THUNDER BAY – Business Profile – The Urban Boutique is celebrating their second year anniversary this month. The company specialize in the latest and hottest clothing brands for both men and women in the following lifestyles; Urban, Street, Celebrity, UFC/MMA and Club. “It’s Fine Apparel with an Edge” states Angelo Petta.
A few years ago Petta gave up his corporate career in the high tech industry in Ottawa to re-locate back to Thunder Bay to start the Urban Boutique. He came back because he recognizes the potential of Thunder Bay as a city, and he also saw a business opportunity in fashion.
Angelo brought with him an extensive amount of expertise in both technologies (MENG) & business management which include strategic marketing, social-media marketing, business development, sales, processes and customer relationship management.
“Our vision is simple; ‘Disrupt the Status Quo’ and their goal is to be the Number 1 Retailer of Choice in the region for Urban, Street, Celebrity, UFC/MMA and Club Lifestyle Clothing,” shares Petta.
Their core strategies include; a great management team, differentiate & exclusive brands, best in class customer service, cross-marketing relationships and utilizing all the internet and social media resources, tools and technologies in order to develop a best in class grass root social media marketing infrastructure.
Angelo explained that Facebook, Twitter, and their website are really just ingredients. The real secret is the recipe, or how one utilizes these ingredients to develop business and marketing applications.
As a testament to their marketing passion and vision, one of Angelo’s first goal was to get 5% of the Thunder Bay region Facebook users to join The Urban Boutique Facebook group. With 70,000 Facebook members in the Thunder Bay region, 5% equates to 3500 members and they have successfully gone beyond their goal.
Today, Urban Boutique have 5000 members on their Facebook group and including Angelo’s friends list and his super user friends’ list, The Urban Boutique has access to over 20% of all the Facebook users in the Thunder Bay region.
Petta explains, “Once the social marketing infrastructure is in place, one then needs to feed it with innovative and creative marketing and promotional collateral to capture the attention and imagination of the targeted market in order to drive traffic to the store front”.
Through the Internet, and Facebook, the Urban Boutique is reaching across Northwestern Ontario. Orders are coming in from across the North as Aboriginal youth are placing orders. Through Wasaya Air, the company is able to easily ship across the entire region.
The Urban Boutique have also been instrumental in building cross-marketing relationships and appreciate working with the following in alphabetical order; 31@Junot Centre, Crocks, Northside Boutique, Rockhouse and Tonic Night Club. Many other cross-marketing relationships and partnerships are in progress.
Petta states “In order for all this to be possible, you require a great management team that he has put in place; Mohammad Agha is the director of Sales, Marketing, Promotions & Strategic Decisions, Gabriel Coppin is the retail sales manager, Jessica Hubert is the Spokes Model and Raechel Reed is the director of events and responsible for organizing & choreographing events such as fashion shows, model photo shoots, and videos”.
The breath of their lifestyle brands is wide and the collection within each brand is extensive. Here is a small sample of the brands that Thunder Bay can now access locally, Ecko, Rocawear, Baby Phat, Dereon, Affiction, Tapout, Silver Star, Bad Boy Metal Mulisha and many more.
With the Urban Boutique now on the scene, Thunder Bay has access to the hottest, latest and largest collection of lifestyle clothing brands in the region.
The Urban Boutique is located @ 1096 Memorial Ave, Thunder Bay, ON and can be reached @ 807.624.0100 and feel free to visit and check out the latest arrivals and fashion trends.
As well, here is their social stream information; facebook.com/urbanboutique, theurbanboutique.ca , twitter.com/urbanboutique.