We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kayla Villanueva. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kayla below.

Kayla, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s talk about social media – do you manage your own or do you have someone or a company that handles it for you? Why did you make the choice you did?

I currently manage my own social media although I do hope to hire someone or even a small team to run it in the future. To be fully transparent, my budget does not allow for hire of any employees at the moment so everything has been done by me. On top of being a boutique owner, I am also a dog walker/sitter that occupies most of my time. Social media is hard, in my opinion. Or at least staying consistent with posting and creating posts that will bring in new customers. So, with my doggie day job + working my boutique, the mental capacity I need for social media creativity is almost non-existent most days. This makes it difficult to attract new customers. I find that many small business owners run their own social media and also have a hard time with figuring out what to post or how often they should post. On the other hand, there are plenty of resources out there such as youtube, instagram, and tik tok videos of other small business owners sharing what kind of content they think will perform best. The information is out there, I just need to work on having the energy to do it! I do hope to someday have a small team to manage my social media though.

Kayla, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Hi! My name is Kayla and im 29 years old and I own a cottagecore & feminine inspired boutique that carry sizes Small – 3x! I’m originally from Orange County, California but moved to Tacoma, Washington in the summer of 2021. In 2020 I found a few cute online boutiques that I fell in love with. However, all the items were quite pricy and weren’t in my budget.
In february 2022, after moving to Washington, I decided I wanted to open my own online boutique for those who are just like me and want to build the wardrobe of their dreams filled with dresses and pretty prints such as gingham and florals. I had a little notebook where I wrote all my hopes and dreams for the business. I had a page full of name ideas. I talked with my partner about the names and one that wasnt even on the list but I had thought about was “Rosehearted”. We both looked at each other after I said that and just knew that was the perfect name for my shop. I researched everything I needed to create a business and with the few hundred dollars I had in my savings, I created Rosehearted. It was very difficult in the beginning as I quickly learned how purchasing wholesale worked. I didn’t want to take out a loan of any sort (as I was still in credit card debt from my early 20s) so I launched my online store on April 22nd, 2022 (earth day!) with only 4 products. Over the next year and a half I’d go on doing pop up markets and selling online here and there. Not going to lie, my business struggled most of the time and still does sometimes to this day.. It’s very hard to keep up consistent sales especially when i was mostly online.
In August 2024, I opened my first retail location. My shop is located inside Sanford & Son Antiques in Tacoma. The grand opening was such a success and gave me so much hope but as the days went on, I realized that not every day is going to be like the grand opening. There are days when no one even walks into the shop. But my hope and what i really just want to hear someday from someone who walks in is “tacoma needed a shop like yours”.
I curate all the items in my shop and hope everyone who walks in feels beautiful when doing try ons. My shop carries feminine clothing, second hand/vintage clothing, lip balms, stationery, jewelry and handmade scrunchies, tote bags, and wall hangings.

How did you build your audience on social media?

So Rosehearted was very very small for the first year and a half. My follower count was maybe around 400? I would do ads, get my name out via pop up markets, flyers i put up around town, and just word of mouth. I eventually ended up doing a giveaway with another small business (Rosuraie) who had around 7k active followers. That is where my audience really grew! I gained maybe 600+ followers from that. I also figured out how to customize target audience on paid instagram ads and that really helped out with others finding my shop! As for advice, I would say just to be consistent with posting, make visually appealing and aesthetic posts, create ads and use multiple social media platforms such as tik tok and pinterest ~ even youtube! Also make sure to engage with your followers and respond to them whenever they leave you comments and such!

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

Word of mouth and paid ads! When I first opened my retail location, I had numerous customers come in saying they heard of my shop from someone else and just had to come check it out. That is such an amazing feeling!

Contact Info:

• Website: Rosehearted.com
• Instagram: @shoprosehearted
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/rosehearted-tacoma?uid=f1IJttKpAZ6lxjg7EIV-gA&utm_source=ishare