Boutique Management: Great Scope for Novice Fashion Designers
Boutique is a word used in French, means a small shop. Which derives ultimately from the Greek ἀποθήκη (apothēkē), which means “store house”. In recent days students were passed out from Fashion Design colleges, intended to start a small shop with sophisticated facilities, exclusively doing fashionable garments as per their customers’ body size with appropriate fit consideration.
Satisfied customers are always referring to their relatives and friends about the garments are made in a particular boutique. Slowly, new customers’ numbers will be increased and business will be flourished. Fashionable women’s wear always made in boutique. Customers’ satisfaction plays a vital role to bring more new customers through an old customer of the firm.
Many of their boutique products are normally displayed in their windows as display to attract their new customers entering in to shop to place the order, day by day their business will become be flourished. The secret of running more successful boutique is really based on their customers’ satisfaction. Quality based sewing process; customers’ satisfaction of fitting will always bring success. Rapid growth can be achieved in short time.
Recently, the term “boutique” has begun to be applied to mass-market items that are either niche or produced in intentionally small numbers to be sold at very high prices. This can be referred to as boutique manufacturing. Although some boutiques specialize in hand-made items and other unique products, others simply produce, women’s’ gown, salwar-kameez and relevant latest fashion trend focused and stylized dresses are made, and other fashion accessories in artificially small runs and sell them at high prices.
Even the foundation wear like budget oriented brassieres with different sizes and colours, briefs,nighty,maxi,night -suit for women, lingerie’s, knitted active/sports -wear, Hand kerchiefs,perfumes,can also be showcased in the boutique will be the customers attraction to buy in one stop shopping to increase the business turnover.
Store display, window display, visual merchandising to be introduced often to the seasonal trend based to attract the customers considered to be more important. Fabrics – swatches library in a small level to explain their customers and to motivate them to make their clothes as per fashionable trend. Boutique branded label, wash care label, are essentially to be placed in customers clothes are always good.
Customers satisfaction plays an vital role to bring more new customers through an old customer of the firm.
Duties and Responsibilities of the Boutique Manager:
- Administer all floors and ensure effective control on same and achieve all personal targets and administer all interactions with clients from beauty ambassadors and monitor all unit transactions.
- Train all boutique associates and ensure optimal utilization for all tools and resources and maintain an efficient client base and perform community outreach and maintain news on all launches.
- Maintain all display according to marketing standards and ensure replenishment of same.
- Manage appropriate cleanliness of store and manage all communication with district manager for trends and inventory.
- Provide required training to boutique staff and ensure compliance to all company procedures and policies and prepare efficient schedule to achieve all business objectives.
- Evaluate all payrolls and ensure optimal level of staffing to meet all peak hour traffic for clients and administer all expenses and evaluate all profit and loss statement on monthly basis.
- Select and hire staff to vacant positions and interview individual to ensure optimal skills for position and provide required training for efficient working.
- Provide training to all employees for all product knowledge.
- Ensure adherence to operational standards and evaluate strengths for all Boutique team and evaluate performance and provide feedback for staff.
- Maintain professional environment in boutique at all times and ensure achievement of all monthly sales and service targets and develop strategies to increase number of club members.
- Assist staff to provide optimal services to all customers and administer all shifts and ensure compliance to all cash collection procedures.
- Monitor and prepare inventory for physical staff and place weekly orders and organize all PR events for boutique and ensure achievement of all business targets for boutiques.
- Administer all sales strategies for boutique and ensure accuracy and effectiveness of all customer transactions and monitor all complaints and provide effective resolution.
- Prepare team for each shift and evaluate work at all times to ensure adherence to individual competency of all staff.
- Manage and deploy all resources for everyday boutique work and utilize all resources to ensure smooth operation and documents all activities for each shift.
- Ensure compliance to all Boutiques –in-Shop operations and manage collection of all cash as per procedure and maintain stock inventory on monthly and quarterly basis.
- Oversee all merchandising and display windows and organize various special events and ensure achievement of all objectives through same.
- Participate in everyday meetings and provide formal training if required and prepare all weekly and monthly reports.
Supervisor Duties and Responsibilities in Boutique:
- Manage a team of sales professionals to achieve operational objectives.
- Provide guidance and support to sales staff to perform their duties effectively.
- Supervise the monthly attendance, staff scheduling properly
- Ensure that the sales staffs team follows boutique standards and guidelines for operational efficiency.
- Provide support to resolve any problems faced by the sales person and inform the Management to recruit staffing and supply needs for all departments inside the boutique.
- Provide support in recruitment, evaluation and training of staff members.
- Evaluate current operations to identify and implement process improvements.
Benefits and disadvantages OF BOUTIQUE
The key advantages of boutique manufacturing in comparison to traditional factory manufacturing with batch fabrication, large or mass production are as follows:
- Affordable investment in boutique set up
- More flexibility during garment manufacturing
- Quick alteration of product types produced on every workplace or production line
- Helps build to order without the necessity of using many pre-assembled components; creation of value caused by assembly takes place mainly at the end of the production flow.
- Allows an unachieved level of product individualization
- Modern trend of younger generation prefer the fashionable garments are made through the boutique manufacturing closes the gap between piece production and small batch/low volume production. The workflow organization of a boutique manufacturing entity can be a mixture of both – elements of jobbing or batch production, however involving higher standardization than the first one.
