Charlie Boutique has been tucked along Queen Street West near Claremont for five years, but only recently has the small women's boutique taken the leap online. The reason for the delay was simple. "A lot of independent boutiques can't afford to start an online shop right away," says shop owner Erin Swan. "There's Etsy for independent designers, but there was nothing for independent boutiques."

 

So when Shopcaster literally came knocking on Charlie's door to tell Swan about their new e-commerce platform, one that promised to be so simple she couldn't say no, she immediately jumped on board. 

 

Charlie's is just one of more than 200 stores to join the Toronto-based networking e-commerce site Shopcaster. Instead of offering a pricey custom service, Shopcaster's attractive and easy to use platform allows boutiques to manage an online store entirely by their phone. They snap a photo, upload it to Shopcaster and complete the sizing, fabric, pricing and manufacturing information and voila: the item is posted to their store. The whole process takes about a minute. It's then uploaded to a marketplace, allowing customers to search for products based on location, category, or boutique. 

 

"An increasing per cent of [a boutique's] sales will have to happen online. It's just the way the world is going," says Shopcaster co-founder Judy Sims. "Because we gather them into a marketplace, we provide them a much larger potential than they would have without e-commerce, or if they did e-commerce on their own."

 

In an article in the National Post, it was reported that Canadians spent $18-billion online in 2010. Though this amounts to only 3.4 per cent of Canada's overall retail spending, this number is expected to almost double by 2016.

Swan says having an online shop via Shopcaster "definitely helps," especially in securing sales from outside of the city, and is now part of her business strategy going forward. 

 

Girl Friday is another boutique located almost directly across the street from Charlie's. Since joining Shopcaster, they have been selling to new customers across Canada and the States. "We are a very small store so it wasn't worth it for us to [set up our own online store], but there was a customer here who wanted it. When Shopcaster approached us with how they operate and do all the hard work we were like, sounds great! It reaches a customer that wouldn't necessarily come into the store, it's advertising and also getting more customers, as well as catering to the customers we have already," says Girl Friday manager Symone Sheane. 

 

When an item is purchased online through Shopcaster, the boutique confirms the order, prints off a UPS label and packages the item in a box that has been pre-delivered by Shopcaster. A UPS delivery agent is automatically dispatched to pick up the item the following business day. 

 

Shopcaster started in Toronto, but quickly expanded to include cities such as Vancouver, Montreal and New York.  They embed themselves in neighbourhoods and markets encouraging boutiques that already have an active online presence to sign up. Now anyone can join, but shops have to be approved by Shopcaster. A Toronto carwash shop recently tried to join, and although Sims says their site was pretty, it didn't quite work for Shopcaster's vision for boutiques. 

 

"Initially we were a site that allowed them to display their products online, but over time we came to recognize that an even bigger problem for these retailers was doing e-commerce," says Shopcaster co-founder Judy Sims. "They were being squeezed on one side by big box stores, chains and shopping malls, and on the other side they're being squeezed by new sites like Etsy." 

 

In a world where Target comes to Canada to disappointing reviews and large retailers like Zara are opening online stores, independent boutiques have a unique opportunity to fight back and reclaim some of what makes them different. 

 

"This is where a small boutique can take some of that power back because as long as they've got the cash flow they can control the quality of the goods, they can control their messaging, and most importantly they have what most mass retailers don't, they've got that personalized service," says Jason Dubroy, the VP of shopper marketing at DDB Canada. 
 

"If you can translate that personalized service through the lot, from start to finish, whether its somebody coming in for the first time or if it’s the same customer you've had for 25 years, that's where you're going to be able to win. But you're only going to be able to win by adapting to the change in the space." 
 

Marketplace e-commerce platforms aren't boutiques only venture into innovation. Many use microblogs to extend their community by posting customer-relevant information, while at the same time driving traffic to boutique websites. These boutiques are active on social media and many use YouTube to showcase their store, or hire influencers such as fashion bloggers to promote their brands. But with the addition of a social marketplace to sell their product in a way that can become an extension of their brand, they're in a better position against big box theory. 
 

Dubroy says the real trick for independent boutiques is to be able to take risks without sacrificing "the integrity of what made their boutique special."