Misunderstandings & Lies

At the beginning of the year, Teen Mom OG star Amber Portwood began a new, online-based clothing boutique, Forever Haute. In the last few days, online critics have been making accusations that Portwood’s buying the clothing from other online places super cheap and marking it up to take advantage of her fans. They’ve also tried to claim that, even though Portwood has said there have been no returns thus far, that there have been some. We spoke to Portwood exclusively this morning to get her response to all of this and talk about how well her business is going. What did she have to share? Read on for details.

EXCLUSIVE Amber Portwood Responds Critics’s Misunderstandings Lies

“They don’t understand retail business and they don’t understand how boutiques work,” Portwood began with telling us of the critics. “Nor do they understand how people steal photos of actual wholesalers and send you a product that isn’t even in the photo. It’s so hard for me to explain it to these people because they don’t get it.”

“When I get my clothes,” she continued, “I hit four to five star only. I don’t go beneath that. My clothes are quality and when you get them, you’re getting exactly what the picture looks like. I have all rights to the pictures. I have all of the rights to the clothes that I buy. People are saying they’ve seen this (my clothes) on other websites. You might have ‘seen it,’ but you’re not getting the same product. There’s no way. You’re getting a knock off.”

Portwood added that, “The way I get my clothes is I have to have a business license. I have to be registered with the state. I have to have a resellers permit. I have to have an IRS ID. That’s the only way that I’m able to even buy these clothes from the wholesalers. If you don’t have that, you cannot get on the websites that I get on to get these clothes. It is illegal to go on random websites/somebody else’s boutique and buy clothes and resell them. It’s illegal and I would get in a lot of trouble for that. People just don’t understand that I would never do that to my fans. I even posted on my Instagram a picture of the actual wholesalers I got the stuff from to show people this is where I’m getting it from.”

So how are sales going thus far?

“I’ve been really successful since the day this started. I’ve had many, many sales. I’ve already sold out in so much. The website has crashed at least 15 times since it’s been opened. We’ve actually had to change servers to a higher server so it would be able to handle all of the people that keep coming on. We have repeat customers which we’re really proud of. It’s only been open for 17 days. We’re really proud of the work that we do. I’m really proud of the clothes that I handpick and the quality that I handpick. For me it’s quality not quantity. I really worked hard on setting this up. It took months to even learn the business and learn what I was doing and get all the legal things in the right place to even make this happen. I am the full owner of Forever Haute LLC. I started it myself. It’s not a franchise. This is from scratch. We’ve had no returns. We’ve had no complaints.”

And what about the people who have posted online there have been returns?

To this, Portwood explained that, “We’ve never had a return. We’ve never had a complaint. The person that did that- my support team actually looked up everything and their name isn’t even under our file. That’s a lie. It was somebody who completely made it up. When people buy things from our boutique we get their name, their address, exactly what they bought. That’s how we do our inventory. We know who our repeat customers are. Their name wasn’t anywhere to be found. So what my support team was trying to do was be very nice about saying that you’ve sent us an email, we sent you something back, and you never responded because you never bought anything pretty much. So this is a lie.”

“If somebody has a problem with a product and they want to return it, you just go through something very small just like every other business,” she elaborated. “You tell us why you want to return the product and then you send it back to us. If it’s something that we’ll refund, we refund it to you. If it was the wrong size, we’ll send you the right size. It really doesn’t make sense to complain about a product. There’s nothing wrong with our clothes at all. It’s coming directly from the wholesaler.”

Portwood also cleared up another misconception, explaining that, “What people don’t get is that this isn’t a clothing line. This is a boutique. I’ve always wanted a boutique. The reason why I started a boutique in the first place is because the show would come on and I would have hundreds of people asking about my outfits and where I got them. I thought why not just start my own boutique, pick out the clothes myself, and let it be known to the world and have them be able to buy the same things. I just feel like people are turning a boutique into something that it’s not. It’s just like every other boutique.”

“I don’t design the clothes but I hand pick them,” she continued. ” I go through thousands and thousands of items and I pick out what I feel would be quality clothing. I don’t understand the hate part because there’s millions of boutiques out there. I take pride in actually having clothing that is more affordable than a lot of boutiques out there. I have to make some money, but I’m not racking up the prices up so high. It’s mind boggling to me how high some of the prices in some other boutiques are compared to mine. I really take pride in not overselling my clothes.”

Portwood also dished on how far she wants to take things with this boutique, telling us that, “Eventually I want to start a non profit organization connected to my boutique. It takes money to start a non profit and I don’t think people understand that. There’s a lot of legal things that you have to do for that as well. Once we get this boutique up and running for more than a couple of weeks, we are going to be working very hard on starting a non profit organization for young women and young teenagers who are pregnant. I’d love to eventually have a shelter for them, for example. We want to do anything to help our community while we’re making money. We don’t just want to make money. We want to help as well. We’re trying to do more than the average and people are just really looking at the negative. There is nothing negative to look at. There’s a lot of people out there who just don’t want to see me succeed because of my past; however, I’m going to just keep succeeding. They don’t determine my future, I do. I work hard. So does Matt. If it wasn’t for Matt, a lot of this wouldn’t be possible. He’s a very hard worker as well. He’s a boss himself. We like to take the money that we get from MTV and invest it. We don’t like to waste our money.”

While it’s sad that with all this going on there has been so much hate, Portwood told us on the haters that, “I don’t want to win with these haters. I want to keep doing what I’m doing. Work hard behind the scenes. I’m not one of those people- and I’m not going to name names- that always talk about how they’re a boss and how much money they have. I like to keep things private because I want the quality of my clothes and the quality of my homes and the quality of my boutique to speak for itself.”

“I think people need to understand a few years ago I was sitting in a prison cell and now I own my businesses,” she added. “I’m now able to afford a nice life for myself and my daughter, Leah. That’s what needs to be focused on. The negativity is a big cloud in front of everybody’s eyes. I really don’t want my real supporters to start believing these lies. I want people to know they’re not getting scammed. This is a boutique like any other boutique. All my clothes are quality and if there’s ever a problem with anything, we have a support team that will work with them. I never like to scam my fans or do anything to hurt them. They’re the reason I am where I am today. I’m still that girl in Indiana just trying to make a living and doing the best with what I have.”

“I think people are going to see a lot more out of me,” Portwood wrapped with telling us on the future. “I have a makeup line coming out very soon. I’m working with an established makeup creator already. We have some great designs coming up. It’s amazing makeup that’s paraben free and not tested on animals. It’s great quality. My focus is to grow and stay grounded and take care of my family and take care of my supporters. That’s my number one goal in life- to try to be positive in every situation. I try to block the negativity, but it’s hard sometimes.”

Portwood also hinted that, in the future, there may be another huge thing happening. “The biggest question I get is why don’t I start my own clothing line,” she added. ” My answer to that would be you have to crawl before you walk. You have to walk before you run. So this is me crawling and maybe in a couple of years I’ll be walking. So let’s see where it leads to.”

We think the clothing Portwood has looks great and appreciate her clarifying all of this with us. We wish her much continued success with all of her business ventures and look forward to continuing to see her flourish.

Make sure to visit Portwood’s boutique at www.beforeverhaute.com.

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