top of page

How To Start A Luxury Holistic Shop & Earn A Passive Income.

Writer's picture: Missy JayMissy Jay

Updated: May 10, 2024

For some time now, I had always wanted to have my online shop however; as I had no formal knowledge in business, I did not know where to start and make my dream a reality. I finally decided to enrol myself at the university of Youtube.com for the free educational services and content. Now, the challenge I encountered was finding the right teacher or content creator for what I needed. I started watching several videos and to be honest, I did find most of the content creators to be overly enthusiastic in how much money your business will make within a very short time, and this was a very common trail of business content which I came across.


My view and tip to you on earning a passive income is not to make it as your driven intention, solely for the purpose of starting your business. My aim here was to get my boutique plans going and how I can share my talent with the world and in doing so, earn sometime for my time and input and grown my business in time. Well, most of us want to be our own boss and have the financial freedom however; I must say that if you are trying to start a business, the best thing is to ask yourself “why”?


I mean really asking yourself this question and truly evaluate it because, this will be the main motivation and the drive you need to get things in the right order for your business. Why do you want to start this business or why this niche? Is it just for the cash or you want to provide a service that can actually bring something meaningful to the people or provide a service that you are proud to present as your product or share your talent with other likeminded people around the world?


Black tote bag with crystals displayed on it
Missy Jay Boutik Tote Bag - Interactive Product

The fact is starting a business is not as easy as some content creators make it sound. In some videos I saw the trends of the title such as “how you can make money without doing much work”. My question is, is this really true or is this even real? Of course, there are things to be done to gain results and that was the big fat fact that was missing in most of the videos I watched to gain some knowledge about starting a business. Sure, it might be easy to just start as some say but the fact is you really have to do the work! I mean, the hours of content that had the titles like “create your business website in just one hour” didn’t seem to be that way to me as obviously the videos were edited down to an hour or in some cases the videos were longer than the time frame specified on the title or intro. I also find that; the university of YouTube can be addictive and that can be another challenge on its own in terms of time management during my research. In my personal case, I decided to watch most relevant videos to minizine the time spent being distracted by other people’s business which might not be necessarily a good idea to watch. One thing I did come across often among the content creators was, finding your own niche and honing it. So, I did just that!


a drawing of possible logos for my online boutique call MissyJay Boutik
Pencil Sketches of Logo Samples

After almost over a week of visual lecturing and some adverts in between, I decided I wanted to provide a service that I won’t get bored of producing and this has to be something that it's fun for me provide to the world. The main thing is that I just wanted to stay connected to my passion for astrology and spirituality and use the artistic side of me to create products that I can share with like-minded people around the world. Now that I got my niche, nailed it! The next thing was how I wanted to share my artistic skills and combined it with my passion for astrology, then I thought of how I have always wanted to have an online boutique, so the natural direction to go was into clothing, I chose T-shirt and hoodie as my products. Now I can use my art skills and borrow some with the help of other creative artistic platforms for creating graphic and other content, so I chose Canva! Canva provides both free and paid version, so I upgraded my free subscription to the paid version to gain more materials to use. As Canva is very easy and a straightforward platform to use, I jumped on the idea of creating my t-shirt designs. I did get to learn some new tricks from Sarah from Wholesale Ted on her YouTube channel. Like me, if you are looking for a good teacher on YouTube about general business ideals, I believe this is a channel you can learn a lot from just like I did.


MissyJay Boutik logo in gold circle with black text
MissyJay Boutik Logo

Now a recap, I got my niche nailed, got my creative platform sorted, now the next is where do I sell and share my art and products? Well, you guessed it, back to find a tutor from the university of YouTube.com! I must say that although I had seen other content creators talking about this eCommerce website as a service provider, I choose to work with them solely because of my next YouTube teacher and content creator Shannon, from Oso Curly’s YouTube channel. I like that fact that Shannon, does not exaggerate anything within her content, just straight to the point and I do appreciate her practicality and realistic approach to how start a business. Knowing that Shannon uses Shopify.com I learnt a lot about the benefits of this particular ecommerce platform, so I decide to give it a try. I must confess that Shopify does have helpful costumer services representatives and they are always willing to help you resolve any issues you may be experiencing no matter how big or small.


red sweatshirt with astrology and moon design on the left and a pink sweatshirt with a blue and grey dream cater design with blue and white eye
Designed Sweatshirts For MissyJay Boutik

I watched Shannon quite a lot, as I find her content trustworthy and informative especially since we are both based in the UK, I knew I could do with some UK business tips regarding some legalities and things to be considered when starting business. Subjects such as VAT, other taxes, geographic shipping laws and so forth. At this point I was like, phew, I asked myself, how could all this be as easy as some content creators make it out to be? If you are thinking of starting your own online business, try not to get caught up in the idea that you can just get everything done within a day or that you can get things done, quickly. It's simply not true at least not from my findings, research or experience on my online holistic boutique journey so far.


After about two weeks of research and studying, I finally came up with a plan for my shop, yay! Now that I can see my plan on paper, planning all the details, I could think of, I then allocated the days which each task was to be carried out. Now I can put my art skills and my knowledge of graphic and design to work so, I took to my pencil and note pad to come up with some sketches of how I wanted my brand and logo to look, colours, fonts of the logo’s presentation on the website. After a number of sketches, I found my preferred design, then hooped unto my computer and used Adobe Photoshop to create my logo which I had lots of fun creating using several font versions of the idea I had. Now that I have my logo, I made a rough brainstorm of how I wanted my website to look, which I put on paper to visibly see the general ideal of my website, the issue I now faced was that I had to start learning how to use the Shopify website as the eCommerce platform was new to me, but I was prepared to give it a good go, so I did!


Although I have knowledge in website design, this project was an ecommerce shop and that needed a redesigning or at least that is how I envisioned the whole ideal of the customising the theme I wanted to use. This took am another week to get a hang of the tools and features on the platform for how I wanted my design to look in terms of presentation. Omg, I have been so used to designing websites from scratch, like this very website blog you are reading right now that, a simple tweak to make life easy for me was not happening. Shopify was not as easy for me simply because of my past experience in designing and having more control on my design work but now I had to pick a theme and tweak it, that was the main issue I had. After about day for, I started getting the hang of things and tried not to let my perfectionist get in the way of actually getting things done correctly and not get caught up in the little details, but I must confess that I could not help myself.


Like anything new in life, you have to give it a go and keep trying till you get things to be as you want so as had already picked my preferred theme, with time I kept working on my store every day and into the early hours of the next day, which meant sometimes going to bed around 2am or 3am the morning. The thing is, I couldn't wait to wake up the next day to see my vision come to fruition and yet I wasn’t asleep. I would go to bed around 3am and wake up around 8am excited to work on my store which was fun also educating myself as I made small progress each day, yay!


I did eventually manage to get things done, setting up my store and with a lot of support from Shopify technical team. Now that I had done a good job practising getting to understand the platform, I started designing, my products such as hoodies and t-shirts. I then started setting up my boutique. In all I was able to set up and sales started coming in slowly and it was by no means a fast or a quick success because I simply was caught up in making the store look perfect and I forgot the vital part of what I needed to do the most, which was advertising and the promotion of my boutique. As sales were coming in, I then thought of how I could improve my store, I was enjoying creating my dream and I could not wait to wake up each morning to do a bit of tweaking to get my online boutique to look perfect. Quite frankly I just love my shop so much and as I realised, promotion was key, and I also wanted to create more products and share my passion with the world. Upon reflection I decided to take a break and make the necessary changes to make my store look how I wanted to present to the world as I had originally wanted and planned on paper.


black t-shirt with emotional healing written on the left side of this image and the light blue t-shirt with a big colourful third eye design on the right image
MissyJay Boutik Unisex T-Shirt

I went back on YouTube to find more knowledge and this time I did searched for my nice which is apparel shop content creators, and I came across John Santos channel, and I pick up some tips from him about the importance of branding and labelling my products and this was very informative, and I liked this idea. Then I learnt that it wasn’t going to be that simple, therefore I needed to new strategy for my business if I was looking at doing the improvement my it needed to get my store where I want it to be.


I then deactivated my store temporally from the public to take my time and gradually work on my store branding and all that comes with it. This was what I did not consider before starting my boutique. Upon reflection, taking a step back and understanding how best to get my products promoted and presented in the right way and to let potential customers see and understand my brand was key. Other hacks I took from John was to get samples or my product and take my own photos to showcase my product and be my own model and advertise it, so I did just that!


What I learnt as time went by, I realised that I had not talking the cost of my business into account and before I relaunched my store, I had to outline my new business strategy more in details, such as the cost of running a website, domain cost, VAT charges, whether or not to provide free shipping and how that would impact my business as a whole, email hosting, transaction fees, design cost, cost of Canva pro, the cost of my brand label printed on each product and so forth. As you can see the costs adds up so, if you are thinking of starting any type of business, online or in person, do take the cost into account and not think too much of making your product prices as low as possible because this can cost you a lot of loss as your own money will be invested into the business and no profits at all. It's best not to compare yourself with everyone because I did, and this made me lose track of the vision for my store originally.


a gift card in classic black and gold design for shopping
MissyJay Boutik Gift Card

Regardless of whether you are going a limited business, sole trader or not, it’s important to know that you or your business will certainly be charged for any service you are not practically offering by yourself for example, you want a logo for your business but you can’t design it yourself, you need to pay someone else to get this done for you so, remember to do what is best for your business. Competition is good but at what cost? My little experience so far is to be patient and build on your business and be confident that those who understand and appreciate your brand and will eventually find you, if your aim is not a “get rich quick” plan as others try to do.


As I started my boutique journey, I have learnt that running a business is not joke even if it’s a side hassle or a passive income stream and I now have a different understanding for running a business and a profitable business because they are not the same. Now, a quick recap of what to take into consideration for a new start up business:

  1. Fine your niche and research it very well.

  2. Create your brand image.

  3. Have a clear understanding of your brand presentation on website and packing.

  4. Cost of running your business, i.e.: website monthly or yearly fees, domain fees, VAT or taxes charges nationwide or worldwide, your shipping cost, inventory or storage cost if it’s a physical product, virtual office fees if you are not running your business from an actual shop, cost per item that you buy and wish to sell, email hosting and paying yourself for the services you are providing among other things and not forgetting your profit margins for each product you sell.


no evil eye and a rainbow design on a black hoodie on the left image and a human skulk with pink flowers and the text of karmic healing on a maroon hoodie on the right side of this image
MissyJay Boutik Hoodie

As you can see, it’s not as easy as some content creators make it sound like you can start a business in a day, but this is only possible after weeks if not months of a very good research and understanding what you want to convey to your audience and costumers.

I know you are wondering how did it all go? Well, the fact is I did relaunch my boutique on time as planned. I must say that I did start promoting my store on social media before the relaunch and I am still considering having a few platforms, concentrate my energy on two main social media platforms so I can be more effective. I am excited about growing my smally business and acquiring more knowledge in running a passive income business and to expand my consciousness with the world through my art and astrology.


I hope you feel inspired to go for your dreams whatever it may be. Nothing is ever easy especially if it’s new to you but it’s worth giving yourself a chance and the opportunity to live your dream through your reality and that is how to make your dreams literally come true. Don’t wait anymore and start taking the baby steps towards your dreams, plan it, do something about it each day, and you will see it happing. Remember not to get too caught up with the details before you start, because the details will reveal itself once you start and sometimes it may not even be what you might have concerned initially.


There is nothing such as perfection from the get go but that to get things to look and feel perfect, you will need to put in the work however big or small, just make sure you are putting in the right amount of positive energy in whatever you are doing or creating, whether it is a business or just starting anything new in your life. Just start and the rest will follow!


a black and white image of a dark skin woman tying her hoodie with the boutique relaunch date written on the poster image
MissyJay Boutik Relaunch Poster

Featured subject:

Holistic Luxury Retail Shop - MissyJay Boutik


Credits:

Shannon: Oso curly - UK Curly Girl - YouTube

Sarah: Wholesale Ted - Wholesale Ted - YouTube

John: John Santos - John Santos - YouTube

Design Platform: Canva - Home - Canva

Design Software: Adobe - https://www.adobe.com

ECommerce site: Shopify - https://www.shopify.com

Media Platform: YouTube - https://www.youtube.com




a colourful image of assorted clothing of  unisex sweatshirts, hoodies and t-shirts
MissyJay Boutik New Product Page

Recent Posts

See All

Comments


bottom of page