We recently connected with Ebony Staten and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Ebony, thanks for joining us today. One of the most important things small businesses can do, in our view, is to serve underserved communities that are ignored by giant corporations who often are just creating mass-market, one-size-fits-all solutions. Talk to us about how you serve an underserved community.
I’m Ebony Staten interior stylist and owner of The Vogue Room and founder/Executive Director of The Vogue Room Foundation. I created The Vogue Room Foundation, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to helping first-generation, minority college students with their transition to college life, which includes providing them a functional and well-designed space to promote productivity, innovative thinking, and alleviating the burden that comes with decorating their dorm room. We believe that investing in a quality space will give them the jump start they need to maximize their education.
Ebony, 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?
Ebony Staten is a chic geek (full time IT Project manager by day for a global financial institution ), and an interior stylist and owner of The Vogue Room & founder of The Vogue Room Foundation by night. The Vogue Room LLC, which started in 2016 is an interior styling boutique providing residental services in the Charlotte, North Carolina and surrounding areas. The mission is to help you bring your personal style into your home space! The goal when we approach design is to elevate the space and to help the client live and feel better in their home. It is a thoughtful and detailed experience. The Vogue Room uniquely curate spaces designed just for you.
The Vogue Room Foundation was birthed in 2018. While scrolling through my Instagram feed and stopped at a post by Michelle Obama. It was a photo of her at Princeton University in the early ’80s with a message to her fellow first-generation college students: Be brave and stay with it, because education profoundly changed her life. This message resonated with me because I am a first generation college student as well.
“Just like Oprah, I had my great ‘aha’ moment,” and decided that I was going to decorate a minority first generation college students dorm room. 5 years later, The Vogue Room Foundation is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to helping first-generation, minority college students with their transition to college life, which includes providing them a functional and well-designed space to promote productivity, innovative thinking, and alleviating the burden that comes with decorating their dorm room. We believe that investing in a quality space will give them the jump start they need to maximize their education.
How’d you meet your business partner?
Literally met my mentor on instagram. I admired his work and built a genuine connection with him and it turned into a mentorship without me having to ask him if he could actually be my mentor. I think mentorship is about creating genuine connections with the people. As much as we see the value in that particular individual, they should see the value in you as well!
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Being a self taught interior designer and breaking into an unfamiliar industry without any credentials is definitely an illustration of my resilience. Breaking into an unknown industry is definitely an uncomfortable feeling but I was determined to learn and perfect my craft. Therefore, I created an instagram page in 2016 (before the analytics/alorigithm) but the issue was what do I actually post, considering I didn’t have any clients. So I started to post different vignettes in my 1bedroom apartment. Then I wanted to take it a step further and connect with other interior designers. So, I would repost interior spaces of different designers that I loved. By reposting designers, I started to build and connect with these designers as well. Once I started connect with different designers I became a sponge, and learned so much! I knew I wasn’t going back to school for design so I started learning more about design through a non-traditional way. Some interior designers offered classes/courses that I would enroll in, I would attend High Point Furniture Market, and I joined different design communities. Through it all, if it wasn’t for my resilience to push myself to learn as much as I can, I wouldn’t have an interior design business today.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.thevogueroom.co
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thevogueroom/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thevogueroom
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-vogue-room-llc/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/thevogueroomco
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@thevogueroom7475
- Other: Tik Tok:https://www.tiktok.com/@thevogueroom
Image Credits
Residential photos: Trey Thomas Photography Dorm Room Photo w/ student: Victoria Moon Photo Dorm Room Photo: Jon Black with Seawell Black