Take Your Online Business Boutique from $0 to your first $1,000 with Shopify

If you’re keeping up with projects that I’m working on, you’ll see that one of them that my wife and I took on was Bottega Collection, a women’s clothing boutique (we since sold the business).

We chose to use Shopify as our tool of online sales platform choice to run it and I wanted to write this post in order to explain why so that you can see if it’s the right fit for your small business or new side hustle.

Shopify is a full e-commerce platform tool that you can use to create your online store.
If you have a physical product to sell, this is a great outlet for you to use.
And if you are doing business internationally, you might want to look at offshore e-commerce solutions.

But with Shopify, all of the items that you’d have to figure out — payment processing, order fulfillment, inventory management — are all done on the back end of the Shopify platform.

Here are some of the highlights of what Shopify did for our women’s clothing boutique and why we chose it as our tool:

syncing of our inventory
payment handling
simple setup
mobile payments option
ability to provide coupon codes
a free Facebook store
ability to add apps (many for free)

Let’s discuss these a bit further and why we find them so useful.

Syncing of our inventory: Once you load your inventory into Shopify, Shopify tracks that inventory. So if you sell a dress or other item from your website (or in-person using their mobile app!) Shopify will automatically update your inventory.

Payment handling: There are lots of payment processing systems out there (PayPal, Square, etc.) and Shopify also integrates with a payment processing system so that you don’t have to worry about doing so yourself.

Simple Setup: You can literally be up and running the same day. If you’re familiar with WordPress, then you’ll find the back end of Shopify fairly easy to design and navigate. And if you have questions, the support is excellent. I had what I considered to be a complicated issue, but I was stoked when I was able to hop right on the phone with a Shopify consultant and get it handled in under 10 minutes.

Mobile payment options: Just like most payment processors (PayPal, Square, etc.) you have the ability to collect payments on the go. For a women’s clothing boutique, this is perfect for trunk shows and other in-person sales opportunities. Shopify has its own branded card reader (you have to purchase additional ones). The cool thing is that using it along with the mobile app (currently only for apple ios) allows your inventory to be synced.

Ability to provide coupon codes: We are able to provide our ladies with coupon codes. We can have them activate and expire on cue. We can give out specific codes to groups or individuals. You also have the ability to allow customers to purchase gift cards but this doesn’t come with the basic account.

A free Facebook store: There is no effort needed on your part. All you have to do is install the app and your customers can now shop from your small business boutique directly from Facebook!

Ability to add apps (many for free): There are tons of great apps, many of them for free. Email newsletter integrations, coupon code pop-ups, order fulfillment and printing shipping labels; there are over 800 apps in the app store, many great apps starting with a FREE price tag.

All in all, Shopify is a great option for businesses like women’s clothing boutiques that sell physical products and it’s also a major player that runs major online e-commerce platforms.

Shopify is just one of almost 20 ways to make an extra $1,000 in a month.

It doesn’t matter whether you do $1,000 in revenue per month or $1,000 per hour. Shopify has a solution that will work awesome for you.