You should try to do online sales as well. (Feel free to DM if you need more guidance) host parties at your store, collaborate with other business owners, only use credit to build your business and then pay it off with the proceeds. This will build your credit and allow you to balance credit and cash making your business for resilient to these kinds of market fluctuations. Ensure all your debt is only on your business and not backed by any personal assets. The only way to do this is to build your credit from $1k up to whatever you can think. If you have regular expenses you can build quickly and get regular credit increases until you hit a huge number and don’t have to worry when you have a bad month.

Well retail is cyclical, right? I worked with clients in retail before, and it seems like Black Friday through Christmas is where they made the bulk of their sales. Do you have a plan for how you’re going to approach the holidays, or are you just winging it? This is literally the time of year people come in looking to spend money. There’s a reason why bookstores sell all sorts of $20 crap that isn’t books, and I would make sure you’ve got good gift material in your store.

Also-- side note-- if you’re going to run a business, you have to at least learn how to use a period between sentences. I know it’s Reddit, but it comes off as really unprofessional and makes you look like you don’t know what you’re doing.

If you started off so strong and it tapered then fix whatever is wrong with your shopping experience

Word of mouth should mean increased sales over time if the offer is good and experience good

I’m sure you already know this, but a large amount of clothing stores and boutiques are owned by rich people (particularly, their kids or wives) and they do it so they can have something fun to spend their time on and say they own a boutique, as it sounds cool and impressive.

So you’re already competing with people who don’t have to make any profit.

So, what do you do? I know a few owners and they have had success through

1. Being really good at thrifting and spending their time taking trips across the country and loading up on thrift finds and their good fashion sense.

2. A boutique does a lot of selling online through all the various online platforms for resale.

3. Store operates as a quasi event space that can be rented out.

4. Focus on weddings and sell other clothes as the lesser focus (particularly, for men, as there less ‘good’ options for men out there and many many options for women). Men and their partners care about looking good for their wedding. There is a market to be tapped.

Most of my experience is around thrift and boutique, I’m not sure what your space is. It’s a really tough market.

What kind of clothing are you selling? Resale clothing? Your own brand? Brand new streetwear?

Short term answer is almost always to cut expenses and raise prices.

Long term, you need to find ways to get more customers and improve margins.

Big picture you entered a really tough business. You have to figure out some way to get customers to consider buying from you vs online. It’s not an easy sell.

Marketing is a good idea, but figuring out your brand strategy and your target audience and who your niche is before you market is an even better idea.

There are a ton of retail clothing shops, and many of them are failing. What sets you apart and why? What does your customer base look like? Where can you find them?

I have a branding workbook I send to my clients to help them dial in this vision. Let me know if I can send it to you to help.

Have you collected customer data at the point of sale? If so, maybe a strategic discount to past customers would be helpful.

If you want to be really aggressive, ask them to fill out a short survey in exchange for a discount. Within the survey see if you can get to the bottom of why they came once but haven’t come back again.

Product marketing strategist here.

That’s awesome that business started off great for you but also just wanna say slow seasons are normal.

My main question is are you strictly in person retail or are you also online for e-commerce?

I see someone above suggested marketing, but depending on where you’re at financially and the numbers in your business, hiring an agency might be overkill (and tbh there’s a lot of bad ones).

Learning to create some marketing on your own would probably be your best course of action through social, email marketing, and getting a website setup for better sales conversions. Maybe even running an ad or two. It would help you get more repeat sales and create that more “autopilot” system — not to mention get things rolling again for Black Friday.

Happy to answer any questions, I hope that helps!