Interested in the fashion business but don’t have the capital for a bricks and mortar set-up? Why not try selling your wares online instead? Online boutiques have become popular lately: According to www.emmagem.com, a Malaysian fashion and lifestyle ezine/blog, ther e are more than 500 fashion sites listed in the country. Many of these websites offer clothing and accessories of different types and sizes and target the female web community mostly.

So, what does it take to open an online boutique? Four boutique owners share the ins and outs of running their cyberspace shops.
 

Low capital
Setting up a store online is simple and requires nothing much more than funds to buy your products (or stocks), as the rest of the set-up will consist of daily items such as a camera and an Internet-ready computer. The first thing to do is create a site for shoppers to visit. Azlia Idha, director and founder of getGorgeous, started her shop with her sister, Siti Allia, (pix)through Fotopages, a free, international photo blog site, in June 2007. "We started with Fotopages before registering for our own website and hiring a web designer to make the site look more professional a year later," says the 27-year-old, whose target customers are fashion-savvy Muslim women.Leng Chan, 26, started Shopaholics Unite!, which sells easy-to-wear everyday clothing, by making use of free blogsites such as Blogspot. "My [then] partner and I came up with RM2,000 each to buy our stock of clothes and RM14 to buy mannequins. We took less than two months to recoup our capital." Azlia agrees: "In the beginning, when we were just testing the waters to see if this business could work, we went to retail shops to buy six pieces of clothing that amounted to RM200, which we made back in about half a month."

Stocking up
Stocks are sourced from a variety of places, according to the boutique owners. Chan gets her mass-produced and custom-designed items from local wholesale suppliers in Kuala Lumpur. Janyfer Yeoh, 31, who runs Vintage biri-biri, which sells vintage clothes, says 90% of her stock is used clothing sourced from suppliers in Japan. "Over there, fashion trends change very fast, so it is common for the Japanese to donate clothes to charitable causes in order to create closet space for new clothes. Sometimes, there are also dead stocks from manufacturers, which are also sourced through my supplier. "I also buy thrift clothing and accessories whenever I go for garage sales. Because of that, my wares are one-off pieces and non-restockable."In addition to getting stock from local wholesalers, Azlia also has agents who source clothes from Bangkok, China and Indonesia. "We initially made contact with our suppliers at exhibitions. From there, we got to meet people who could source stock for us."Pricing varies from seller to seller as there are no regulations or guidelines to follow. Although they do take profit margin into account, the sellers also price their stock according to their gut instinct. "There are people who typically sell at twice the price, or 80%, 90% on top of the original price, but I prefer to decide on a price by asking myself, ‘How much would I actually pay for this?’," says Chan.

Building your credibility
As customers cannot physically see the products or meet you, it takes more effort and skill to reassure them. When Chin started her business in November 2007, she promoted her boutique by going to fashion websites such as Emmagem and participated in forums. "I answered questions and gave feedback to the queries on these forums so that people would feel at ease with me and in turn, have more confidence in buying clothes from me. I also sold my products at bazaars so that people could personally check my products. Of course, the bulk of my business comes through word-of-mouth recommendations from existing customers." A good code of ethics and providing good customer service are equally important in reassuring customers about your products. You need to be prompt and patient when corresponding with customers, says Chan. "I usually answer queries within 24 hours. If I happen to be out of town, there will be an automated response system that will notify the sender of my absence."