We were lucky to catch up with Amanda Vereb recently and have shared our conversation below.

Amanda, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?

My mom likes to do the cryptoquips in the newspaper. Years before I opened up my business, she did a cryptoquip that went, “an iron horse with a flaxen tail, the faster the horse runs the shorter his tail becomes; what is it? A needle and thread!” After she did that, she gave it to me and I saved it for the longest time. Fast forward a few years later and I’m trying to come up with a business name. I’m not the type of person who was going to call my business “Manda’s Mending” or “Alterations by Amanda” it had to be way more thoughtful and cooler than that. As a creative, I am 100% a night owl and ideas come to me better when the sun sets. It was an “ah-ha!” moment for me. I sprung out of bed at 4am and thought “The Iron Horse!” The “atelier” part came a little later that day to show more of what my business is. Atelier is French for “workshop” and thus, The Iron Horse Atelier was born.

Amanda, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My great-grandmother taught me how to sew at the age of 3. Her and I were 80 years apart within a few weeks of each other; we were VERY close and I cherished her. As her eyesight was going, she could still sew but needed help threading her needles. This was the very start of my life-long passion. As a young kid, I began hand sewing more advanced things. I would make my own clothes in middle school and upcycle old clothes, mash them with other ones for a newer look.

Into my high school years, I made my prom/homecoming dresses and purses. This was a serious hobby for me but it was not on the radar as a prospective career. I was initially thinking about being a high school art teacher or becoming a marine biologist. When my one friend and I were touring colleges together, he had mentioned to me in art class one day, “why don’t you apply for fashion design school? I think you’re really good at sewing it might be better than testing water samples all day.” I ended up attending Philadelphia University and earned my bachelor’s degree in Fashion Design. I also studied abroad at The American University of Rome focusing on fashion illustration. In college, I was primarily geared towards mens and women outerwear. I wanted to work for a company that I could design high-end men’s jackets. My senior year final collection was published in Sally Congdon-Martin’s Emerging Fashion Designers 2 book as one of the top 50 up and coming fashion designers in the US. After graduating, I worked in Philadelphia, New York City, and Pittsburgh as a product developer.

In 2012, my life took a strange turn and I moved to the Caribbean to live on a sailboat in St. John. I still sewed with a home sewing machine on the boat but I worked as a bartender on island. When I was 3 months pregnant with my son, I left the island and moved back to my mom’s house. There weren’t a lot of design options for me to turn to there, and that is when I started working with bridal salons for alterations. I got a job working for the alterations department at David’s Bridal. What was supposed to be an interim job until I got back on my feet, turned into a love affair with the wedding industry. I learned the ins and outs of bridal gowns and the many different forms of them. From there, I took a new job as a sub-contractor for a popular bridal salon in the area. This strengthened my new found skill set and I also learned how the wedding industry breathes. After working for the salon for a few years, I knew something was missing and I could not stay happy working for someone else. I was formulating a plan to move forward and grow as a single mother and businesswoman. I was still working for the salon and in the meantime, I was in the beginning stages of starting my own tailoring company. I was sewing in my mom’s basement for friends and referrals no more than 15 feet from my bed. I started to envision a life that I had once dreamt of starting to unfold for me. In 2016, I found a small studio space in the prime location of Lawrenceville, a neighborhood of Pittsburgh, and took the financial leap to open up my own tailor shop; The Iron Horse Atelier. It was a TINY space (12’x16′) and it was every part of perfect because it was my own. The Iron Horse Atelier focuses on bridal alterations and suit tailoring. The company is LGBTQ inclusive and body positive.

In 2021 I happily moved into a much larger and magnificent space that allows me much more opportunity and space to take on more clients. It was in 2022 that I was contacted by ABC/Disney to film a segment for ABC’s Localish talking about my story and showing off my studio!

Each year, I like to donate either my time or money to causes that help displaced families and children locally. A fun fact about my business is that I have been involved with The Salvation Army since 2021 for a “Runway Repurposed” event that helps raise money for displaced families and single parents living in the Family Caring Center in Pittsburgh. I won “Best Design” in the runway competitions for 2021 and 2022 that uses only recycled materials. My garments were made out of bubble wrap, broken garment bags, and earrings made from gallon jugs. The year after was made out of egg cartons, cardboard, and paper straws.

Have you ever had to pivot?

My business slowly started to take off. I celebrated my first year in business. Then my second, third, and fourth. Right before my fifth year in business and after signing a lease to a bigger space, it was a few weeks shy of the world-wide pandemic.

During 2020 I watched as I saw the business that I built from the ground up starting to fall apart when the world shut down. It was like glass shattering. All of my brides that were on deck to begin their alterations for their weddings or even worse, brides that were supposed to pick up their dresses THAT DAY were all cancelled. Email after email; my clients canceling their appointments. Surely this couldn’t happen. As a single mom of one, there was no way I could fail. I had a mortgage, bills, plus business rent and utilities to pay. I quickly caught on that during the shutdown, people needed masks. I had the skills and materials to make them and away I went. I sold masks and for each one I made, I donated another one to frontline workers including grocery stores, pharmacies, hospitals, and a funeral home in the area. Things started to get dicey when I ran out of elastic and it was impossible for elastic to be shipped to the US. I had to get creative. I started using hairbands and pilfering through stores to make sure I had enough to make masks for whoever needed them. Who would have thought that during armageddon, elastic was going to be a primary item needed? I am proud to say that I made over 1,000 masks and that kept me financially able to provide for my son and I until the world started to open back up.

In my eighth year of business, I have proudly accepted the invitation to show a 7-piece couture collection for New York Fashion Week this coming September 5th; a lifelong achievement that I have been dreaming about and working very hard at succeeding.

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

While working as a subcontractor for one of the bridal salons, I was working in my mom’s basement that doubled as my bedroom. I was saving money on rent this way in the beginning. To fund the beginning stages of my business, I sold my engagement ring from my first marriage as well as my Ninja 250 motorcycle so that I could buy my first industrial sewing machine. The savings and sale helped also to put the down deposit on the lease for my first studio. I found this space in a prime location of Pittsburgh from Craigslist ad. This space was so very small that the rent was minimal so that I could continue to save up to make sure that my business was successful instead of taking out large loans and paying them off if I couldn’t make it work.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://theironhorsepgh.com
• Instagram: theironhorsepgh
• Other: My couture collection/brand is amandavereb.com
  IG @amandaverebatelier

Image Credits

Richard Kelly
Laura Petrilla
Tara Bennet
W Steven Vinces of Sage Studio Photo
Wild Native Photography
Rachel Tokarski Photo
Tyler Norman Photography
Brittany Boote