Lina Boutique
Having already helped her parents launch their own business in December last year, young entrepreneur, Irina Okhotnikova, decided she would like to begin her own retail business.
Irina was just 23 years old and moved to Southampton from Russia with her parents in 2000. Having spent a couple of years studying and helping her parents set up their own business in St Mary’s Street, Irina decided that there was an opportunity to bring a more Eastern European flavour to Southampton.
With the assistance of Rick Harwood, Business Coach at SO14 Enterprise, Irina spent 8 months of intensive planning, forecasting and saving up money for her new enterprise. Finally, all that hard work came to fruition and Lina Boutique opened its doors in October 2005.
Lina Boutique sold imported clothes from Lithuania made by many top designers in Eastern Europe. Unique, one off designs for both ladies and gentlemen offered individuality to customers, who preferred to stand out from the crowd. All the clothes on sale were made from natural materials, along with numerous handmade items such as ceramic and wooden plates, mugs and ornaments.
Sadly and an important lesson to anybody looking at starting a business, it can be a struggle to build a business and establish a regular customer base. You need to identify your potential customers and target them effectively. To do so, you must be prepared to invest heavily in promotion and marketing. Irina did not have enough revenue coming through the business to reinvest in this area and couldn’t afford to continue investing her own money.
Many businesses can take anything between 1-3 years before they will start to make a profit and this can mean huge sacrifices. Irina decided to call it a day and is returning to university.
Irina said “It was a long hard journey and I knew there would be tough times as I tried to establish my new business in Southampton city centre. I had a lot of support from my family and friends as well as my business coach.”
She continued “starting your own business is a real challenge, running it successfully is an even bigger challenge, I’m pleased I gave it a go, as I would have always been left wondering what could have been."