Who is Tara?

Meet Tara Austin, Founder of Ruthie Grace Boutique!

About Ruthie Grace Boutique

Named after founder Tara Austin’s grandmothers, Ruthie and Grace, Ruthie Grace Boutique prides itself on community, excellent service, and instilling confidence in every customer by selling fashionable clothing and accessories, showing women that when they feel beautiful, their inner beauty shines.

Tara’s Journey

Ruthie Grace Boutique is named after Tara’s grandmothers, who were influential in her life. Growing up, Ruthie and Grace would take Tara shopping, which inspired her future brand. Tara’s middle name is Ruth and her sister’s is Grace. When designing her business, she wanted to create something that reflected the legacy of women in fashion, stemming from her upbringing. 

In 2009, Tara graduated from college with a degree in animal science. Although she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with her degree, Tara knew that she had to begin her career. She began working in insurance and customer service in her hometown. As time went on, she began to see a trend of small, independent retailers making their presence known in the market space. These boutiques weren’t necessarily high-end and didn’t sell exclusive fashion, but they catered to quicker turnover and offered affordable, everyday wear. Tara seeing the boost in interest inspired her to create a boutique in the heart of her hometown. In 2011, she opened their boutique in a historical building. 

“That was where the business really started,” Tara says. “I had no background in retail… I just love clothes and I love people. I thought surely those two together can get me far enough.”

Expanding into the E-Commerce Space

As the business continued, Tara learned the ins and outs of the business on the fly. At the time, they operated their boutique solely from the brick and mortar, but the company expanded into E-Commerce in 2015. From there, she began to understand what it took to cultivate an E-Commerce business and use social media engagement to leverage growth.

“That’s when the business really began to grow,” she says.

In 2017, Tara and her team moved the business into a warehouse center to account for the exponential growth they were experiencing. Right now, Ruthie Grace Boutique still has a brick and mortar location that receives high traffic. Tara says this location embodies the brand and the business because it’s local to the community. The E-Commerce store operates out of the warehouse space, and it has become a profitable portion of the brand. E-Commerce is 80% of the brand’s total gross revenue.

Tara loves that E-Commerce offers the opportunity for brands to grow and scale over time. Once a business leader and their team masters the basics and foundations of E-Commerce, they can maintain benchmark KPIs. After a team understands the tenets of the market, they can implement advertising, work towards retention and serve customers, as long as they’re making smart financial decisions and following a business model that works best for the brand.

“The path to success can be understood and E-Commerce gives owners the opportunity to scale at an exponential rate,” she says. “[The] opportunity of scalability in the industry is exciting… You can take your brand to the market [and] reach wider audiences.”

The Ruthie Grace Boutique Team

Everyone who works for Ruthie Grace Boutique is local to the community and operates from the warehouse and storefront. Tara loves hiring team members from her hometown, which continues to keep the business close to its roots.

“I think with E-Commerce and the global internet network, there is so much opportunity to outsource work, creatives, and things like that from other areas,” Tara says. “I’m not saying I’m opposed to that, but… I love supporting my small community. I really take a lot of pride in that because it’s that relationship that has so much value to me.”

Tara says that if anything happened to the business, she’s sure her community would feel a loss as a result of the business not existing. Not only does the brand generate revenue for the community, but the brand also serves it as well. Tara and her team give back to the community on a regular basis, from supporting local charities and funding school organizations. 

“Employing people who are local to me is also a part of that big picture objective of where my heart is in the business. Community is really important to me and relationships are too,” she says.

The CX Philosophy at Ruthie Grace Boutique

Ultimately, Tara and her team want customers to be happy and satisfied with the product they received and the experience they had along the way. These two ideas come together to make up what the Ruthie Grace brand is. The team wants to serve customers and help women feel confident in the things they wear, showing them they are uniquely beautiful on the inside and out. Therefore, the language the company uses and the way the team interacts with customers serves as reflections of the brand’s ethos. The team strives to work together with customers to achieve their goals, and they use it as a guide to determine ways to resolve customer conflicts, needs, or demands.

“We just want people to walk away from the brand thinking that the experience alone was good. A lot of the times when people just rely on the products to prove that, then they’re missing half of the brand experience,” she says.

The brand’s CX team offers support on multiple channels, from social media to emails. They’re always prepared to help customers with whatever they may need. This is essential, Tara says, because the team doesn’t see people as customers or an opportunity to make money; rather, they see people who are interested in shopping with the brand as individuals. The team’s commitment to CX gives them a competitive edge to other companies in the market. While other brands look at the bigger picture, the Ruthie Grace Boutique team considers the minute details.

The team’s unique approach to customer experience has created lifelong customers. One customer has been with the company for 13 years. The Ruthie Grace Boutique team prides itself on going above and beyond for each customer who reaches out with a request.  

Ruthie Grace Boutique’s Growth Strategies

Elevating to the Next Level

Tara says that she and the team are looking forward to Q4 and want to capitalize on sales like never before. Because there has been a shift in the market and consumer spending since the business began, Tara has noticed that clothing isn’t gifted much anymore during the holiday season. 

“That mentality doesn’t exist as much anymore in the clothing industry. Really, you’re buying clothes for yourself and not so much for other people,” she says.

Furthermore, the Ruthie Grace Boutique team wants to maximize profit margin, sales, and profitability heading into the last quarter of the year, and this will prepare the brand for more growth in 2025. As the team continues to grow, optimize, and increase profitability, they want to soar to new levels of customer experience as well. 

Tara wants to introduce an in-house styling service where stylists can build client portfolios and customers can have a designer that styles according to their preferences. While the company does something like this in its storefront, the amenity will be available for customers on the E-Commerce side as well. Tara says that she doesn’t want her brand to compete with larger retail brands. Instead, Ruthie Grace Boutique strives to be different and offer innovative services for customers that will set the company apart in the industry.

“We see ourselves wanting to have an in-house styling service where we have stylists that build client portfolios. We do that in our storefront, but it isn’t something that we have in the online space,” she says. “We want to be able to figure out how we can take this and have online stylists available as a service to people online. That’s where we want to take the brand. We don’t want to compete with the giants of retail. We want to be different, and we are.”

Advice for Entrepreneurs

Tara advises aspiring entrepreneurs to avoid getting distracted by shiny objects. A lot of entrepreneurs, especially in retail, get caught up on things like social media, investing time and effort into growing a social media presence that they overlook the other large and equally important components of growing a retail business. It’s easy for young entrepreneurs to become burnt out while striving to create a perfect social media presence. 

“I think there is a lot to be said about a business that’s growing and scaling behind the scenes that you cannot see on social media,” she says. “[But young entrepreneurs] only look at what they can see, the shiny objects — those metrics they perceive as metrics of success — but [they] don’t always determine success in retail.”

She says entrepreneurs should build a business that supports the lifestyle they’re after. When their business begins to grow, there will be many hardships, but they’re simply learning experiences along the way.