It’s 10:39 pm, and I’m in bed, trying to focus on getting something productive done on a Saturday night in by myself. Instead, I find myself with tabs open on Missguided, Boohoo, and Pretty Little Thing. 

Earlier in the day, I had been surfing the Princess Polly website. The day before, I had been looking at Nakd Fashion and Tiger Mist. This got me thinking about how I found these boutiques in the first place. 

After much deliberation, I decided that this topic had become something I should really discuss in depth. We’ve covered Instagram boutiques on CF before, but have you ever wondered how they work?

Let’s talk about it. After all, these stores are only getting more and more popular.

Table of Contents

What is an Instagram Boutique?

An “Instagram boutique,” for our purposes, is a brand that has based their public relations and advertising on social media pages instead of having brick and mortar stores.

You may remember I wrote a piece that slightly overlaps with this topic discussing the struggling retail industry this year. But this is another world in itself. 

These boutiques are all competing with the fast fashion stores we’re all used to, namely staples like H&M, Forever 21, Charlotte Russe. 

What interested me most is that these stores kind of popped out of nowhere and in the span of months got on mainstream radar. How crazy is that? 

Now, let’s get into how they made this happen. Why are Instagram boutiques so successful?

Instagram Boutiques & Influencers

Reason one for the success of these companies is their ability to leverage influencers. 

Let’s take FashionNova, a company that appeared in 2014 but has since become huge online, thanks to celebrities posting photos wearing their clothing. Larger brands like Forever 21 are plastered across magazines. FashionNova, however, rarely features there, and for a long time was not worn by major players in the game.