spend in this category. And I that budget ticker, note how many things I have on my board and how many things I've bought in this time period so that I can buy smarter and make sure I'm conserving my cash and I don't have a bunch of unsold inventory at the end of the month. So the boards are really built to help you flex those creative juices as a retailer, but also to be a lot smarter with your money every single step of the way. Now, obviously, once you have everything planned to your boards, you can pick what you want, add it to your cart and buy it. You'll be able to check out with each brand and know each brand minimum on the platform so that you know that you're meeting all the requirements and checking all the boxes as you go. So the creative inventory planning boards are a huge piece of Hubventory, but I wanted to take that a step further. One thing I find so frustrating in retail is the black hole of what happens after you buy a product. So you went to market, you bought all these great things, you went to any online wholesale marketplace and you bought all these great things, but then they're shipping, they're lost in limbo. And unless you're really great at tracking your POS and putting them directly into your ecommerce system, you don't always know what's arriving when. So in Hub Andory, we made sure that we have live shipping updates. So once the brand has shipped your product and they've input that shipping number, we have live tracking updates. And all of those pieces of inventory that you bought, those orders flow to what we call shipment boards. So you have boards which are like little purchase order managers, right where you can see by a picture of the actual product you bought when it's going to be arriving. So now you have the ability to say, okay, this shipment just changed, it's coming later than I thought it would. I'm going to just drag and drop and arrange my boards so that I know what's coming. But I can plan my next two to three weeks of new arrivals based on real time data. And what I already know I have in store in the boutique, whether that's an online boutique or a brick and mortar boutique. So inventory planning boards are great for planning inventory, but then also great for managing what is already ordered, what's shipping, and launching your next collection. Now, one last feature I want to tell you that's really exciting and this is beyond just planning your inventory, but it's buying smarter and it's buying in a budget is I wanted to get you some savings and so on Hubventory. I'll talk about brand features in a minute. But one brand feature that really impacts retailers on Hubventory is the pricing structure. We have a low flat fee for commission rates for brands on Hubventory so that brands can pass that savings on to you. The retailer. So with that we have brands that have had the opportunity to add Hub member discounts. Now anyone can buy on hubventory whether you're a boutique Hub member or not. It's a platform open for everyone. But for those of you who are members of the boutique hub, I wanted to get you more exclusive, just like we always try to do for our members, so brands can offer Hub member discounts. This little icon will show up in the corner of products as you shop. It'll show up on brands profiles as you view new brands. And we'll have special collections just with products that are specially priced for Boutique Hub members. So it's a perk so that you as a Hub member know how much you're saving every single day with those exclusive offers from the brands that you know like and trust. And the brands love it because they love building long term relationships with you, the retailer and they definitely appreciate your loyalty. So those are some of the biggest perks I can't wait for you to experience as a retailer as you start to shop on Hubventory. And you guys, here's the thing with this platform being built by the industry, for the industry, with your feedback along the way, I do not want you to hold back when you come to the site, when you find something and you're like, ashley, I love this, but what if you tweaked it just a little bit and did this instead? That's the type of thing that is so important in terms of this community is always being open to recognize how things can be done different. How things can be done just a little bit better, a little bit smarter, that ultimately make your life a lot easier at the end of the day. So boutiques, I am so pumped for you to go ahead and check out hubventory.com now those of you who also sell wholesale, I want to tell you a little bit about why hubventory is also different than other platforms. I already mentioned the low flat fee structure. I think that's really important so that you can clearly budget what you're going to be spending in terms of marketing your product on platforms every single day. So a low flat 5% plus the ability for brands to upload their top 50 loyal customers and spend zero commission on those customers anytime they are connected to their profile. So upload your top 50 to sell to for free or it's a low flat 5% commission for all brands selling on Hubventory. Now another cool feature for brands. Just as I love those inventory planning features for boutiques, I wanted to give Brands a way to collaborate with one another, to show community over competition, to merchandise their products together with those other brands that they love. So brands also have the opportunity to create boards. On Hubventory, a brand could create a board based on their new preseason launch, so spring collection, fall collection, midwinter collection. They could create board based on a way a boutique might buy like a Valentine's Day collection, holiday collection, so on and so forth. Or a brand, let's say a denim brand, wants to team up with an apparel brand or a lifestyle brand or a beauty brand and start to showcase how their products fit one another because ultimately they have the same customer base. We wanted to give that opportunity as well to have merchandising happening on boards so brands can follow one another and then create joint inventory planning boards that boutiques can follow when this happens. Boards boards have increased reach across the platform. So the more that brands will collaborate with one another and create boards on Hubventory, the more those boards are shown across the site. Because we want to reward the brands that want to reach new customers by working in community over competition with one another. So tons of opportunity to spread that reach and awareness just by collaborating and creating joint boards with one another. Okay. One other feature I think is so important for brands that I want to mention today is easy to inventory integrations. So on Hubventory, I feel like we have created one of the best CSV upload processes for uploading all of your products out of any platform up there. It's seamless, but if that's not for you, and let's say you're a brand that is also housing your inventory. On Shopify, we have a brand new Shopify integration. We're the only wholesale platform with an app in the Shopify app store to with one click, connect Hubventory as a sales channel for your wholesale brand so that you have easy seamless integrations to list your products. Now boutiques, if you're still listening, this is also really important for you. Here's why. The next phase of our Shopify development allows you as a boutique once you purchase a product, to immediately create a draft product listing in your Shopify account if you're a Shopify user. So hopefully on all ends of the spectrum, you as a brand uploading product, you're saving time with that Shopify integration. And you as a boutique uploading product to Shopify once you buy it, are also saving time because of that integration. So at the end of the day, there's two things that are really important to me when it comes to building Hubventory number one, I want it to be incredibly easy and simple, as clear, as curated and as trusted as it possibly can be. I want it to be a really easy button opportunity that saves you time and saves you a ton of money along the way. But the second thing is, I always want Hubventory to be incredibly creative for you. I've had an opportunity over the last several months to play around with building boards and planning collections and merging inventories together. And it is a really great way to exercise the creative juices of your brain in a way that is beneficial to your business. That hopefully saves you time and money in your business, but helps you plan inventory a lot smarter. So the business coach in me is definitely bleeding with don't waste your money on products you can't sell, but buy them smarter when you plan ahead of time using the features that we built for you inside of Hubventory. So that's my quick rundown I wanted to give you guys today on the show. Thank you for bearing with me and for listening along. But most of all, I have a couple of really important thank yous that I've got to get out because like I said, man, this puppy has been two years silently in the making, building as we go completely bootstrapped, without private investors or any big flashy press. It's just us listening to the feedback of our industry and trying to build something really great and really beneficial along the way. And for all of you who helped us by answering a survey or jumping on a zoom call or sending me a message or meeting with Ben and our development team, everyone who had a part in giving us feedback for this platform, I genuinely want to thank you because your feedback is going to make someone else's life, life a whole lot better. So thank you for being a part of our community and trusting us to build something like this along the way. Now, the second huge thank you I have to give is to our team at the Boutique Hub. I know many of you when it comes to the Boutique Summit or traveling to markets, you've had a chance to meet some of our team. But some of our team is also very behind the scenes. We're small but mighty. We're under a team of 30. And I tell you what, these guys at the team, they work so hard. They work so hard and they are so passionate about serving you guys. They love what they do. So it was a real treat to get to see them take this huge monster of a project on to be creative and solve problems along the way. And to make it all come together. Typically, a platform like this employs hundreds and hundreds of people. And so for our small but mighty team to be able to put this together is just. It puts me at awe. I'm in awe of what they built. So I get to be the person who logs on and sees progress every day and shares wild ideas, but they're the ones working really hard to put those ideas to work. So, to all of our team at the Boutique, Hub and Hubventory, you guys, I'm amazed by you and thank you. All right, guys, I just want to thank you again. Thanks for listening to the podcast today. Thanks for letting me share this big, exciting announcement with you, and I hope you can join us for our grand opening at Hubventory, September 12th through the 16th at hubventory.com Please create your profile before then, whether you're a brand or a boutique, and let us know if you have any questions or feedback along the way. We're just getting started. There's a lot more to build. So many features and exciting things to roll out to you, but I can't wait to see where it goes next. So thanks guys. I hope to see you soon on hubventory.com and I'll be back next week with more of the podcast. I appreciate you. Thanks guys. 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.