The Boutique Hub Origins

The reason is, I know if we can change a business, we can change that boutique owner's life. And then that changes her family's life, it changes her staff's life, and it changes the entire community around her. When I was Miss Rodeo America, I had the opportunity to travel all over the United States. And sometimes it was seeing these little boutiques, you know, on a Main street in Oklahoma, or maybe it was downtown Atlanta or in the heart of la, or maybe it was at a rodeo in Reno, and there was a trade show with these cute little vendor shops. But growing up in North Dakota, we really didn't have boutiques. When I was traveling, I'd see all these cute little stores. And then I got back home and I thought, how do I bring all of these cute stores together in one place so people like me who maybe don't live in a fashionable area can have access to them? I thought that fashion was New York or fashion was la, And I felt like there was this huge void. What about women in the Midwest? What about women in the South? What about someone who doesn't fit this stereotype of fashion? To me, that's what boutiques are. Boutiques are fashion for everyone. No matter your size, your ethnicity, your income level, your affinity to fashion. Boutiques are for everyone. I will never forget when I was telling this large company that I wanted to work with about the Boutique Hub. The Boutique Hub was already started at this point, and I was so excited to tell him about this community. It was growing and all these things we had planned. And I'll never forget, this CEO got up from his chair and went to walk away, and he said, good luck with your little project. There was a moment where it maybe felt like a dagger in the heart, but there was then an even bigger moment that was like, I'm going to show you this is not a little project. So that reaction was really common at first. A lot of people, including friends, including a lot of family, thought, you know what, Ashley? Maybe it's time to get a job. Maybe it's time this thing isn't going to work. This seems like a crazy idea. No one's ever done it before for a reason. It's just. It's too big. What I learned along the way is it wasn't the model that was so critical to get started. It was really the community. It was the movement. We had to be able to communicate in a way that really illustrated community over competition. And people had to be willing to give in order to receive. We started to just work on breaking down Those barriers where people were willing to give to one another, and that's when the movement of the boutique hub really began to take off. I think that most businesses have to go through a pivot stage. We'll say where initially we think this is going to be the idea that's really going to take off, but then something happens, and it becomes this other idea over here. And for us at the hub, there was a time when we first started and we wanted to create this online shopping mall of boutiques. We ran into the problem of we didn't have enough boutiques to market to shoppers, and we didn't have enough shoppers to market to boutiques. We brought all of our boutique owners together, and what we learned was they really needed community. They needed education. They needed someone to be a voice for them. And that's what we started to kind of build during that time. But still, as that was happening, I was in this mindset of a young entrepreneur again, feeling like, who am I to be the leader of this? Like, this is my big idea. But I still didn't feel qualified. Like, I had imposter syndrome. And so I found someone who I thought was going to be a partner of the business. This person I never met in person. I met them on a social media platform, and for almost a year, we worked together, and they promised, yeah, we're gonna partner. We're gonna change the name of the business. They were gonna become majority owner in the business. Like, all these things were happening. And I was always waiting for this paperwork to get finalized, but it never came, and never came and never came. And I began to feel like I was getting catfished. Finally, at Christmas that year, my husband and I both said, this is enough. Like, we've. This is not really going the way that we had planned, and nothing was ever coming to fruition. And so when that happened and we put our foot down and said, no more, this person blocked us from all of our customer lists, drained our bank accounts and everything that we had created in the boutique hub. The basically ceased to exist at that point. I remember laying on the couch for at least the next day, it could have been a couple days. And Eric was so good. He. He came over. I'll never forget him, like, standing over me at the couch, and he was like, you know what? This sucks, and it's okay for it to suck for a while. He said, just take your time. Figure out what you want to do. If you want to keep going, I'll support you. If you don't, it's Your choice. That was really a moment of I've got to fight or fight or flight. Again, I've got to choose. If I really want this, it has to be me that goes after it and creates it. And so at that point, I began to seek out mentors and people that could help me actually create the vision that I had always had. And I just began to hustle. I worked for almost a year for free just giving tips and advice to business owners. And shortly after that, we started to create the boutique Hub as it is today. But honestly, like, the Boutique hub wouldn't be what it is today, today had we not really initially failed hard like we did. I had what it took inside of me the whole time. It didn't take someone who I thought was smarter than me or more talented in some way to make it happen. We all have that innate ability inside of us. We just have to recognize it. My mission at the Boutique Hub has always been to change lives. It's the center of my vision board. It's the thing I'm absolutely motivated by every single day. The reason is I know if we can change a business, we can change that boutique owner's life. And then that changes her family's life, it changes her staff's life, and it changes the entire community around her every single day. I see these changes happening in boutique owners that really are life changing. But it didn't really hit home for me until it happened in my family. When we started the boutique Hub, this was something that was my passion project and I worked so hard on. But Eric had to work the whole time, and really, we were juggling these small kids and all these things that come along with it. And until the point where he was able to quit his job and come to work inside of the boutique hub. And it gave us ultimate, you know, freedom to be able to be together as a family in that way. That was really eye opening. That was us, you know, seeing in our own life a reflection of what we aim to do for other people every single day. But to see those changes unfold every single day is really why we're here in the first place.