Angie’s Showroom is a business located in Texas, United States; and it specifically sells luxury handmade lingerie. These are basically the customized home and nightwear worn by women as undergarments. The business was born out of a love for fashion, a passion by Angelina Mahany. The passion sparked in her while she was in France for her studies. The idea of business ownership was fueled by the reason that she could not find what she was exactly looking for in the United States markets. This contributed to the decision of implementing her idea of making her own and then selling it to the US markets, with a touch of quality and luxury as just like she had experienced it from the French markets. She decided to show America what they have been missing. This gap she saw, gave her a business that she runs to this day despite the challenges she faces as a business owner.
Telling us about her journey, Angelina was born in Moscow, Russia. Growing up, she developed an interest in traveling, learning different cultures and languages, and exploring the world. She was a hard-working girl from a young age and her determination, endurance, and effort were nurtured through ballet school where discipline, time, and strength are keenly observed for one to be termed a ballerina. She then joined college and pursued a degree in Business Management; this was because she wanted to chase something totally different career-wise which motivated her to a new goal in learning about businesses. She then moved to France to do her Masters in Marketing.
The question is, why France? Angelina says it is because she loved studying French at school and the name ‘ballet’, which was a dance she loved, was also derived from French. Living in France also made her imagine beauty, love, melody, and the art of living termed as ‘Art de Vivre in French because of the peoples’ artistic culture and lifestyles that one from a different country and loves fashion like Angelina would really be swayed into living like them so easily. After completing her studies, she worked a little in Paris and for the love of traveling to new places and learning new cultures and languages, Angelina then moved to Cyprus, found in the Mediterranean sea, as she saw the Island as a beautiful place to live in.
There, she was employed in a small company and this gave her a chance to interact with a lot of business owners who shared their success stories and this gave her the urge to start her own business.
Angelina then got married and shortly after that, she moved to Texas and made the bold step into her career of entrepreneurship which she has built until this day. She took advantage of the business opportunities in the United States and in addition to her Marketing degree from France together with her love for fashion.
She started with a reselling business where she chose to sell handbags and accessories. This pushed so well leading to her growth and in a period of two years, she started her own company and launched her own brand. She was motivated by the need to bring something unique to the US which she couldn’t find in their markets but had a variety to choose from while living in France and Russia. This idea made her work on and sell handmade silk and lace lingerie. From her quality experience, she chose to focus on French and Italian laces for comfort and beauty in her products. She wanted to bring out the luxurious feeling to every woman using her products.
Challenges
Angelina speaks of several challenges that are affecting her business operations. They are such as, first, building trust for an unknown brand which the customers are not aware of its existence in the market to compete with the regular brands that are already in use. The second challenge is finding a budget for advertisement for her company, especially for a small company like hers that needs so many resources for growth and expansion.
The third challenge was finding her first customers when the business is starting and customers who come repeatedly to buy her lingerie and maintaining her customer satisfaction especially after entering a market where they already have made their choice, tastes, and preferences in particular brands. The fourth challenge Angelina is experiencing is growing her business through brand awareness and bringing it to the level of competition with other businesses especially in a new market with a new product that the buyers do not use and have a completely different alternative for.
Fifth is the difficulty in advertising lingerie and loungewear on digital marketing platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Google since they block the images and content about such products as some appear sensual to be accepted as presentable for the audiences like teenagers. The websites and pages are monitored and the restrictions from their hosts depending on the regulations and terms of business, makes them have difficulty in advertising. The problem is even seen in the local media stations such as the television stations that do not just accept to advertise the product because of their all-around audiences. They are, therefore, forced to regulate the content leaving her business to look for other platforms that would advertise her lingerie.
The sixth drawback she talks of is the production of raw materials which is done largely in Ukraine and Russia on a small scale. This is because there are no seamstresses to do the production work in Texas. This goes ahead in making the cost of material and labor high and they will produce and manufacture the materials abroad until there comes relief in the future.
Lastly, Angelina speaks of the need to attract more investors to her business to help in expanding the budget so that she may one day open a factory or have a larger space to work on locally.
Opportunities
As for opportunities, Angelina explains that there is a need to bring closer and if possible, into the country the production and manufacture of the materials used in making of the home and nightwear such as lace and silk. This is because production is still done abroad in Ukraine and Russia where they are forced to do their imports for the raw materials from. This will open doors to bigger markets for the wholesalers and retailers found in Texas who are in line with this particular business and would also help them in customer fulfillment because of the regular flow of materials that would lead to a constant flow of goods to their regular and new customers.
This will enlarge the lingerie market and, therefore, they can invest into digital marketing and grow by selling on bigger platforms such as Amazon which is her dream. She sees this as possible since from her survey research, Amazon has started having an eye on luxury products and giving higher paychecks.
She goes ahead to expound on the need for a shift in the lingerie industry from using unrecyclable materials they use currently of silk and lace to recyclable materials used by other companies like cotton for the home and night wears. This will help the company produce enough products rather than working on pre-orders because of the worry of being unable to recycle their waste. This will help in running a sustainable home and nightwear business in the future.
Advice
To other business owners, she says that they need to do what they love for passion and success as this would be their motivation for growth and expansion into the bigger markets. This will help build hard work which will help them be motivated and energized to keep them on their toes through their businesses and aim in reaching a higher goal. She also encourages them to never give up since the process of starting and growing a business is normally challenging and they should let their passion be their drive for aiming higher into the business markets.
Secondly, to her, Education is key. Business owners need to be open to learning new things that are important and would add value to their businesses and educate themselves in the process since the world is changing so fast. She states that there is a possibility that ‘what you learned yesterday may not work today, especially in this era where things are changing so fast because of `the technologies that are brought on board for application in almost every stage of the businesses’ process today.
Lastly, Angelina advises business owners to transfer duties that are lagging them down to selected responsible representatives as employees and put more effort and time into growing the business. She also gives importance to the need for having time for family and friends and even how important the need for the business owners to allocate for themselves time for rest days and off.
Connect with Angelina:
https://www.instagram.com/angies.showroom/,
https://web.facebook.com/angieshowroom.usa?_rdc=1&_rdr,
https://www.pinterest.com/angieshowroom/_created/,
https://www.tiktok.com/@angies.showroom?
Sleep specialist
Using the acquired academic and professional experience, I advise patients with various complaints about mental health - depressed mood, nervousness, lack of energy and interest, sleep disorders, panic attacks, obsessive thoughts and anxieties, difficulty concentrating, and stress. In my free time, I love to paint and go on long walks on the beach. One of my latest obsessions is sudoku – a wonderful activity to calm an unease mind.
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