A note from Streamline: We are excited to have a post from Jessie Jarvis at The Boutique Hub. For people in the Boutique industry, The Boutique Hub has been a huge resource in helping retailers learn how to scale their businesses but also in giving a way for boutique owners to connect with one another. It has been our pleasure to partner with them.
There’s an age-old adage that says a man reaps what he sows. While the literal meaning revolves around the idea that the more work someone puts into his crop after he seeds it, the more crop he will reap at the end of the season, it goes much further than that. In every walk of life, the message of a person reaping what they sow rings true—and the boutique retail industry is no different.
Sure, a boutique or brand owner can work sun up until sundown, get all their orders out the door, develop new products, and still have a killer business; but when she sows a relationship with her fellow owners and wants them to succeed as much as she does, that’s when she reaches absolute, paramount success. That is what we call “community over competition”.
Community over competition doesn’t mean putting the success of someone’s business in front of your own on a regular basis. It doesn’t mean forgoing your own happiness to cater to someone else’s. What it means is helping your fellow business owner when needed, without thought. It means bucking the idea of having a business adversary (or adversaries) and knowing that a rising tide lifts all ships. A boutique owner doesn’t need to share all of the tricks up her sleeve, but offering a helping hand to the business that might be falling a bit behind does just as much for her as it does for her counterpart.
Envision an outdoor mall with 4 boutiques, a couple of restaurants, and a wine bar. Each business is successful on its own. They host their own events, which attracts their regular customers, but they never really get outside their own box and break into a new audience. Now imagine that they start working together and coming up with ideas to share their customer bases with one another. Each boutique includes a 10% off coupon for a neighboring restaurant, and the wine bar hosts a Sip-n-Shop every month where each boutique brings in a small sampling of their products. When all business owners work together to host events, give shout-out’s to their neighboring businesses, and promote one another as they promote themselves—now that’s one seriously strong shopping center! Instead of 4 stores, a couple of restaurants and a wine bar, it becomes a destination!
One of The Boutique Hub’s biggest missions is to promote community over competition, in all that we do. 2,000 successful boutiques make for a great retail industry, but 2,000 successful boutiques that work together to promote themselves, their peers, and their industry as a whole? We see that happen daily through our close connection of forums, where owners share information about what has/hasn’t worked for them, collaborate together on photo shoots, have meetups with one another while at Market, and share a close bond with their business counterparts. This type of community is what we’ve worked to create since The Hub’s inception, and we’re so excited to see where it, and the boutique retail industry is headed.
Jessie Jarvis is an Idaho cattle rancher, western fashion influencer, and serves as The Boutique Hub’s Special Projects Manager. When she’s not busy working for The Hub, you’ll find Jessie spending time with her husband and son, or practicing her golf game.
