Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Getty Images Many entrepreneurial success stories involve angel investors, venture capital, and fundraising from friends and family. But what about those of us who don’t have a rich grandmother or access to boardrooms where people hand out big checks?
The first time I sought outside funding was summer of 2020. We did a very specific fundraise through IFundWomen to bring on my first full-time employee. That was the first time. Outside of that, I’ve never taken out loans. I’ve just been super-conservative with what we do. We don’t have a huge inventory. We don’t have a huge product line. As a brand, we live within our means.
I brought my prototypes to a trade show called Shop Object and presented them as a collection. And I took wholesale orders from retailers who came to the show. I asked for 50 percent deposit on those wholesale orders, which gave me enough money to fund the first round of production. So I knew exactly how many I needed, how much money I had, and that I could afford it.
It was a very distinct tipping point, to go from making no money at all to being like, “Wow, I can actually support myself with this.” That’s where I am now, and I feel very lucky.“We were saving up to buy an apartment, but that fell through. So we used the money to start a business instead.”Initially, my partner and I had saved up to buy an apartment, but that fell through right before the pandemic. So we used the money to start our business instead.
I did take out one loan from the small-business administration in 2021, to prepare for my collaboration with Disney. I did a line for Encanto, and I wanted to do 13 products at a time. So it was very ambitious and I didn’t want to disrupt my day-to-day operations and take money from my day-to-day products. So I qualified for a small-business-administration loan for over $100,000. That’s been great. The terms are good, and it’s given us all the right tools that we need to expand.
Infelizmente muitos artistas fingem ser inteligentes e honestos segue o jogo pra eles que vai acabar muito mal
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