Live with Glen Recap!

Here's a quick recap of Glen's live today - you can watch the whole replay HERE!
If you'd like to learn more about Ave Flex and Ave 3PL services, that part of the video starts around 39:30. We'll release more info on both of those options in the weeks to come!
----------------------------------------------------
It’s a pretty wild time to be a boutique owner. We truly are so appreciative that you choose to partner with us and definitely don’t take it for granted!
Comment Sold Integration
  • We’re still on track for completion prior to the June deadline. There might be some features that have to be finalized later (i.e. on-hand inventory), but the most important functionality should be ready to go.
  • We are working through some specifics on how pending preorders will be impacted during the transition and will pass that info along as soon as we have the final answers.
Boutique Hub Summit
  • Ave was invited to attend the Boutique Hub Summit happening in Dallas next month! We will have a booth and will be offering free headshots to any shops who would like one.
  • If you’re planning to attend the conference or will be in town for the June Apparel Market, come by and see Glen and Ashlie! We’d love to meet you in person.
Updates
It’s feeling like such a pivotal time in the boutique industry. Ave is in a unique position to have regular conversations with both vendors and shop owners. We hear regularly that a lot of businesses on both sides are really struggling right now.
So first we just want to say that if this is you, you’re definitely not alone. We’re all on this crazy ride together and just doing our best to get creative while we weather the storm.
The reality is that your sales are our sales. So when things are tough for you guys, they’re tough for us too. So like everyone else we’ve been working hard to reduce expenses and diversify our service.
Reducing Expenses
We sincerely wish that everything could stay the same. That we could continue to offer extravagant resources and essentially unlimited inventory at no cost. But we see lots of business closing and we really don’t want to be one of them!

There are a number of ways we have been working to decrease our overhead during this sales slump:
  1. Team + Payroll restructuring 
  2. Vendor curated launches (previously known as Pilot) have been instrumental in allowing us to continue offering such a wide variety of products each week. We are brainstorming ways to add some more curated releases back into the rotation, but for now you’ll continue to see quite a few vendor curated launches each week.
  3. Creative Assets. Right now we’re spending 40k-50k/month to produce all of the content that you know and love. Unfortunately our current sales just don’t justify such a huge investment.
    • Starting with this week’s new releases, you’ll notice that many items are shot on just one model instead of two. Judy Blue and 111 North will still feature two different models but the other styles will be dialed back to one.
    • Silent model videos will also be paused for now. This allows us to significantly cut down on the cost of each photo shoot while still making sure you have beautiful photography for all products on your websites and socials.
    • At the end of this month you’ll also see a decrease in the number of styles that Amanda and Kirra are shooting each week. Their content is incredibly valuable to us, but the increased volume of items they have been responsible for with the Pilot launches was just not financially sustainable. There will still be fit videos for a large percentage of items but not every single one (i.e. not 20 different Lizzy tops every Friday).

Amanda + Kirra videos and model photography are the most consistently requested assets from our shops. So we really tried to find a balance that kept both of those offerings intact as much as possible.

Diversifying
We’ve also been busy behind the scenes layering in some new options and services to support boutiques in all different phases of their business.
  1. We’ve added in a full blown Third Party Logistics (or 3PL) service. Where shops continue to purchase their own inventory, but we process, store and ship it for them. This allows shops to combine shipping on orders that contain both drop shipping items and their own in-stock inventory.
  2. We also launched a brand new co-op program in April called Ave Flex. We have a small group of shops who have been beta testing this service and so far it has been going really well. We hope to be able to expand that in the near future to shops who are interested! 
We appreciate all of your flexibility and understanding as we’ve worked to navigate the challenges of this market. Change of any sort can be tough, but please know that any adjustments we are making are because we want to continue serving you well during these crazy times. 
Back to Announcements