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

Courtney, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with what makes profitability in your industry a challenge – what would you say is the biggest challenge?

While we assemble all our products by hand here in the United States, we still compete with cheap, mass-produced products from overseas. When a consumer searches for a light up hair accessory through a large e-commerce website like Amazon, they get product results from all around the world. Since we are a small, local business that started from the ground up, we do not have the means to produce such large quantities, so our product costs are higher. However, we must lower our margin in order to compete against these massive factories.

Then, depending on the department you sell in, you face further challenges with profitability. E-commerce websites have higher fees for certain departments, such as clothing and accessories. For this reason, we have transitioned into the party and novelty sector.

Lastly, when competing against global products in various departments, you must budget for marketing campaigns. This helps you get a better placement when consumers search for your top keywords. During the holidays, we tend to lose even more margin, as competing sellers increase their budgeting spend to maximize consumer search results.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I graduated from Western Illinois University with a degree in fashion merchandising and knew right away I wanted to create something special. It was 2012 and there was a rising trend in LEDs. After learning to solder and embed LEDs into different types of accessories, I created the lighted hair clip now known as the ZuZu Flower. Not long after, finalizing our design, I incorporated my business, created an e-commerce presence, developed, and patented my design.

Not only am I super proud of having my own patent, but I am also proud that I have created a product that helps boost the wearers self-confidence, while keeping them safe and seen.

My business has become a family endeavor, and I am so blessed to be able to take this journey with my biggest support group. We work closely together to assemble, ship and promote ZuZu Flowers.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

We traveled down to New Orleans for the Halloween & Party Expo to exhibit at our first trade show. Little did we know that we would have a booth next to our future parts manufacturer. Establishing a manufacturing partnership is critical, and it is important to have a liaison that you can trust. After learning more about his story, and sharing where we were at with our product, he was able to fulfill our need for a manufacturing partner. Since then, we have worked together to strengthen our product design and packaging requirements.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

Seeing my product out in the world! We ship ZuZu Flowers all over the United States, however, it is very rare that I encounter someone I do not know wearing my product. Being able to share in these moments or even coming across photos that customers have shared brings such a smile to my face. It always melts my hearts when we get a new review that is accompanied by a story and/or picture where we provided such joy with my invention

Contact Info:

• Website: www.ledlutions.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ledlutions/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/zuzuflowers
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ZuZu_Flowers