In the last five years, she never thought about throwing in the towel and going back to work for her previous company.
The silver lining in 2020 is that she was able to slow down and look at the bigger picture and tap back into where she started. For the last year, she scaled back on projects and new developments and worked with The Financial Gym to get her finances in order. She has had mini pivots, because she has been featured by countless publications and had organic exposure.Īlthough she has always been passionate about her company, she has lacked the resources to build it out the way she wants. Malyia is currently at the pivotal moment for her company. They took the time and patience to help walk her through the process. She still works with her first mom and pop manufacturer. It was important to her to manufacture her products in either New York or somewhere in the U.S. Malyia found her sources for materials like she did at the fashion houses. The first month she looked into selling platforms, pop-up shops, and any other way to get the brand out there and she had great, organic growth. The first few days felt like freedom and she reveled in it, even though she didn’t know how any of it was going to turn out. Malyia was passionate and she made it work. She went into a little debt to do what she needed to get done and that is the only regret she has. She had saved some money and she didn’t have to work for a year while she built the brand. She had a lot of side hustles to make it work.
In New York, that was like calling her an intern. When she left her job in 2015, she was making about $40,000 a year. She was approached to do a pop-up shop where she was photographed by Vogue for her personal style, and she put in her resignation the next day. When she got the first order out, she wanted to take it to the 10th level. She set up the Etsy shop and got all of the social media handles with that name, and she had the one piece sitting there for six months, until she got her first order. Her friends talked her into selling it on Etsy and when she asked what she should call her store, her friend said Made by Malyia. Body chains were all the rage, all of the celebrities were wearing them then, and you couldn’t find them for less than $14,000. She spent a couple hundred dollars and made a body chain that she wore it to a music festival.
Fashion love and martinis how to#
Midtown has a lot of craft and beading shops that are not good quality, but they are good for a beginner learning how to create jewelry. There were repercussions to her leaving, but she didn’t want to miss out. She had a celebrity who wanted to wear her jewelry on a late night show and she decided to leave work to get the piece to the celebrity, because she didn’t want her job to prevent her from that opportunity.
She had been building her brand on her lunch break. It was freeing, because she made the decision and left on her own terms. Malyia had to step away and find her own path, because she couldn’t get into management or higher-paying roles, and it wasn’t because of a lack of talent. Fashion is difficult to get into as a woman, and especially as a black woman. She was always interested in fashion and she majored in it in college. major fashion houses, but she was missing the creative piece. By 2013, Malyia had worked in fashion for several years, as a buyer or in sales or design for U.S. Shannon - Black Cherry Schweppes Podcast Notes She joins me today to talk about the seemingly crazy decisions she’s made and how that has led her to an amazing chapter in her founder’s story What are we drinking? Her story of being one of the only black women in her fashion industry job to one of the only black women designing jewelry is truly inspiring. My guest today, Malyia McNaughton, founder and CEO of Made by Malyia, is one of those founders. Starting a business is not for the weak of heart, but if your gut is telling you to do it, and you just can’t imagine a life otherwise, than even though it might not make sense financially and might not make sense on paper, it just might be the right path for you.
0 kommentar(er)
