Business Case Application: The woman’s way of doing business: Business of Pleasure and Inspiration Which Brings Some Cash.

 

Jessica Molinari is an Italian immigrant who moved to USA a decade ago. She has a passion for arts, culture, design, and quality products. As she was living in US, she noticed that many the products sold in the stores are of lower quality, produced cheaply by the mass Chinese manufacturers for the vast American market. These designs lacked originality compared to the products found in her native country. Fabrics did not last, had simple or dated designs and cheap look, most of the artistic gifts and jewelry had a kitschy style, or repeated itself throughout the internet. She got tired trying to adjust her taste to the mainstream market and saw an opportunity to bring better quality products to the US for customers who were in search of authentic quality products and diversity.

 

In 2021 Jessica opened her own business, offering international art, jewelry, and gifts designs. She named it JM Designs. Along with art and gifts, Jessica built a fan base on social media for promotional purposes, she also included accessory designs and sales as part of the focuses of the business, and established blogging and vlogging channels as her main promotional tools.

 

Jessica’s idea was to start the business as a test, to use all the free media platforms (Etsy, YouTube, Facebook) to promote her products and see which one of them would be most successful. Once 1 or 2 lines of products show success, she would direct her attention and resources in the direction of these product lines and would eliminate those that were not of interest to the public.

 

To avoid debt, Jessica decided that she would develop the business very slowly. She started it as a sole proprietor with the intention to change it to LLC if it reaches a certain level of success. She invests her own money from her day-time job, and she would only put as much as she is comfortable with until she starts to build clientele.

Because of the limited finances Jessica had, she had to do everything by herself. The main resource poured into the business was her time.

 

The business model was dependent on seasonal and holiday gift giving and emotional buying. Jessica would design gifts for Christmas, Valentines Day, Easter etc. and advertise them before the holidays. To keep the sales active throughout the year, she has developed art inventory and an accessory line. Some art designs were targeting people of certain folklore or cultural backgrounds. These products, she would present at folk festivals and fairs.

 

The key challenges that Jessica faced during the first 3 years of building her business, we will discuss below. Some of them she addressed, others she is still fighting with, but without these 3 years of real-life, and trial and error experience she would not be able to stand where she is now in her entrepreneurial journey.

 

Challenge 1: To grow a business with minimal investment requires you to do everything by yourself.

• All the accounting, procurement, IT, marketing, promotions, sales, designs, and making of the goods falls on you. You barely have time to create new designs, or to grow your inventory.  
• If you work a primary job and do the business as a side hustle, chances are that this business will need many, many years to start functioning. If you do not put daily effort into the business, it will be stale, and you may retire by the time it launches.

 

What needs to be done: Jessica knows that she has different options.

• She can delegate the responsibilities to a third party – either hiring a service, or a helper. This option will require higher financial investment.
• She can quit her primary job to work on her business. This option will remove the main source of income she has, and she thinks that this is not a viable option. Although she can take a loan, that will cover her business and her living expenses. The risk here is that if you fail you will owe money to the bank.
• She can invite a partner and can split the responsibilities for the business with someone who wants to take care of the business side of the work, while she is taking care of the creative side of the job. Partnerships sometimes are challenging because one may not be as interested in the business as the other one, and could benefit from it without putting any effort, additionally it may be complicated to cut ties with your partner.

 

What has been done: Challenge 1, has not been resolved only small steps have been taken to prevent Jessica from overworking herself. She is still 100% involved with all tasks but will eventually take a decision for change after she consults a professional, or and after she is more informed. For now, she is using the services of 3^rd party suppliers to produce prints of her artwork on paper and on fabrics, which allows the art to reach wider publish with its more affordable prices.  

 

Challenge 2: If this is your first business and you do not know what you are doing, you are acting like an amateur. To be an amateur, costs you money, missed opportunities, wasted time, as well as the possibility of someone taking advantage of you.

• As the old wisdom says: “Being prepared is winning half of the battle”, so Jessica felt she needed to be formally trained to prevent wasting resources in mistakes. She wanted to be able to measure her options adequately.

 

What needs to be done: Training.

 

What has been done: Jessica is currently undergoing an MBA program; she took an entrepreneurship class in 2021 which familiarized her with the process of SEO and gave good practical insight on how to start and what to watch out for as an entrepreneur. She does not miss an opportunity to talk with other entrepreneurs about good practices and ideas. Learning does not stop even after the programs are over.

 

Challenge 3: The research and evaluation of the business’ focus took a long time. Jessica needed to test her products wisely, because she did not want to waste time in dead-end directions.  She was betting on quality over quantity, special sales and doing a business that feels right for her over quick financial success and doing something she hates.

 

There are many businesses out there which are very profitable in delivering goods for other businesses, helping people to succeed or just live better. Businesses of this type are not necessarily fun, glamorous, or beautiful. They could be boring but very profitable and functional. However, Jessica was not interested in another boring job, she wanted to be inspired and to inspire others.

If you want your work to bring you pleasure, inspiration and profit at the same time, you may need to work extra for it because having three of them is a rare combination.

 

What worked for Jessica in the first 3 years of the startup:

 

• The best ranking product of the business was her art.

It did not require much investment, it was selling slowly but for good price, and it was not taking much of Jessica’s time to create it, she was good at it, and it was bringing her the pleasure and the attention she wanted. The product was not perishable and did not require special maintenance to store or even a separate storage place. One issue with selling art is, it is a very personal thing, so you have to choose wisely where to display it, how to promote it. Thankfully in this age and time, Facebook exists and helped the first sale to happen, she received commissioned orders through acquaintances. Jessica also has an Etsy account and a website all linked together as recommended by the SEO consultants. She launched an Amazon account which she abandoned after realizing the amount of effort required to publish 1 item. For now, the sales focused through Etsy, Facebook and her network of friends and acquaintances.

 

• The second product that was successful was the scarves she produced through outsourcing.

However, she faced some issues with the vendors who sold her polyester scarves masked as silk. Because the order was international it was too complicated to return, so she decided to sell the polyester. This situation killed her original intention to focus on high quality fabrics and products. Even though the scarves were beautiful and had a “silk” tag on them, she did not want to lie to her customers and ruin her brand by selling polyester for silk. She removed the tags and disclosed the real fabric. Jessica decided to keep the scarves as a testing tool for the market but not to get herself into retail. She did not like the amount of work the retail products required from her, the issues with the customers and all the risk associated with buying and selling the products. Also, the competition in the retail industry was much higher, while the products were cheap.

 

• The 3^rd place on the profitability ladder unexpectedly was taken by her blog. Jessica created the blog with promotional goals in mind, set up to direct the readers to her Etsy account. Surprisingly, the blog started attracting readers interested in articles articles and generated small profit, while also directing traffic to the Etsy shop.

 

What DID NOT work:

• Her YouTube channel, also a promotional tool, generated a fanbase, but the fans were not interested in Jessica’s art and design, as much as they were interested in videos that had nothing to do with her business. She quit producing content because it was highly time consuming and not serving the purpose.  
• Various accessory products that resembled items you can buy online, such as jewelry, small leather purses, fur items – coats, gloves, hats – customized or not, failed the profitability test, for Jessica. It became clear for her that in the US the customers are more interested in buying luxury brands rather than owning unknown leather quality bags with beautiful designs. She decided to leave this product for another time and place of her entrepreneurship.

 

Even though Jessica’s company did not prosper significantly in the financial department in the first 3 years of its existence, she did not feel discouraged but rather happy with the place where the business was standing in 2024. In her mind the business is moving well, upwards and in an organized manner compared to the beginning where everything was chaos.

 

A major part of success is to love what you do, to be entertained by your project, and to enjoy the journey, because this is what keeps you going, what makes your journey effortless and makes you happy. Jessica enjoyed the process of building her business and exploring all the aspects of it. Success will come to those who are working for it.

 

Many businesses in USA are owned by women, many of these businesses are side hustles, a secondary income for the home, many of them are a primary income source. I feel that women’s hunger for entrepreneurship is not always about money. Women find a major creative outlet in their businesses and a way to exercise their strike for nurturing. In most cases it is about something that these women love.

Most female entrepreneurs are delivering beauty, service-oriented businesses, connecting people, teaching. Whether she would become a stylist, would be buying and selling unique children’s clothes internationally, or would help others to stay organized through personal concierge services, or deliver handpicked healthy snacks to a portfolio of companies, the woman is always putting herself in position to make the world more comfortable, more beautiful and healthier place.  

 

Tonight, a day before March 8^th, the International Woman’s Day, I would like to congratulate all the women and their supporters for the impact they make in this world, with their presence, with the example they set for other women, men and kids and with their wise insightful thinking. Because we women make this world a softer and welcoming place, more enjoyable, more fun, a place where things grow and where miracles happen.