We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Alex DelBello a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Alex thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What do you think it takes to be successful?

It all derives from passion. I dream of further and further success of course, just like everyone else, but to me success is when working doesn’t feel like work. I’m an artist and designer, and I forget how many countless hours I’ve worked on my brand because it’s truly what I love to do.

As cheesy as it sounds it takes believing in yourself to the fullest extent, even if no one else does. Many people I’ve showed my designs to don’t understand them and don’t believe they will sell. I was shot down multiple times at the start of building my brand. But I know that if it’s coming from deep within me and I believe in them in my heart, the people who share that belief will find me.

Alex, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’ve considered myself an artist for as long as I can remember. My Grandmother gifted me a set of paints as a child through which I explored my craft and continued on to studying Fine Arts at Parsons School of Design. I’ve now taken these lifelong discoveries of my personal style and ethos to build my rug brand, allybello.

It began as paintings on canvas that I felt needed a more tactile quality – I could stare and fall in love with the paintings, but I craved further immersion into them. I took all I’ve learned from working in the interior design industry and began manufacturing these designs into rugs, and the moment I held a design of mine in my hands I knew this was my answer.

I look to nature for inspiration. My most recent collection, the Coastal Collection, pulls from the forms of a bluff on the coastline, the perfect lines of a shell, the patterns that the movement of the water creates in the sand. There is endless inspiration from mother nature. My love of nature combined with my immersion of design in New York City creates a seamless dichotomy of rug designs that can adhere to multiple customers’ styles and homes.

My goal with allybello is to create high quality rugs at an affordable price point, so that anyone can have access to great design. Everyone deserves a beautiful and comfortable home; creating spaces is something so special to me and if I can provide people with that same ability then distributing my art through rugs is the perfect way to do it.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

It’s an ironic statement often heard that within design exists ‘rules.’ And some of these really do apply in order to make a space feel better, like: most of your furniture should sit on a rug rather than off of it, or lamps provide cozier lighting than overhead lighting, or larger furniture actually does make your space feel bigger. However, some rules and tendencies of limiting design in order to build a cohesive space are the rules I strive to break. I don’t believe that you can’t put red and green together, or mix one style of lighting with another style of furniture, or lay a wild rug with even wilder furniture on top of it. I’ve worked in high end residential interior design for many years, and unlearning the standard tendencies has been exhilarating in designing rugs for allybello. I can create whatever designs I want and show how they really can work.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

When I decided to start manufacturing my designs into rugs, research told me it could be far more expensive than I had imagined. And through past jobs shopping for billionaire clients in gigantic rug showrooms where there are hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of product just in that single showroom, it did feel unattainable for me to do on my own.

I had $300 in my account and used that money to order my first set of samples from India. It was essentially all the spare money I had until my next paycheck. A few weeks later I received the samples and I loved them, thanks to the wonderful craftsmanship of my mill. I asked friends for help, one a website designer, one a graphic designer, and one a photographer. We built a logo, website, and took photos of the samples.

From there I shared my brand with any contacts I had, specifically interior designers, and was able to land my first sale, a custom 9’x12′ rug for a designer (Press Interiors) in Manhattan creating the most adorable boys bedroom. Any profit I made off of that sale went straight back into the business, whether that be Shopify bills, or more sample orders to mail out sample packages.

This process repeated – lots of word of mouth, lots of social media, and selling rugs made to order to keep the money flowing in the right directions.

There is always more growth to achieve, but spending that first $300 although scary, was worth it to jumpstart this dream.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.allybello.com
• Instagram: @allybellorugs

Image Credits
*For green Pebble rug in bedroom* Credit: Press Interiors *For brown Ripple rug in bedroom* Credit: Lawson Taylor Interiors