Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Ahriana Edwards. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Ahriana, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

I always had an extended shoe size growing up. In fact, I was already in the double digit shoe sizes by the time 8th grade came around. Therefore, I’ve always struggled finding footwear that were appropriate in my size. Fast forward, I found myself in college majoring in Business Administration and always having to show up as my best self professionally – but I couldn’t do that! It one of those feelings where you have all of the main ingredients in a recipe but you’re missing that one key ingredient. That was me and my fashion wardrobe. I found myself having all of the blazers, trousers, accessories, but I could never find the shoes. I always find myself dressing down in my outfits for business because I didn’t have the appropriate shoes. In fact, I had ran down black flats that was the only thing that could fit my size 12 shoe. It was a pain having an event or internship coming up and not having options.

As soon as senior year hit, it was the height of the pandemic. I was oblivious because I thought that it wasn’t going to last and that we all were going back into office and I would be fully immersed into my full-time job after college. So I started searching for inspiration to transition from being a full-time athlete to a full-time professional. Those same headaches of trying to find a pair of shoes showed up. How has it been 10 years in the footwear industry and no change? We saw major strides in plus size clothing, but shoes were always forgotten. One of my loved ones said “You majored in Entrepreneurship. You know what to do – start the business!”.

With 0 fashion background, I let google become my bestfriend and started figuring it all out. It wasn’t until I did customer discovery and surveyed hundreds of women with extended shoe sizes and found that missing piece that they needed: DRESS SHOES.

After that moment, it was clear: I needed to create Vaila to give us women with extended shoe sizes aVAILAbility. Those early days taught me to actually talk to women that were like me and figure out what the current footwear industry was missing and how to build the best footwear brand for them. Millions of women like me need access to footwear that fits well, looks good, and is workplace appropriate. From there, I set out to create a footwear brand that did just that.

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?

Ahriana is the proud Founder and CEO of Vaila Shoes, where she provides women of forgotten shoe sizes (sizes 9+) with access to modern dress shoes that they desire and deserve. Vaila utilizes the trends of today to create a seasonal dress shoe line designed for the workplace and after-hours. Vaila is on a mission to achieve extended size inclusivity in the footwear space and help women look good while doing it.

Since college, Ahriana has been motivated by sales and entrepreneurship. She’s participated in business accelerators with notable organizations such as Black Ambition Prize, Digital Undivided, Future Founders, and Techstars to push the needle with the success of building Vaila. At age 22, she raised over $80K in non-dilutive funding from pitch competitions before Vaila launched. Along her entrepreneur journey, She’s had the pleasure to be featured by organizations such as Entrepreneur, Forbes, Black Enterprise, BET, Essence and Nasdaq (to name a few). In just 1 year of business, she also launched her company into Macy’s and quickly became recognized on the 2023 Footwear News “Women Who Rock” List and the 2023 Story Exchange “Brilliant Business Ideas” List.

Her previous sales and marketing roles with industry leaders such as Toyota, Nestle, and Facebook along with my previous work at multiple business centers have contributed tremendously to her expertise and success.

At her core, she is motivated by creating a generational legacy and aims to use her innovative mindset and creativity to create a social impact for the undervalued, underestimated, and underrepresented.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

There’s this hype around entrepreneurship in terms of grinding it out and #NOSLEEP! However, I noticed quickly that I needed to give myself Grace. It’s really hectic being an entrepreneur and one of the hardest jobs. After the company was scaling quickly, I become very burned out because I felt guilty for being tired and taking a break. I had to unlearn that mindset because rest is really what propels you forward. It would be some days where I would get a good amount of sleep, but my body just couldn’t allow me to physically and mentally be present in business.

My advice? Give yourself grace! Things will get pushed back and that’s okay! Just know that if all you could give was 40% energy one day, you still gave your 100% that day. Take that break!

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

In the beginning, we actually started growing the community before we sold any products. We found that in order to enter into the footwear market for women with extended shoe sizes, we needed to talk about the problem. For years, ladies with extended shoe sizes have been silenced. Whether that’s us whispering our shoe sizes in stores, or looking at comments about how boys would pick at women with larger feet. I wanted to bring light to that situation. I wanted for Vaila to be a brand that was unapologetic. After all, we are empowering women of forgotten shoe sizes. We spent a solid 6 months creating the narrative of the problem, adding humor and building the community through affinity groups (athletes, mothers, LGBTQ communities), and getting their feedback on how to build the perfect brand for them.

My advice? Create the narrative with the community first and then offer them your solution to uplift them and solve their problem. We were able to make $5000 in that first weekend of business because we built the trust and community first.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.vailashoes.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vailashoes
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahriana-edwards/