We were lucky to catch up with Alicia Bittan recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alicia, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.

We’re constantly searching for new and emerging brands and designers, to curate our favorite styles from their collections and bring together a curated selection of beachwear from 100+ brands from all over the world, all to one place we like to call #BikiniHeaven.

We see ourselves as that one-stop-shop for all our customers’ beach-fashion needs.

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.

We’re Cristalina Swimwear, a multi-brand boutique with currently 100+ swimwear and resort-wear brands from all over the world. We are constantly looking out for emerging brands and talented designers, to hand-pick our favorite styles and fill our brick and mortar boutiques and online store with a carefully curated selection statement beachwear.

We were born a little over 7 years ago, when we realized there was a hole in the market for fashion-forward, unique, and out-of-the-ordinary swimwear styles. We also realized that small brands and designers from Latin America, Europe and even from within the USA were emerging, and had no platform to display their styles, and get exposure. Our concept was created on a random Thursday night over a few glasses of wine. We started with 5 local brands in our first store in Aventura, FL, and expanded to100+ brands from all over the world.

We’ve continued growing our first boutique in Aventura, FL and opened a second location in Key Biscayne, FL + our online store, where we serve clients from all over the world.

Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?

I believe that no business has ever not experienced a near death moment. However, I also believe that those near death moments are what trigger the most important changes that mold the success of your business.

Our near death moment was when Pandemic hit, March of 2020. Our business relied heavily on our brick and mortar sales, and when our store shut its doors, we did not know how we would make payroll, and continue operating when our expenses surpassed our revenue. In the face of this crisis, we were forced to restructure our business, dedicate time and effort to growing our online platform to increase sales, and redirect our social media from in-store sales, events and news, and start communicating with our virtual community differently.

We also realized that we had no chance of surviving against greater, more established online retailers competing with the same brands. Bigger retailers could offer greater shipping rates and huge discounts on the same styles we were currently carrying, which is when we started searching more for “undiscovered” and emerging brands, and stopped chasing the highly sought-after, well-established brands that all our online competitors also had. Definitely, this catapulted our business.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

We’ve always been very connected to our community, which has definitely helped us strengthen our reputation within our market and our clients. We are constantly on social media, and from a very early stage we’ve always shown the behind-the-scenes of how our business works (in-store action, packing online orders, photoshoots, etc.)

We also like to make our community part of what we call our #CristalinaFamily. We reach out to clients and followers from our Instagram to be part of our photoshoots and content creation sessions, which definitely builds trust and allows us to connect with our consumer.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.cristalinaswimwear.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cristalina_swimwear/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cristalinaswimwear/
• Other: Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cristalinaswimwear?lang=en

Image Credits
@isabellamuriel @cristalina_swimwear @coticescato