ATLANTA BUYING TRIP & BOUTIQUE SUMMIT RECAP
Share
Hello again there babes! I’ve been SO busy this past week in Atlanta, GA for some pretty amazing events. As a boutique owner, I am apart of a group called The Boutique Hub, which is a community of boutique owners who come together in the spirit of “Community Over Competition.” You would think that when I see other boutique owners, we would snub our noses up at each other… but NO! We are actually BEST friends… because of The Hub! We share goals, ideas and horror stories.
My mom (who is also my business partner for those of you who don’t know) got to Atlanta on Sunday afternoon. When we got there, we met up with my BEST friend in the whole world, Amanda. She happens to be living in ATL this Summer, so she came out with us and our boutique pals to a rooftop bar. We may have drank too much Cabernet for one night but it was SO much fun!
The Summit happens once a year and it was the second time my mom and I attended it. This year it was in Atlanta, on Monday & Tuesday, right before the apparel market (which was Wednesday-Saturday). The Boutique Summit is a basically a conference where there are breakout sessions, workshops, motivational speakers, and best of all.. a reunion for us to all see each other again. It grew SO much since just last year. I believe there was about 300 attendees there last year and 800 this year (I’m probably off, but it was something around there). The Summit this year was truly one of the best things I have experienced in my life. I felt SO inspired, fired up and motivated for the future of my boutique and the entire boutique industry as a whole.
As the Summit came to an end and a lot of my boutique friends traveled back home, my mom and I stayed to shop at market for some more Summer styles for Vogue Society Boutique and to get ahead on Fall buying. We decided to stay the whole entire week and shop the market Wednesday-Saturday. We usually only do market for 2, maybe 3 days.. but we really wanted to take our time to find the BEST styles at the BEST prices with the BEST quality (always our mission at market). We also wanted to try out some new vendors and take a look at some that we have never worked with before.
MARKET DAY 1
We started out STRONG and EXCITED on Wednesday, placed a ton of orders, although getting a late start on the day because we stayed out late after the Summit the night before. We ended the day with a quick bite at our hotel bar and took a nap for like 2 hours that night (LOL… we were BEAT)!
MARKET DAY 2
On Thursday, we headed back to market after getting some Zzz’s and we shared the experience a bit on a LIVE Facebook video! I love doing fun social posts like that! After checking out a ton of vendors, all the styles started looking the same (EVERYTHING is leopard and snakeskin… look, I LOVE them both… but I hit my quota on that and needed to move on)! My mom & I ended the day by having lunch with some boutique friends and sharing some awesome laughs and stories.
On Friday, we had our last full day at market. We made some great new relationships with vendors and then got to catch up with my bestie one more time over margs!
MARKET DAY 4
Saturday was our final day in ATL.. at this point was SO missing my pups and ready to head home. Before we took off back to Sarasota, we actually had some extra time to head to market ONE more time before we left! We finished up our buying, took some pics and then we were off to the AirPort to get home.
I seriously had such an amazing time. I’m sad it is over but HAPPY to be home! I am also REALLY excited for the future of VSB. I mean REALLY excited that my heart FLUTTERS as I write this. That is when you know you chose the right career. I have so many ideas and thoughts about where I want to go with our brand in the next few months. I am going to keep my head down and my heart open and GET ROLLING on these ideas. Watch out world… here we come!