Shop Small
Shopping small never goes out of style.
Walk along the streets of any campus in the south, and you’ll soon find numerous local boutiques littering the sidewalks. As quintessential to the culture as College GameDay, boutiques are a fashion staple for every southern girl. Especially during football season.
When the air starts to cool and the tailgates start popping up, Norman’s products turn to a distinct dichotomy of crimson and cream.
Gabrielle Potter, former employee of a Tuscaloosa boutique comments, “We curated specific collections for game day months. Everything was game day colors or neutral colors that could be made to wear at games.”
In buying these specific colors, they position themselves to be premier shopping for spirit wear. Any boutique worth their salt will carry fashion-forward clear bags, team colored apparel, custom hats, and buttons. This strategic product selection proves beneficial as gameday season is the biggest for these small shop owners.
“There were girls every day coming in to buy an outfit for the upcoming weekend,” says Potter.
With sites like Amazon and SHEIN, fast fashion is becoming increasingly popular and harder to compete with. When college students could buy an article of clothing that’s fashionable and under twenty dollars, its hard to beat that. College-town boutiques have to combat these by presenting their customers with a shopping experience unique to their university.
Written by
Molly Waters