We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Zaria Jenee. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Zaria below.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
Soul mango is an online boutique where we sell, art prints, tote bags, stickers, enamel pins, and greeting cards! We have a really fun collection of items that you can use in your daily life to connect with others and just to showcase fun aspects of your personality. The main mission and the main goal of Soul Mango is to create a space where women of color see themselves in the artwork, see themselves represented across the board. In the fun quirky things like books, and TV and pop culture, all the way to fine art and seeing themselves like a Michelangelo painting. It really is a celebration of the diversity and the many shades sizes and life walks that women come from, and recognizing the beauty and all of that. There’s such a wide variety of things that a lot of people can identify with and I think there is a need to encourage, facilitate and foster experiences beyond just a Eurocentric narrative.
Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?
I really had to save up. Luckily, I had a little bit of my savings, but I had just quit my first real job out there in the world and had moved on to another job, which, fortunately I got a pretty decent pay increase and that gave me the space in the room to really finance the beginnings of Soul Mango, but that meant I had to be smart and frugal because funds were still limited! Mistakes were still made financially haha, but I just take them as growth points and lessons learned.
Do you sell on your site, or do you use a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc?
I currently am utilizing square space and their e-commerce platform. I love Square space. I have my portfolio website on square space already and I have had it on there for years, and so I already knew the platform backwards and forwards.It made sense to keep using square space with Soul Mango and when I looked at all the other e-commerce platforms, square space gave me the freedom to really customize how my website looked while also giving my customers a good e-commerce experience. I know Shopify is a really good option for start ups because it’s pretty decently priced and you do get a decent amount of freedom with the templates and the web design formatting that they allow, but I just wanted a little bit more wiggle room for myself so that is why I ended up going with a Square space. Like I said, square space is really good in terms of crafting a unique website and a unique experience. I think they have some really beautiful templates and their platform is really user-friendly to me. Everything feels very intuitive. There’s not too much that doesn’t make sense. I think a con for some people can be the price. I would say square space is the most expensive option but it also is not the least expensive option. It’s pretty middle ground but I think it gives you a good amount of bang for your buck. They have a lot of different levels in terms of your e-commerce, and in terms of your business profile and what you want included on your website based on what your business is, so I found that to be a really good plus.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.thesoulmango.com
- Instagram: @thesoulmango
- Facebook: @SoulMango