We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sara Lashkari a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Sara, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. One of the toughest things about entrepreneurship is that there is almost always unexpected problems that come up – problems that you often can’t read about in advance, can’t prepare for, etc. Have you had such and experience and if so, can you tell us the story of one of those unexpected problems you’ve encountered?

Well, I guess it is something that none of us expected, but I ended up opening my business during the pandemic. This was not by design! I had the space at the end of February 2020. Then, we all know what happened. I was not able to open during this time, so I used the space as sort of an office/photo studio. I started my online store first, but that was not right away. I’d say that I began this maybe in May of 2020? I joined some online vendor event groups, some local Facebook groups etc and tired to grow that way. Then, in October 2020 I was able to open my doors. I had a very small Covid-style grand opening, ha! It was definitely hard, but to be honest, the economy now is making things harder than they were back then believe it or not. Also, I had initially started this business under a different name AND with a partner, but she abruptly decided that she could not do it and backed out leaving me to deal with the mess. And this was all before covid! I had to figure out how to get a new LLC and change things into my name etc… What a mess, but I am still here.

Sara, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I have always been into fashion. I had allllll the Barbies, the accessories, the house, van, etc… I also used to draw a lot and my drawings happened to be of pretty dresses. I initially went to school and got my Bachelor’s of Science, and then decided I did not want to pursue that. I ended up moving to Seoul, South Korea, and my love for fashion really blossomed there. I loved the different trends, all of the shopping, stores, etc. I also noticed that a lot of the items I bought there started to become on-trend/fashionable a couple years later in Canada and the US! After that, I went to study fashion styling in Milan, Italy, for a summer. I moved to LA a few months after that and enrolled in FIDM to study Merchandise Marketing. I got an internship at the TV channel E! and worked on a few shows about fashion. I met some stylists there, and started to work with them. That led me to doing a bit of my own thing. Living with an EDM star and family in Ibiza for a summer, starting an Instagram Blog of my outfits, working for an online styling company, and then my own store!

Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?

I can tell you that right now is a very uncertain time for business owners, especially me. It has been a very slow year. I do not think that people have a lot of that disposable income that they had before. A lot of people are shopping online and looking for deals. This year has been my slowest by FAR since opening, which is such a shock to me! I am trying to pivot and figure out other avenues. I do a lot of pop up events and have toyed with the idea of just doing those and having an online presence.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

I think the best source of new clients is doing pop ups in the local area and signing people up for my email list! I also try to do monthly pop ups in my store with other local female artists or business owners.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://lilyloveboutique.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lilylove.boutique
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Lilyloveboutique15

Image Credits

myself – took on a tripod lol or myself.