Thinking about starting or growing your boutique in 2026? Maybe you have questions and wish you could pick the brain of a seasoned boutique owner or retail expert with your most frequently asked questions (FAQ's)? You're in the right place! In this video, retail expert and founder of Boutique Training Academy, Emily Benson, answers the most frequently asked questions every boutique owner has... from photography and vendors to shipping, social media, and SEO... and more! 

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#EmilyBenson #BoutiqueBusiness

You're starting a boutique or retail store and you're here thinking, okay, I just have

these like random little questions that I need quickly answered and I'm here to answer

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those questions for you.

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In this video, I'm gonna go through everything from free shipping to talking about vendors

to just these odds and ends questions that a lot of you guys are sending in.

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And why should you listen to what I have to say?

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Well, hi, I'm Emily Benson.

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I'm a retail strategist and inventory expert.

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I've written two books in the retail industry, the first one being the number one

bestselling book on how to start a boutique in the world.

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So you're in good hands and I am so happy to be talking about some of this stuff because I

want to just get it out of the way.

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Like, let's just go through these quick questions.

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Okay, so here we go.

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Question one.

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How do we photograph items for the store?

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Are we using a professional?

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Are we using a DSLR camera?

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How are we getting good quality pictures for our website for marketing?

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If you're starting out and you don't have a huge budget, I'm gonna be so honest with you,

your iPhone is perfect.

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iPhones, uh Samsung, whatever phone, Android phones, they have really beautiful cameras

and you are so lucky if you have one to be able to just take good pictures on it.

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Now, what I will say is, I would love for you to go and look at brands that you love where

your customer's also shopping and see what kind of photos they are taking.

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There's a couple of different.

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kind of styles of photography.

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have fashion photography.

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We have more editorial photography.

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And then we have true just like.

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product photos.

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They're very different and you do need a little bit of a mix of all of them.

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So if I were you or if I were me starting out a new retail store, I would honestly go out

with a friend.

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Go out with someone you know that has a good eye that can kind of take some pictures with

you.

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And if that means you're trading clothes or you're paying through bartering, that's okay

too.

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Remember you're just starting up and you want to get the best first shot that you can.

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So we're using our phone.

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Maybe we're using a camera if we're like really good at it.

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but we're trying to kind of bootstrap this and do it on our own.

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If you have unlimited budget, would you hire a photographer still?

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Maybe, I might.

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If I needed the colors to be like exactly right on my website, I might work with a

photographer.

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If I knew the photographer could turn images around pretty quickly, yeah, I might work

with a photographer.

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Often though, we see that turnaround time is like two weeks.

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It doesn't work for how quickly we move in retail and it's easier to just get dressed up

and take your own photos.

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So you don't need a photographer.

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If you are one, if you have one, if a friend can help you, awesome.

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Do it, great, but you don't need it.

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Question number two that I get all the time is, I have to insert something here?

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So often I hear, do I have to do live sales?

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Nope.

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Do I have to mention the name of the vendors who I'm buying this from?

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Not necessarily.

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I will say there are some vendors where there are more prestige vendors you want to talk

about the fact that you're carrying them, but a typical LA vendor that you're going to run

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into a magic or unfair on fashion go.

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You don't have to say who they are what they do.

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Honestly, I think it's kind of silly when boutiques do that and I know that they do it

because there are customers that like.

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love a certain brand or know a certain brand fits them.

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If there are brands that are like denim brands or sort of more higher price items, things

that like really feel like, someone would get attached to the brand, you can totally

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mention it, but you don't have to.

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And honestly, at the end of the day, your business and your brand is the most important in

terms of the hierarchy.

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So I wanna just be so clear that like, yes, you can talk about the brands that you're

buying, but more importantly, I wanna talk.

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you to talk about your brand.

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If you're in the startup phase, I want to make sure that you know I have a one hour free

webinar where I walk you through how to get started.

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It's called how to start a successful clothing boutique business.

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If you want to watch it, it's available on demand.

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All you need to do is type in start below and we'll put a link.

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It also includes a 30 minute Q &A.

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So it's a lot of great learning.

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It's a lot of

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this stuff that I talk about really put together in a cohesive way.

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So like you feel so confident to go out and start that boutique business because I think

these little things like we find them getting in our way and we find that like, yes, it's

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important to talk about this stuff.

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It's important to talk about the like sort of in the weed stuff.

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But overall, like if you're running your business.

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using best practices from a retail perspective, then you're going to be successful.

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Oh, another should I want to talk about is the do I have to be on every platform?

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Should I be on this?

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Should I be using every social media?

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No.

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be on one social media, maybe two where you know your ideal customer is.

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And then I would also recommend doing something that's more evergreen or search engine

based.

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So make sure your Google listing is really good.

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Maybe you want to start using Pinterest because it's more evergreen.

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If you actually have Shopify, you can automatically have Shopify send your items over to

Pinterest for you every time you post them.

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So no brainer, turn that on if you use Shopify.

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But something like Pinterest, something like YouTube even is a great place to have

evergreen content.

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You guys are watching my videos from

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like three years ago and I'm still building an audience and I'm still finding new people

because of that.

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A lot of people will also ask me should I like hire someone to do SEO for my website?

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I'm gonna say yes and no.

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I mean if you are naming your items really well using terminology that people are

searching, if a customer comes to Google and types in like white maxi dress, yours might

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come up.

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Okay, what I'm gonna tell you though is that there are other big brands paying a lot of

money to get theirs higher in the search.

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So does SEO matter?

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Like yes and no.

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What I think the SEO that most matters is if you are a pop-up shop or you're in a like a

collective or if you have a brick and mortar, you do wanna pop up when someone Googles

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boutique near me or a boutique in Boston.

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You wanna pop up with that.

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So to add those things on your website,

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Really the easiest place to do it is right on that front page.

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Just go to the bottom of your Shopify site, you know, right on the front landing page,

whether Shopify square, whatever you're doing online and at the bottom in the footer, add

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some of these key terms.

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You can even have something like ChatGPT write you an SEO driven search engine optimized

description of what you do so that you can put that on a few different pages on your site.

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The thing about SEO that just to know and why people talk about it is essentially the web

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is searching all the time these web crawlers from Google from YouTube all these search

engines they're actually going out and they're crawling on the internet and they're

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bringing the data back so that when a user does come and search for something it has the

most recent up-to-date like internet gossip for the person searching so the more you

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update your website the more you add

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terms that you think people are going to be searching for, especially if it's like more

local, if you're in a certain state, if you're in a certain county, a certain town, all of

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those things, yeah, add them on your website because that's what Google is going out and

searching for and then bringing back and feeding to the user.

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If you are going to be shipping items, if you're online only, if you're brick and mortar,

don't worry about shipping yet.

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Brick and mortar, let's like worry about your store set up.

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Let's worry about your friend forward table.

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Let's worry about

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a of the other things to get your word out there.

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But if you are online and you are shipping a lot.

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A couple of tips for you.

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So the first question we get all the time is, should I do free shipping or not?

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My honest to God answer is, I don't care what you do, just make sure it's paid for

somewhere in your back end.

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whether you are building it into your retail price, whether you're building it into your

margin and then saying we're doing free shipping, or you're gonna maybe like split it with

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a customer.

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So you add a few dollars to every retail price and then you charge like $4 flat rate

shipping, $6 flat rate shipping.

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great.

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I will recommend for any shipping that we're using bags, not boxes.

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It's always going to be cheaper to ship in a poly bag.

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We love a good recycled bag.

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We love something made out of post-consumer recycled material or something that's

compostable.

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So we are thinking about being more sustainable, but that like sort of plastic envelope is

always going to be the cheapest way to ship.

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Now,

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The other piece of this though is that if you are shipping something that's more breakable

like jewelry or gift wear or shoes, it's going to be more expensive.

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It's going to be more complicated to make sure that it ships well, but you're a smart

person.

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You're going to figure that out.

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And what I always say is pretend you got an order, pack it up, bring it to the post

office, have them weigh it, have them measure it.

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see how much it costs.

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Now, what you might want to do, and this is something that I'm not going to give you, so

you can search on the internet elsewhere, but you may want to set up your system so that

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you enter the weights of every item into your POS system, and then it connects with USPS

or it connects with FedEx or it connects with the carriers of your choice.

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through your POS system.

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So I'm gonna talk Shopify talk here because Shopify is sort of best in class for doing

this.

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So Shopify, as you start to connect the backend, it's gonna have you select some carriers

to use.

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Now,

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Remember, you need to be able to somehow get this to the carrier.

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So most often people are using the United States Postal Service, right?

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But if you live near a FedEx, you live near UPS, you may want to set up an account with

them.

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You may go talk and say, hey, I'm a small business.

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They always want to work with small businesses.

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So I would highly suggest if it's FedEx, if it's UPS, if it's DHL, depending on where

you're shipping and how you're shipping, this is going to take a little bit of research,

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but...

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Again, we see a lot of people just use the post office because we all have one in town.

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Now, at first, you may want to take everything to the post office and ship it as you start

to like understand how the business rocks and rolls.

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Or you could go big and get your own uh Shopify printer, right?

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That prints out all your labels and then you organize and ship and your goods and then

just drop them off in bulk or schedule a pickup from USPS to come get your stuff.

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So what I'm going to tell you is...

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It doesn't matter how you ship and how you charge to ship as long as number one, you're

somehow paying for that shipping.

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It's not like coming out of your bottom line.

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I don't care how it gets paid for.

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That's the most important with shipping.

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And number two is that you're doing it in the most efficient way and the most trackable

way and the most reliable way.

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Okay.

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So you do want to have some sort of tracking turned on for whatever you're using.

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A lot of e-commerce boutiques are now including what's called route or like

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package insurance where you pay an extra dollar and it adds an extra level of insurance

on, I would definitely suggest that because there are gonna be issues if you're shipping a

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lot of stuff, things get lost, people move, like things happen, okay?

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So shipping is kind of the like annoying part of, I think of having a boutique business

where you're online, but once you get the hang of it, like it's no big deal.

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So don't worry too much about these things.

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Remember everything is like Google-able, figure-out-able.

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biggest piece of it is that you're making money, you're being efficient, and also you're

shipping as quickly as you can.

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People are still wanting things quickly.

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And so just make sure that you're you get an order, you pack it and you ship it.

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Then you ask for that feedback and you ask for those reviews and then it becomes circular.

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These are some of the odds and end questions that I get a lot.

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If you have other ones, post them below.

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I would love to make a video that's just like pure reaction to what your questions are.

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So if I'm not answering what you need,

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post down below.

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And like I said earlier, if you are in startup phase, I have a one hour webinar called how

to start a successful clothing boutique business.

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It is for you.

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And I want to encourage you, even if you don't sell clothing in particular, still sign up

for it.

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All you have to do is give us your email address and then we will give you immediate on

demand access to the entire one hour free training plus a 30 minute recorded Q and a that

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I did with.

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people just like you who are just starting up.

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So it's gonna be really helpful for you.

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A good 90 minute chunk.

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I wanna say we also include a workbook.

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So it's a lot and it's for free.

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All you have to do is comment, start right down below and we'll give you that link so you

can get it.

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All right, don't let any questions, any concerns hold you back from getting started.

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That is the most important thing is like, let's just get going.

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Let's get you going.

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Let's get you testing out things.

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And the sooner you start, the sooner you can start to figure out what's going on.

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and grow that boutique business.

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So I'm happy to be here alongside you.

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Here's to making lots of friends and making lots of money in boutique land together.

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Have a great day.

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I'll see you on the next one.

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Bye.