Hello,
Here is our history....My partner and I have a bridal atelier in Europe that is well known in the country, and we sew and sell a lot of wedding dresses throughout the year. However, me and my husband had to move to the US one year ago, and we decided to continue our business here. The ptoduction of the dresses would still be done in Europe, we just going to sell it here. We tried using ebay to sell the dresses but the competition from China with their very cheap wedding dresses is unbeatable. Our dresses are sewn by professional team and are unique design, not a replica. Of course if the client brings a picture with other designer dress that they would like us to sew, we do that as well, but all of the dresses we sell are ours and we have new collection every year.

The problem now is we need an idea how to grow our business in the US, how should we start selling our dresses? We would really like to open our own bridal boutique in the future, but for now this is not possible and we need to start from somewhere. What is the best thing to do in our situation to start selling our bridal dresses here? I would really appreciate your help and advises!

Here is our new collection of 2011 if you are interested to see it.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Versai-Bridal-Couture-Boutique/221584264571923

Hi,

Wow ... those dresses are amazing. As an internet marketing firm I may be able to help. Truth is, in my experience, the BEST way to start a new business will be to network. There are also a TON of internet options but none of them will work as well as getting out and talking to people.

I am not sure where your located but heres where I would start:

#1 - Business Network International ... this is the single best investment we have made.

#2 - Joint venture with florists, wedding planners, cake decorators, photographers etc

#3 - Tradeshows

From a purely internet perspective I would focus on:

#1 - Adwords (Google and Bing) (extremely targeted and confined to a geographic area)

#2 - Facebook advertising ... by the same token as above you can specifically target your prime demographic ... single women from 18-35 living in your location etc etc

#3 - Other "free" advertising options including craigslist and local classifieds.

Again ... we are a successful internet marketing firm and again ... the best option for you will be to focus on relationships. Once you start making sales THEN you can focus on reinvesting in your company and creating a marketing budget.

David GS

All of the suggestions above are excellent ones, something else you might try (even though it may seem like a long shot) is to try to get featured on one of the wedding shows on TLC.

Put together a wedding dress showing, like an art museum would do. Write a press release to all the papers and tv stations, get florists, banquet halls, caters, travel agents to sponsor it. Use the sponsoring dollars to run advertising campaigns.

Have one of the banquet halls donate the space as part of there sponsorship.

Let each sponsor setup table displays next to your gowns. Make it a big galla event!! The more publicity this gets the better it will be for your wedding dress business. Have dresses for sale or one really nice one that can be raffled off if they give you name, address, email, and phone number. Now you are building a good list to market to after the show.

You could do monthly giveaways and put a little box in all your sponsors locations, florist, caterer,banquet halls.

Send out weekly text campaigns to the list you are now building!

Hope this helped, have a Merry Christmas!