Finding the key partners to work with can make or break your venture. After thousands of conversations with aspiring entrepreneurs, it’s one of the most common obstacles and risks holding folks back from pursuing their idea. So – we asked some of the smartest, most resourceful entrepreneurs in the community to share their lessons and insights to help inspire and educate the next great set of entrepreneurs.

Keosha Parker

When starting my sportswear brand, I only knew local manufacturer, I actually was going thru a middle man. A guy who made t-shirts for the club I was working at. Already having a boutique, selling jewelry, I wanted to expand. I asked him about a dozen shirts, he gave me a price, got the shirts printed and the rest was history. I went thru him for about 4 or 5 years, Until one day he just gave me his plug. I was excited. I still use them to this day. I believe in having relationships with my vendors, so I still keep them around. But I knew in order to expand, doing high volume sales, I would need a manufacturer would could execute the entire collection packed & shipped to my door. Read more>>

Claire Howell

I think the biggest thing for us in building business partnerships – whether they be distributors of our products or entities we source our materials from – has been finding common values. Part of the reason we started our company was to show that business can be done while empowering people and protecting the environment, and that means we have to really do our research in every stage of our business model to make sure we are lining up with those values as much as possible. Read more>>

Elaine Madej

The Red Door is unique, our business program is set up as a win -win situation. When I first took over the Red Door it was on a booth fee bases only. Since the start up, we found many artists that want to sell wholesale and some that prefer commission. We are very flexible. This also works for the customers because the artist can keep their prices lower. We have only sought out one artist that we found at the Lyons craft fair, everyone else found us. Most of our artists are first time sellers, their artwork is their hobby, therapy, escape. Read more>>

Chanthini Harrell-George

Like most in the chandler field I ordered a kit online when I first started. It was simple and to the point however it did not give much info on how to buy in bulk, the components of the fragrance oils, differences in vessels and wicks. This lead me on the quest to find better more informative vendors with products that can point me in the right direction to become more educated as a candle maker. Read more>>