Tori Gerbig is the name of a woman who in 2011 worked in the insurance industry with a salary of $ 20,000 per year. In her free time she enjoyed spending time with her family and looking at clothes on the internet. It was there when she realized that there weren’t many options and the idea of starting a secondary activity to sell clothes on eBay came up.
CNBC Maket It published the story of this entrepreneur, who after 11 years earned with your Pink Lily business, $141 millions of dollars annually.
The life of successful people seems easy when they are at the top, but before that there was work to do to develop their own processes that would allow them to achieve their goals.
Tori Gerbig told her story and shared some tips, which for her and her husband have been important to having a successful company, from nothing.
To their 24 years ago, Tori liked to browse the internet to see clothes, there weren’t too many options then and that’s what gave him the idea to start a side business, selling women’s clothing on eBay.
10 years later, the entrepreneur and her husband Chris run Pink Lily full time, with an audience on social networks that has grown to 3.6 million followers and who have been vital in their process.
They started with an initial investment of around $300 to buy clothes and accessories on a wholesale website. Since Tori was not familiar with pricing strategies, she set them herself thinking about what she would pay as a customer.
In the first few years they earned between $250 and $1,000 per month, which they used to pay off student loans and reinvest in the business.
At 2013, they started a Facebook group to market their merchandise and by the end of the year, they had managed to save around $20,000 which they used to launch Pink Lily’s official website. That’s when the business really started to flourish, Tori said.
In May of 2014, they surpassed $141,000 in monthly income and that’s when the couple quit their respective jobs to dedicate themselves full time to their company, ending the year with more than $4 million in income.
Currently, they sell more than , 000 products on their website every day, they have a physical store and have 250 full-time employees. With this platform last year the business allowed them to obtain $141 million dollars.
Tori Gerbig revealed her top tips for starting a successful business:
one. Find a gap in the market
It is very important to find a gap in the existing market. Tori detected an unmet need for fashion-inclined women who wanted to be able to find a dress for $ 50 or less.
2. Reinvest your earnings
If you want growth to happen quickly, you should reinvest all or most of your initial earnings back into the business.
3. Create unique and fun social reads
Involving customers in the acquisition of new products and taking into account their opinions makes them feel like part of the family.
4. Empower loyal customers
Customers become brand ambassadors. At Pink Lily they have a program that offers paid positions, with a commission of 10% for each sale to an exclusive group of lifelong customers who can authentically vouch for the products.
5. Find Something You Can Really Own
It is essential to create a niche or product line that you can exclusively own as a business. Pink Lily often buys all of a vendor’s inventory when they find a special product, this way they make themselves from curated collections that can only be found in their store.
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