Has anyone (or someone you know) opened a bridal shop? If so can you tell me the experiance??

Question

I am very interested in opening up my own bridal shop. Does anybody have any firsthand advice/experiances that I could benefit from?

Answer 1

I worked in one for a few years. It was high end, the dresses were all designer (3,000 - 17,000). Its alot of fun, but you can run into someproblems. There is always that handful or girls that keep looking for a gown, after they put a deposit down, then want their money back, but you've already ordered the dress. That gets alittle messy. Its also VERY important to have THE BEST seamstresses. Thats all the difference in the world. They can take a dress that fits all wrong, and the bride is upset, and fix it!! Alot of your profit will come from the veils, hugh markup there. We use to do trunk shows with the veils every month. The girls that were two months away from there date, would put there gown on, and a head piece designer would spend the day with us, and service all the brides. The amount of money they would spend on a "custom" piece was outragious! Anywhere from 150-2000. we tried the shoe thing, and jewerly, but it didn't fly. We couldn't offer a big enough inventory. We did well with the bridesmaids dresses, but not the mothers dresses. All I can say is work in a bridal salon for a year or two to make sure you know what your getting into. Good Luck!