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Many entrepreneurs are turning to drop shipping these days because of its convenience. You don’t need to have a warehouse, manufacture anything, or promote any specific product individually. Just make sure you market your brand to get attention from your target audience.

But imagine starting a luxurious boutique without any help from social media. You create a physical store, then move on to online sales. What will be your marketing strategy? You would probably scratch your head because you can’t think of any marketing strategies that work without digital platforms. True enough. Modern marketing platforms are so effective that you can’t think of anything else. But Blue One owners, Jarret and Crystal, had to develop innovative marketing ideas when social media wasn’t as big as it is today.

Starting from scratch

Jarret was a former Ford model, and Crystal worked in fashion PR. They were in a relationship for a long time before they started Blue One. But they didn’t let their personal life come in the way of their business. This is something that new entrepreneurs should learn. If you start a business with your partner, keep your personal life aside when making business decisions.

Moreover, it helps to stick to your skill-set instead of interfering with what your partner is doing. For example, Crystal leveraged her experience in fashion PR knowledge to promote the business. Jarret used his experience in modeling to pick clothes and accessories that their customers would love.

When it came to making decisions together, the two stuck to picking unique fashion styles from their vacations. They would shortlist the designs and then decide which ones they should put up in their store. This allowed them to run the business together with any conflict in opinions.

Promoting Blue One

Blue One now has a Facebook and Instagram page. But social media wasn’t so popular when they started Blue One in 2007. How did they promote their brand without social media or any digital marketing strategies? They relied on their customer’s word of mouth. 

Referrals were their biggest promotional hunch. And it wasn’t a big problem for them then because Hamptons is a relatively small town where almost everyone knows each other. If someone bought something from Blue One, they would immediately share the news with their friends. The news would spread quickly about their latest collections.

This continued for a few years before social media broke into the scene. According to Crystal, “It was a breath of fresh air. We never imagined that promoting our business would become so much easier. That doesn’t mean we don’t value referrals. We still go back to the marketing strategy that made us popular. We encourage our customers to share their honest opinions about the products they bought from Blue One.”

Apart from marketing, logistics, and brand reputation, you need the patience to run a luxurious boutique successfully. It took Blue One several years to become one of the best boutiques in Hamptons and NYC. And that’s the biggest lesson anyone can learn about starting an online store: you must have the patience to see your brand grow instead of dreaming of overnight success.