How Can I Start an Online Baby Boutique? (6 Steps)

Apply for a sales tax permit and a federal tax identification number. Some wholesale vendors will require that you have these in order to purchase their goods. Particularly if you are going into business with your husband or someone else, consider forming a Limited Liability Company (LLC).
Choose an E-commerce site to host your online boutique. Volusion.com offers an entire package that includes your domain name, shopping cart and web hosting. Corecommerce.com is another E-commerce site that offers packages---both of these sites offer business email addresses, website templates (and the ability to use your own design), marketing tools, accounting tools, data feeds, Google AdWords coupons, the ability to create coupons or newsletters for your store and the ability to accept a number of different payment methods, such as Paypal, Google Checkout and credit cards. GoDaddy.com allows you to pick and choose the services you need, such as a domain name or shopping cart.
If you aren't familiar with SEO and online selling, an all-inclusive site such as Corecommerce.com may be the way to go. Volusion.com and Corecommerce.com offer a free 30 day trial. Vendio.com is a hosting site that allows you to operate your store for free. However, you won't have an exclusive domain name and your URL will be lengthy. This is important---a shorter URL such as Cutebooties.com is easier to identify than one that includes the hosting site's name and additional information, such as Vendio.com/stores/Cutebooties.com.
Set a theme for your store when selecting or designing your website. Choose a catchy name and logo for your online boutique. Familiarize yourself with your products. Create an 'About Me' page that includes your business history, vision and goals. Detail your shipping and return policy on a 'Shipping and Returns' page. Create a Privacy Notice page that details how you will use your customer's information.
Locate suppliers. Look for baby gear closeouts on eBay and other auction sites. If you don't already have specific brands in mind or you intend to design your own gear, contact American Apparel for basic wholesale baby gear. Also contact websites such as Children's Wholesale or Wholesale Kid for purchasing wholesale baby clothing, shoes and accessories. Until you know what will be a hit, limit your purchases to no more than 10 to 15 items of each style.
Take high quality images of your inventory. Include relevant information in your product listings such as clear descriptions, sizes, colors and clothing or shoe materials.
Promote your store. Thoroughly read through your website host's advertising tools. Take advantage of the Google AdWords coupon if offered. Submit your baby product feeds to Google. Your host site may have an easy way to do this; otherwise; you can visit Google.com and import them yourself (see Resources). Take advantage of Google Analytics, which you can use to analyze your traffic. Identify which key words (products) bring in the most customers.
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How to Start a Clothing Store With Only Four Thousand Dollars

Purchase a website domain, hosting service and shopping cart system that allows you to upload products. This will cost you about $100 plus about $15 per month for web hosting. Hire a web designer to create an attractive e-commerce website design for your new online clothing store. This will likely be one of your most expensive expenditures---expect to pay at least $500-$1,000 for a good web designer. (See 'Resources' below for a site where you can find more on hosting services.)
Apply for a merchant account that can be linked to your website to accept credit card payments from your customers. You can also open a P.O. box and list it on your website to accept check and money order sales from your customers. The initial fee to open a merchant account will be around $100. You will also pay a monthly service fee of about $20 to $30. A post office box will cost about $50 per year. (See 'Resources' for more on merchant accounts.)
Determine the type of clothes that you want to sell in your new clothing store. You can focus on a small niche (such as goth wear) or choose to offer a department-store type of selection for your customers, including men, women, juniors and children.
Next, find a clothing distributor who will drop ship individual orders to your customers (see 'Resources' below for a site where you can find these companies). This way you won't have to pay anything upfront--you only pay the distributor when you receive an order from the customer. You act as a middleman.So let's say you receive an order from your customer. You take the customer's money, then forward payment to the distributor, who will arrange to ship the clothing from the distributor warehouse directly to the customer's home. You might be charged a small initial fee to start this type of arrangement with the distributor. You can also use clothing that you have manufactured yourself, but the investment in clothing, sewing equipment or a manufacturer to make your clothes will likely cause you to exceed your initial budget of $4,000.
Once your website is designed, upload your chosen clothing pieces to your website. Categorize your products by type (for example, purses, shirts, jeans, dresses, elegant wear, men's and women's). The only investment here will be time, unless you choose to hire someone to take care of this task.
Publish your clothing store online. Your final investment will be in generating web traffic to your online clothing store. Hire an SEO marketing firm to take care of the content for your site to draw in hits from search engines. You can find good SEO help for about $500 to $1,000 per month. Place ads with Google Adwords, which will cost you $5 to set up. You will then set your budget for how much you want to spend each month for ads.
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