We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Alexa Carrington-Edelen. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Alexa below.

Alright, Alexa thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?

Staying committed, getting out of your comfort zone, being truthful/ relatable to your market, thinking positively And removing anything toxic whether it be people or things from your life.

Alexa, 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?

My name is Alexa and I’m 33 and I’ve been working since I legally could at 15. I’ve worked in luxury retail, hospitality, doctors office and every job has taught me something that pushed me to become my own boss.

I’ve always bartended on the side since I was 18, when I was 27 I took it more seriously and made it my full time job while trying to go back to school for dental hygiene. It was a point in my life where I wasn’t happy and I’d come home every night more miserable than the next. My boyfriend who is now my husband couldn’t bare to see me so upset so we knew we had to brain storm other avenues.
This is where the idea of starting my own mobile bar company came to my mind. The idea of being my own boss was a dream to me. This idea came to my husband and I in March of 2018 and we spent everyday from then on trying to make it happen.
We found our camper on Facebook Market Place for $400.00 that needed an entire gut job but we were up for the challenge.
During this year renovating our trailer we found out we were expecting our first daughter.
The renovation process with the help of my step father and husband took about a year to complete and my dream of owning my own mobile bar company, Parked Prosecco came to reality. My husband Rob and I were on cloud nine ! Now 2022 4 years and a pandemic later with over 200 + events in the books we couldn’t be more proud of the accomplishments and goals we have made in a short amount of time
And have a super strong online presence with over 10,000 Instagram followers organically grown helped us tremendously with most of our bookings coming from that platform.

But with Being in the mobile bar industry or even in wedding industry alone is super demanding and your weekends are gone. That was something we didn’t know before having kids -how hard this job would be. Finding baby sitters, the late nights, the planning and having to do it all over again the next day for another event was extremely hard on our mental health and physical.

I think my biggest strength on how I made this business so successful was literally just being myself and showing the hard parts of entrepreneurship.clients want to know who they are giving their money to and I would do introduction posts every once in a awhile to reconnect with my following – I would receive messages daily on how I inspired someone to go for it and at first it was overwhelming to see all these compliments from
Strangers but I got over that quickly and soaked it up because I kicked ass the last 4 years and I deserve it. You can be your own cheerleader.

With 4 years down my husband and I thought hard about what our next chapter would be. We basically had the mindset that “ we came, we saw, we conquered” …. Now what? We took a $400.00 investment and turned it into a 6 figure company in a short amount of time. So in April 2021 we opened our second business in downtown Chester NY , Sonder Vintage New York- a women’s clothing store. My husband and I knew when we opened up our shop that running parked Prosecco would be too much on our mental health and we didn’t want to burn out.

We decided in may of 2022 that it was time to part ways with parked Prosecco -The night I posted the sale of the business we received 49 emails of other like minded people who wanted to take over the parked Prosecco legacy. We choose our new buyer and We received our deposit 48 hours later.

If I could sum up the last 5 years it would be that if you want something this bad you’ll do whatever it takes to make it happen but don’t forget to take care of yourself during the process and know when your cups too full.

Conversations about M&A are often focused on multibillion dollar transactions – but M&A can be an important part of a small or medium business owner’s journey. We’d love to hear about your experience with selling businesses.

In May of 2022 after 5 years, my husband and I made the extremely hard decision to part ways with Parked Prosecco. I think the biggest lesson to learn when you’re even contemplating the idea is to ask your self if it’s working out anymore. Knowing when your cup is too full is the key too being successful in my opinion. When you’re not in it anymore your work won’t be at 100% and it shows.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Our Instagram was made in July of 2018, that was when the name came to us. We had to make sure it wasn’t In use already so when we realized it was available we made it. I promoted the Instagram for an entire year before we were ready to launch and I believe being myself and real with the hardships of entrepreneurship made me extremely relatable for other likeminded people who wanted to either start a mobile bar or business.

Contact Info:

• Website: Parkedprosecco.com
• Instagram: Parkedprosecco
• Other: Sondervintagenewyork.com

Image Credits
@gillianleephotos