Arkansas Business

Innovate Arkansas client firm Btiques was one of the winners at the inaugural ARK Challenge business accelerator in Fayetteville in fall 2012.

The Fayetteville firm officially launched its boutique shopping app this past summer and currently counts as customers more than 30 boutiques in Fayetteville, Bentonville, Little Rock, Fort Smith, Conway, Cabot and Newport, and Fort Worth, Texas. 

Btiques was founded by the sister-brother team of Sara Beck and Will Carter. We caught up with Sara for an update on Btiques’ first few months:

Give us a basic update on where Btiques is right now.

Having launched this past June, we are very pleased to be up and running, with mobile as our first platform arm. Our office is located on the Fayetteville Square, and we are thrilled to be a part of the growing movement of thought leaders, artisans and entrepreneurs who are a part of the square hitting its creative stride. We thrive when getting to know others who are interested in banding together to make something great, whether it’s an environment, a business strategy or a mindset of doing.

Describe exactly how Btiques works.

Btiques is a platform that allows boutique owners to easily post and sell items to their social and mobile customers, allowing for existing and new customers to shop their products right from their phones. Shoppers can choose to pick up items at their local store or have items shipped. It’s that simple.

The whole ARK Challenge experience — how much of an impact has it made?  

We don’t intend to stray far from the belief that without the ARK Challenge, our idea would have been merely that. Access to the brilliant, yet humble, business and community leaders in the area and beyond — they challenged us to learn and push and create the business that we have today. The amount of knowledge that we have collected, spanning from implementing a lean canvas as our business plan to immersing ourselves in the world of raising our most recent investment, is priceless, and all gained in less than one year.

Tell us about your growth plans. What does the immediate future hold for Btiques?  

We are new and in the learning phase, which is a vulnerable, yet exciting place to be. It means that with extremely hard work, we can lead, follow and discover which direction our business will grow. As many advisers tell us, "Plan on looking nothing like how you started a year from now."  

We are proud to have 30-plus boutique customers on our platform. And from Day One, it has been our mission to learn and apply as quickly as possible, so that we can deliver an entirely new customer base and revenue stream for their businesses. Being true to this, we know that purchasing on the Web is critical to scale this model as rapidly as possible and deliver our customers effortlessly consistent sales. While mobile is the future, the Web still reigns as king of e-commerce.