Womens Clothing Boutique Business Plan

De Kliek Style Studio

Execution

Marketing & Sales

Marketing Plan

Positioning Statement
De Kliek provides professional women with upscale designer clothing and exclusive personal services. Our main competitive advantage is the unique Style Assessment and education emphasis in helping women develop their personal style.

Brand Positioning
 De Kliek Style Studio looks to be the leader in providing exceptional service and assistance for women’s fashion needs. The elegance of the name suggests the types of clothing and accessories that will be featured.

BRAND PERSONALITY

Innovative | Stylish | Contemporary | Modern | Fresh | Approachable | Elegant

The overall brand personality of De Kliek aspires to be fashionable, customer-oriented, innovative, refreshing, stylish and educational. The boutique is a place where women can go to transform themselves with beautiful clothes and take advantage of the Style Assessment and other services that help them determine the right clothes for their unique selves. We are a shop that educates. We help women learn about the designers, gather with their friends, and have fun during the process. We not only carry items that help them look good, but we also help our customers maintain these items. Owner Vrootje Magen will work with her top design advisors to create the atmosphere, colors and wording that encapsulates these thoughts.

Promotion
The following promotional tactics for generating buzz and awareness about De Kliek will be implemented:

• Personal selling and word of mouth via networks of friends, stylists and customers
• A well maintained and up to date Facebook page complete with customer reviews 
• Unique visual displays in storefront on a weekly basis
• PR (local and national)
• Twitter – Where we let our customers talk to us and each other. Word of mouth is important to us, we need to know if its good or bad. 
• Direct mail such as postcard notices that are targeted specifically to the customer
• Sales Promotion such as store events and bi-annual sales
• De Kliek Web Site
• Advertising will be at a minimum with regular ad placements in the Valley Voice

Other important marketing strategies, such as developing strong customer relationships (retention), will utilize a different mix of marketing programs.

Sales Plan

The appropriate merchandise — and the right amount of merchandise– are critical in building a successful clothing boutique. De Kliek will carry 15 merchandise classifications in addition to the Style Assessment. Each month, the sales forecast and open-to-buy (OTB) plan will be reviewed with De Kliek’s inventory service provider, Retail Merchandising Service Automation (RMSA), against the previous month’s sales to ascertain any adjustments and make the appropriate changes. As Open-to-Buy is planned, the percentage of merchandise that is new (i.e., Fresh ratio) will also be considered to ensure that the inventory is, on average, around 40-50% fresh.

Operations

Locations & Facilities

De Kliek will be located in an upscale neighborhood in Los Angeles. A significant proportion of the target market lives in this area.  We will have a medium-sized retail store. We have good relationships with very chic upscale lines so we keep basic looks in the store and can get specialized customer wardrobes within 24 hours. Our services will be so good, De Kliek will also attract women from throughout other Los Angeles neighborhoods as well as the few women who come to LA from out of town to shop.

After De Kliek launches, we will have a website presence where fashionable customers throughout the country can go to learn more about the boutique, the Style Assessment, how to wear certain items for the day, evening and weekend, and make personal shopping appointments. 

Milestones & Metrics

Milestones Table

Key Metrics

Our Key Metrics for our success: 

Inventory measure: Our goal is to turn inventory five times throughout the year and generate $800 in sales per square foot.

Profit Margin Measure: We wish to maintain profit margins at 15-20% through close attention to expenses and cost of goods sold.

Facebook: Promote our new inventory and sales on last season inventory on our Facebook. We will track these customers with an easy to remember code that gives them additional sales. While these are harder to measure they will have an overall effect on sales of 2 to 4 percent. 

Twitter – Monitor and respond to what our customers are saying about us on Twitter. Our clientele are very social media savvy and we need to make sure the buzz is good. This will also have an overall sales  increase of 2 to 4 percent. 

Website – Measure our traffic as it goes through the sales funnel from searching for our website all the way through to making an appt online. We will give our customers the ability to chat with us online or call us with any questions they have before making an appt. We want our customers to feel comfortable trusting us with their style