Archive for Women Entrepreneurs – Page 8

Comfort Eats -US Snacks Abroad

Brittany Canty is a co-founder of Comfort Eats. Reina, the other co-founder and Brittany’s best frienBrittany Cantyd, moved to New Zealand. Brittany always took her snacks when visiting, but she had a hard time shipping them there. She tried to find a business in place but only one existed and it offered a preset package with snacks Reina did not like – which was a problem. The pair decided to start their own business that would allow people to send snacks to those away from home.

Brittany previously worked as a project manager and developer in Corporate America but left that behind to pursue her passion as an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs need to be able to plan and organize, both skills came to Brittany from her previous work. Ambition and passion are also keys to success as an entrepreneur. Luckily, Brittany was able to use her passion of friendship and snacks as the basis of her business while also being ambitious enough to go full time on the project. All of Brittany’s traits set her up to be a successful entrepreneur.

Not only does Brittany have the qualities of a successful entrepreneur, but Comfort Eats is designed as an interesting business plan. The idea of giving people a taste of home while away is a new twist on the snack market. Normally, you must find snacks wherever you are but Comfort Eats allows you to get the snacks you love anywhere.  The business also adds new items every 7-10 days which makes it very versatile. The business is hoping to add a slight pivot by adding global snacks. This addition will allow different cultures to try each other’s snacks and learn more about them. Her ability to innovate on snack sharing was very interesting to me. Overall, the growth of the business makes it an interesting take on snack sending within the growing food market.

Overall, Comfort Eats inspired me because of the founder’s friendship and ability to innovate within a huge market. The passion and determination Brittany has to pursue the business while also focusing on self-care is inspirational. I often think of entrepreneurs as people who do not prioritize themselves, so it was refreshing to see that she made sure to make it a focus. Her business taught me that ideas do not have to be new things but can be ways of changing how things are done in her case snacks abroad. Ultimately, Brittany Canty showed me that sources of inspiration are everywhere and all you need to succeed is determination and motivation.

https://youtu.be/IKaqVDsLY6o

 

Maddie Rae: Slime Queen

There is certain types fun as children that you never grow out of…well at least that is true for me. I loved (and still love) mixing things together and creating some sort of ‘unique’ concoction which is probably why I enjoy baking because it is the grown-up way of mixing ingredients together to form beauty and deliciousness. But enough about sweet and treats, and let’s do full one eighty and talk about slime. Slime? Is it that disgusting looking thing that can turn up in who knows where or can it be that pretty sparkly thing that you can find in the store? Children’s slime is a simple way to have endless fun. Playing with it can be a blast and that is exactly what a young girl named Maddie Rae discovered.

Maddie started making her own slime but as time passed, the interest in slime increased and she found it difficult to find slime glue. But the shortage in glue did not stop Maddie. She decided to try and create her own original slime glue. Finally, after hard work and many experiments, the perfect glue emerged which became Maddie Rae’s Slime Glue. The slime glue was a success and the business decided to expand to an array of slime items that aid in the process of making of slime.

There was a problem when there was not enough slime glue, but Maddie took her twelve-year-old passion for slime glue to that problem and found a solution. Her solution turned into a business which produced Maddie Rae’s Slime Glue. Since then, Maddie had the honor in breaking the Guinness World Record for World’s Largest Slime in 2017 for thirteen thousand eight hundred and twenty pounds. (The record has been broken by someone else) The joy of making slime combined with solving a need caused a young girl to become an entrepreneur.

Catherine Cooke: myYearbook

Another relevant entrepreneur for students is Catherine Cook, creator of myYearbook, a free interactive online yearbook. At the age of fifteen Catherine and her seventeen-year-old brother Dave came up with the idea to be able to interact with more fellow students online. They quickly got their first investor from their web designer older brother and set to work. Soon after building their website, they combined with a user generated quiz site to garner many more interactions.

As they grew, Catherine’s business encountered some pivots as she tried to figure out what would work and what would not. At some points potential investors would want her to move headquarters or determine ad space. Ultimately, she stayed true to her business and vision and it paid off. MyYearbook.com was ranked one of the most popular sites for middle school and high school students in 2006. As her business grew, it attracted nicer advertisers like Disney and Neutrogena.

While she put time into growing it, as was a struggle for many school age entrepreneurs, school and grades started to suffer. Because being in the heart of her target market and being able to optimize her website with direct input and feedback made myYearbook more user friendly, it also became very overwhelming when trying to balance work and school. Later in her high school career Catherine found herself having to skip classes to work.

Yet through every obstacle and inconvenience, starting when she was just fifteen years old, Catherine Cook’s myYearbook has carved itself a niche for high schoolers and grown to 3 million members.

Cook kept up her business all throughout college, after which she sold myYearbook. She remains a partner however, working full time for the business. Catherine Cooke has become a very well-known entrepreneur, inspiring many young people to not let their age keep them from pursuing their big ideas.

Sara Kays

Sara Kays is a 21 year old singer/songwriter from Indiana. Currently in college, Sara continues to write music while getting her degree and performing her songs. She started her craft when she was 13, taking an interest in guitar and learning to sing, write, and perform in high school.

After graduating high school, Sara moved to Georgia to grow in her music, and recently moved to Nashville to continue performing and writing. Sara Kays has been publishing her music since 2018, starting with releasing her first song, “Rich Boy”, in October 2018. After releasing that first song, she then released the accompanying album to “Rich Boy”, called “A House Too Big”.

Since 2018, Sara has released 3 singles in 2019, 4 singles in 2020, and an album in 2020. Her social media presence is most well-known on TikTok, but she also has YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter accounts, as well as a website for her merch (https://www.sarakays.com/).

Her music relates to our generation, speaking through the music to those who have been in negative situations and have been affected by those situations. It’s almost like Sara’s way of soothing the hurt many have felt and being a helping hand in her own way.

 

Hello Walden

Hello Walden is a virtual private coaching service that enables entrepreneurs, business professionals, designers, engineers, and anyone in-between to receive virtual coaching from professional coaches. Each coach is unique in their experiences and focuses so that every individual can find a coach that will be able to relate to them and help them. Hello Walden coaches help with a variety of pursuits, including starting a podcast, setting up a sales funnel, finding a new job, developing a product, writing a blog or a book, cultivating brand voice, fundraising for a startup, and many more. Clients begin by creating an account and filling out a questionnaire. This questionnaire begins by asking them to describe what they are working on, what their biggest challenges are, and where they need the most support. Then, it asks them what they hope to get out of coaching, what kind of coaching style they respond to best, and any other comments they want to share. Once they complete the survey, they are given a few options of coaches that may fit their needs best and they can look at schedules and find a time to call them or message them. Essentially, Hello Walden makes coaching personalized and easily accessible.

Madelin Woods, the founder of Hello Walden, is an experienced engineer and entrepreneur. She has experience working with IDEO, Facebook, Square, and many other start-ups. Madelin came up with the idea of Hello Walden when she was looking for some motivation and encouragement in her projects, but lacked a mentor or coach to help her. Coaching is mostly found through word-of-mouth, but Madelin wanted to create a trustworthy platform for business professionals to find coaching that will work for them and with them. So, Madelin built Hello Walden to help people craving the same mentorship she was seeking.

What stuck out to me the most about Hello Walden was the unique use of technology and people. Hello Walden is a website, but it is highly centralized around people and seeks to cater to each person specifically and effectively. If you visit their website, they have many success stories listed to emphasize how effective their service really is!

 

https://hellowalden.com/

Stitch Fix

Stitch Fix is an online styling service for women who are busy or need a change in their wardrobe. Each customer takes a style quiz and is assigned a personal stylist. The stylist picks out five personalize items that the customer would want to wear and sends them to the customer. There Is a $20 styling fee with every box to cover the stylists’ expertise and time. After trying on every product, the customer can return them for free or use the $20 dollars towards the clothes they want to purchase.

Stitch Fix was founded in 2011 by Katrina Lake. She started the company after her sister was her personal stylist and knew there was a market for women who needed or wanted fashion advice. She was attending Harvard when she shipped the first Stitch Fix box. When she first founded the company, they were only helping women but realized there was also a market for men. In 2016, they launched personalized boxes for men and offered plus sizes in 2017. As of 2020, they style men, women and children.

Stitch Fix’s mission as a company is to “change the way people find clothes they love by combining technology with the personal touch of seasoned style experts”. They take pride in knowing that each box is personalized for each client and that the personalized items can help them build their style. Lake’s goal when founding Stitch Fix was to help women discover their style and feel confident in what they wear.

Since Stitch Fix started, their sales have only gone up, making the company well-known and successful. They have over 2 million customers in the United States alone. Their sales and number of customers have gone up since the beginning of the pandemic. Their sales went from $370.3 million, a year ago, to $451.8 million in the second fiscal 2020, ending February 1st.  Many people have been turning to stitch fix for fashion styles and clothing pieces during the pandemic, instead of going to stores.

Makin Bacon Baby!

After Selling Millions, Family-Run Makin Bacon Battles Amazon CounterfeitersOne morning in 1993 an 8-year-old girl named Abbey Fleck and her dad were cooking bacon for breakfast. as she saw her dad’s struggle with all the bacon fat juice and cleaning it up with paper toils, she thought of an idea. What if there was a way to cook the bacon hanging as a dish of some sort collects the fat? That’s when Abbey and her father began to design what would eventually become the Makin’ Bacon dish. It’s a square, inch-deep skillet made of microwave-safe plastic. It has 3 T-shaped supports rising up from its center. The bacon cooks while draped over the crossbars of the central supports and the fat drips down into the dish.
Abbey’s solution and invention were not only an easier and healthier way to cook the bacon but it was also an inexpensive way. The dish itself only cost 7$. Knowing they had an amazing product Abbey and her father founded the company, A. de F. Ltd., and began selling Makin Bacon the next year. (1994) Since then the product has gotten tons of promotion from “Good Housekeeping” and they even negotiated a deal with Amour for the Makin Bacons packaging in the same year of release. Abbey even made a personal appearance on “The Late Night Show with David Letterman” and on “The Oprah Winfrey Show”.
Abbey has gained a lot of entrepreneurial experience since then. She settled a patent infringement suit against a company in Pennsylvania that had begun to sell a similar product of hers. She acquired a patent for her “microwave cooking machine” in 1996. Still only 11 years old at this point.
Today the Abbey Fleck’s Makin Bacon is available on Amazon and at Walmart. She got the offer from Wallmart to distribute her product fairly soon after her release.

She is an inspiration to fathers and daughters out there that can work together to create something great. Even at that young age to she had a natural knack for business and entrepreneurship. Thanks to her bacon is better!

25 year old Woman turns Fun Candle Side-Hustle into £10m Business.

Think you are too busy to start a side-hustle? It is not worth it right? It could be rewarding but it will never pay off may be the answer to that. What if I told you the side0hustler could turn into a £10million business. Oh the sticker shock may not be in pounds, so how about 13,115,500.00 in US Dollars! All this from a side-hustle that started in a family kitchen 2 years ago.

Hannah Chapman, 25, worked a job dealing with social media two years ago, started melting wax at the age of 23 and it just took off. She started advertising on Instagram her candles and before she knew it she quit her day job to focus solely on making these candles. Chapman credits social media for her success, as without it she would not have the customer base she has today. She says, “That’s the beauty of social media – there are ways of leveraging it that don’t necessarily require money and I think that’s what makes it so exciting for budding companies and young entrepreneurs, it really levels the playing field.”

On top of all that, she is able to employ her dad as a worker in her supply chain. The business itself does not just rely on candle sales, also having wax melts, bath bombs, room sprays and other handmade items. What an accomplishment by Hannah!all information was found at https://www.mirror.co.uk/money/woman-starts-10m-candle-making-22993723

The Bagel Rebellion

Milena Pagan is a self-proclaimed “corporate-retail-strategist-turned-bagel-maker.” Pagan was born in Puerto Rico and moved to Massachusetts to get her degree at MIT. Milena Pagan graduated from MIT with a degree in chemical engineering, followed by a job with CVS Health as an Omnichannel Strategist, but after several years she needed to share her passion for homemade bagels after finding it hard to get New York style  bagels that she really enjoyed. Pagan experimented for several months to create the perfect recipe, then quit her job at CVS and launched Rebelle Artisan Bagels.

Milena Pagan is an incredibly determined person. She identified a problem, and found a way to profit and satisfy that need. Pagan held pop-up shops and promoted her bagels to everyone she could. She has found a way to put a twist on handmade, New York style bagels that differentiates herself from the rest of bagel makers in Providence, Rhode Island. Her success with a Kickstarter campaign granted Rebelle Bagels to pursue a storefront in Providence and they were able to open  their doors in the summer of 2017.

Milena Pagan earned a Entrepreneur of the Year Award New England recently and she deserved it. She has done an amazing job pursing a goal and has achieved great success.  Melina has shown her perseverance and resilience in times of challenge. During COVID she and Rebelle had to be incredibly flexible in order to continue pr0viding customers with the value and quality they were accustomed to.

Customers rave about the fun and interesting flavors that Rebelle Bagels creates on a daily basis. These unexpected flavors are not limited to just bagels, they extend to their very own line of cream cheese, lox, and lunch items.

Located in Providence, Rhode Island, Rebelle Bagels hand make their bagels, cream cheese and lox daily. They experiment with flavors and offer lots of vegan options.

 

Katrina Lake- Stitch Fix

Katrina Lake is the founder and CEO of Stitch Fix, a “personal shopping service for men and women that evolves with your tastes, needs, and lifestyle.” Essentially, the mission of Stitch Fix is to combine technology and the personal touch of stylists to provide a shopping experience that is easy, saves time, and creates a style unique to each customer. To use this service, customers take a style quiz that uses multiple choice questions and pictures to determine the specific style of the customer. Once they complete the style quiz, a box of tailored clothing choices are sent them for a $20 down fee. The user can try on the clothes at home and keep or send home whichever items they want. Stitch Fix provides free shipping, exchanges, and returns. The customer can order on demand or receive regular deliveries based upon their preferences.

Stitch Fix is changing the way the world thinks about shopping and personal styling of clothing. In the age of “fast fashion” and big box stores, personal styling by professionals has largely become a thing of the past because it is considered too expensive and shopping by yourself is much more convenient. Stitch Fix uses technology to take the complexity out of shopping with a personal stylist. It provides a way to get clothing tailored to your taste without having to keep the clothing items you do not like. Why spend hours shopping for the perfect outfit when a professional can do it for you?

Katrina Lake is a bold female millennial entrepreneur who saw the potential for a new market space in the fashion industry (a largely saturated industry) by combining technology and personal styling. She started Stitch Fix while completing her MBA from Harvard University and continues to invest in and work with startups at Leader Ventures. When Lake took her company public in 2017, she became the youngest female founder ever to lead an initial public offering (IPO).

The story of Katrina Lake and Stitch Fix is inspiring to me because it shows that all it takes to succeed is to find your niche and pursue it. Katrina saw an open space in this over-saturated industry and recognized a frustration that many women experience and was able to build a highly successful company and brand from it.

Learn more about Stitch Fix by following this link: https://www.stitchfix.com/