Emma Miller is living every teenage fashionista’s dream with her online boutique, Style It Out.
“I [started] during COVID 2020, my freshman year; I was 14,” Miller says. “I was home a lot and was really big on buying and reselling my own clothes. I just had so much free time and then my dad actually gave me the idea for Style It Out.”
He’d suggested that she turn her passion into an actual business with the help of him and Miller’s mother.
“I thought he was joking,” she says. “He had started his own business, so he knew how to do all the licenses and everything. I would have been totally lost, so he kind of walked me through the entire thing. It took off from there, and then it just became my whole life.”
At the moment, Style It Out offers pink and blue sweatpants, a cream-color sweatshort and jacket ensemble, a white hoodie, a cheetah print jacket, a red long-sleeve shirt, tank tops in a variety of colors and textures, dresses in several colors and prints, a few skirts and shorts, a white ruffle top, black and white beanies, as well as a variety of earrings and necklaces.
Miller considers her boutique to be more on the girly side, but she tries to select pieces that can with most styles.
Though Style It Out sells mostly clothing and jewelry, and it recently launched its first swimwear line.
“I shop at a wholesale place where I can do all the shopping in one spot,” she says. “I go through and basically shop for myself, and then I send a mass email to all my friends asking them if they’d buy it. I get my parents, my friends, everyone’s opinions and collect some votes.”
When it came to choosing a name for her new business, Miller wanted something with meaning behind it.
“I am a huge lacrosse player, and one of my club coaches in middle school used to always yell at us on the field or when we were running around like ‘figure it out,’” she says. “She would always yell it as in ‘do your own thing’ kind of an idea. I always loved that because I would use it in my regular life. … I was like, ‘Wait, what if I did something with that?’ And I was like, ‘Style It Out.’”
Before Style It Out, Miller was running a bustling “closet account” on Instagram where she would resell and ship clothing.
“During that time I was able to discover my love for fashion and creating fun outfits,” Miller says.
The first year of business was a little slow, but quickly Miller realized just how important marketing is for a business.
“I did not realize how hard it would be,” she says. “I was really stupid for thinking this, but I was like, ‘Everyone's just gonna want to buy products.’ … It was really frustrating because I was [thought] ‘I have new products, they're all great prices, but why is no one buying them?’”
That’s when she realized no one was seeing her brand.
“No one knew I existed,” says Miller, explaining that it’s been a process over a few years to figure out what would work for her specifically.
With her new skills and some help from some bigger name social media ambassadors, Style It Out began to grow.
“[At first,] it was mostly just my friends and family that were ordering, and then eventually I thought of doing ambassadors where you send them items and they post for you,” she says. “So I found a few people I had been following, and I was like, ‘Would you want a free item to post?’ and everyone has been so good about it. I actually sent one top to this girl, and her TikTok went viral — by viral I mean maybe 30,000 likes — but for me that was insane. So she sold me out of everything.”
Style It Out now ships all over the United States, but her biggest customers tend to be in Texas, Alabama, North Carolina and South Carolina.
“I still also do pop-up shops in St. Louis at the local schools and stuff,” she says. “So I get a lot of sales from that as well.”
Miller, who is a senior at Visitation Academy in St. Louis, plans to continue her education at University of Mississippi where she will study fashion promotion and media along with business.
Her goal is to continue to run Style It Out with her mother throughout college and hopes to open a storefront after graduating in her college town of Oxford, Mississippi, or back home in St. Louis.
“Style It Out has seriously been a dream come true,” Miller says. “It is a huge blessing in my life and has gifted me amazing opportunities and friendships. I am forever grateful for all the love and support I receive from my community and our amazing customers. I hope to inspire other young girls to follow their ambitions and accomplish their dreams at any age.”
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