Walk a few steps along a cobblestone street just off Damen, enter Beta Boutique, 2016 W. Concord, and you're likely to hear women talk with excitement as they browse the racks and try on clothes at the trendy shop.

Toward the back of the store, a young woman emerges from a dressing room, and someone says, "It's like Hilary Swank on the red carpet!" As a dark-haired beauty models a satiny blue sleeveless dress with gold straps that tie behind her neck, someone says, "It's a must!"

Since owner Janice Moskoff opened the 1,700-square-feet store as a permanent sample sale venue in December 2006, the amount of merchandise has grown greatly along with the customer base. The Beta Boutique e-mail list has grown to about 6,000 subscribers, or double from when the shop opened. The shop, which sends out e-newsletters about big sales and new clothing lines, offers designer clothes, shoes and accessories at 40 to 90 percent off regular retail prices.

As someone who grew up shopping at TJ Maxx and Marshalls, Moskoff says she doesn’t want Beta Boutique shoppers to go through "racks and racks of not-so-good merchandise to get to the good stuff."

After being a Chicago retail consultant and business strategist for Ann Taylor in New York City, Moskoff created Beta Boutique in February 2005 as a traveling women's sample sale, or a "pop-up shop," in different neighborhoods around town. She hosted the traveling sample sales as a test base in Chicago before she opened the permanent shop.

"We always try to carry something a little different" than the basics that women can get at Banana Republic and the GAP, Moskoff says. They try to offer "something with a bit of a twist or edge" but that's "not too far out."

Eye-catching items on a recent visit include a gorgeous, sky blue belted trench marked down from $500 to $220, cute cotton dresses for $42, sexy, satiny strapless dresses marked down from $350 to $98, and loads of denim marked down from $200 to $80 and $170 to $50.

Talking about Beta Boutique visitors, Moskoff says, "I want them to feel comfortable and exceed their expectations" and "We want them to see we offer great merchandise with great prices."

Beta Boutique, which gets new clothing every week, carries both preproduction and overstock clothing in sizes 2-12 and denim in up to size 32.

Although the boutique's merchandise is always changing, the shop tends to carry 15-20+ lines of clothing, Moskoff says.

Quick-selling items are dresses ("We sell out of them really fast") and coats, Moskoff says. Coats are especially big in early fall since they may be 50 percent off. The shop will soon be carrying Cous, a high-end cashmere label with fashion-forward cuts and styling.

Cosmopolitan, fashion-savvy customers at the shop range from their mid-20s to 50 and older, but most are in their upper 20s and early 30s. About half of the shop's shoppers are repeat customers.

Moskoff contacts many fashion labels directly to acquire items, but some labels contact Beta Boutique themselves since employees at different labels talk to each other and word spreads about the shop. And Moskoff has a part-time buyer in New York City who frequently goes to showrooms and develops new leads for buys.

Sales associates often ask customers how they wound up coming to the boutique. "It's not like we're on Damen" where people might just stumble upon it when they are buying coffee, Moskoff says.

Sometimes hotel concierges will encourage tourists to check out the boutique and the surrounding Bucktown-Wicker Park area with its many other shops and restaurants, and the shop has received a lot of media attention.

"We get a ton of people shopping from out of town," Moskoff says, estimating that roughly 10 to 20 percent of customers every weekend are from out of town.

Michelle Berger, a loyal customer, says that she has been shopping at the boutique since she moved here a year ago from the U.K. Berger, a native New Yorker, heard about a Beta Boutique sale via DailyCandy, the hip e-newsletter.

"I attended the Beta sale and was instantly hooked," Berger says. "The abundance of trendy labels and diversity of lines were reason enough to fall for the concept, but the value of the goods was the ultimate clincher.

"Beta allowed me not only to shop new and exciting brands, but also to purchase much more for my money than I could at any other boutique in the city. In fact, I was able to purchase identical items in Beta Boutique for significantly less money than competitors in the neighborhood had offered."

Berger also says she isn't easy to please.

"I want up-to-the-minute trends for not-too-much-moolah," she says. Also, she adds, "Several of the foreign labels they carry, which I recognize from my travels, I have yet to see in other Chicago stores. I think Janice really knows and understands her customers, and [she] offers a sophisticated shopping experience to people who want a phenomenon which is not unique for New Yorkers but may well be for Chicagoans: the sample sale experience. For this, I will always start my trend hunts at Beta Boutique. Why would I waste my time and money elsewhere?"

Beta Boutique, 2016 W. Concord, is open 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday and from noon to 5 p.m. Sunday.