Business can be a lonely game, but it doesn't have to be.

Welcome to Boutique Chat, where we explore community over competition and how to scale your company with the balance and the happiness that we all seek.

We'll hear from product-based businesses of all types, retailers, e-commerce, and wholesale brands,

along with industry experts shaping the future of our industry.

I'm your host, Ashley Alderson from the boutique hub, and I can't wait to chat.

Hey, guys, it's you and me back for a five-minute Friday,

and I wanted to come with a really

simple reminder that you probably already know this week, but it's what you need to do when

you're looking at a ton of unsold inventory. Now, here's the deal. I think, and no shame in this

game, but so many of us in this industry, boutique owners, retail owners

of all types, are a little bit of compulsive shopers. Are you a compulsive shoper? You love to shop

and you love to keep bringing in the new, right? Nothing wrong with that. Your customers love you

for that, right? They admire your taste. They appreciate your curation. But the downside to being a compulsive shopper is

we get so stuck on the hamster wheel of what's new that very quickly things become old in our

mind. And they become old in our mind long before they become old in the minds of our customers.

Now, if you're a live seller, this is especially true for you

because it feels like you have just this enhanced view of the energy around what's new and what's

already been launched. And so what happens when we get in this trap and on this hamster wheel is

we compulsively just keep buying. And we look at all of our unsold inventory,

and rather than ask the very important question of,

well, why didn't this inventory sell?

Instead, we trick ourselves into thinking,

...