We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Angie Burge. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Angie below.
Angie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How do you feel about asking friends and family to support your business? What’s appropriate, what’s not? Where do you draw the line?
When I first started sourcing vendors overseas & making custom rugs, I needed to find a way to both learn the process & also what the quality my vendors were capable of producing. At the time, I didn’t even realize that just because someone says they can do something- doesn’t mean they actually can! If I had been able to go to India directly for inspection, it would have been a lot easier, but I had to build my knowledge virtually with COVID and through a LOT of trial and error.
This is where my friends and family came into play. I selected a small circle of people that I knew I could rely on to give solid feedback & gave them rugs at cost. I found that each person had unique tastes, different from my own, and that I was able to utilize their patterns to create a line, build my social presence & learn the trade.
It was a win/win because they got a great rug for a great price and I was able to sharpen my skills as a rug producer, cover my costs & get rugs into the market that created some raving fans. I owe everything to my first clients and family/ friends who trusted me. I am forever grateful.
Angie, 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?
If someone were to tell me a year ago today that I would be working for myself full-time, I would have laughed in their face! And probably cried thinking I had had a mental breakdown!
When I was in high school, I worked for an interior designer and this is where I first discovered my love for textiles. I went to college at the University of Georgia and ended up majoring in history to become an attorney. I quickly realized, while studying for the LSAT, that wasn’t for me. I had no idea what I was going to do… I loved people, community and can be passionate, so sales wouldn’t be too hard, right?
My first job out of college was working in sales for a telecommunications company where I would have to hit 50 businesses a day in a particular zip code. Write down 5 pieces of information about their phone and internet services on their business card and turn them into my boss after 5:30 in Atlanta traffic.
Management would highlight the corners of the business cards every day so we couldn’t reuse them and we’d rotate zip codes weekly with our team. We would start with a map and drive “tight to the right” to hit every business along the way. They taught us how to pick random floors on elevators so security wouldn’t kick us out for soliciting (because they couldn’t find us) & I even had a stapler thrown at my head to “get out!”
I was there for close to a year, which is about 11 months longer than most and won my first presidents club trip with them.
I stumbled across & applied to a startup company called LivingSocial. I remember being AMAZED that you could get 6 sessions of laser hair removal for $99 if you purchased the daily deal within 24 hours.
The recruiter called me within 30 minutes of my application and said “you’re younger than we like to hire, but if you have been selling T1s for a year, so you’ve got grit and you can’t teach that”.
I was one of the first 50 employees with LivingSocial and got to see the rise and fall of the daily deal industry. I survived several layoffs and was promoted to a senior management position traveling the southeast with a team of 10 and 4 presidents clubs under my belt before the age of 30.
The day I got the call from DC that they were laying off the entire sales organization before our merger with Groupon in 2015, I decided, upon wise counsel of my amazing friends and family, to collect my severance & opened an LLC for a retail clothing bouquet. It wasn’t my time to be an entrepreneur and now, I realize I had much more to learn.
I chatted with my husband and decided to just wait for up to 6 months for the right next move and see where the boutique would go. Within 2 weeks of being laid off I had a call from Allergan Aesthetics that there was an open position within their luxury skincare department selling to the medical industry. I took the job and dissolved my LLC the first time I got a bill asking me to pay taxes on an LLC that never went anywhere.
I remember my first week of training thinking “this company is good to be true.” Allergan was like sunshine, teaching me how to be a better rep, wife, friend and eventually mother. The practices we were blessed to work with I became part of the staff. I got to help these small businesses grow their direct dispense skincare through education, business planning and events.
It was 7 wonderful years of an amazing corporation who treated me well, promoted me from sales to training to management again. I had the best products on the market, an amazing team of women and then COVID and my 2nd daughter came along. Things felt different traveling overnight and going out to sunny California for week long trainings. I found myself returning home needing to recharge instead of being charged through my work. Then, the wonderful man who hired me at Allergan passed unexpectedly in late 2021 and it shook me to my core.
My awesome team rallied around our mission to win region of the year & we did it in 2021. For Jonathan. It was the highest honor of my career and I saw so many of the amazing woman I work with receive the highest sales honors on stage and yet, it felt like I still was called for something else.
Life is short and certainly not promised and nothing like learning lessons the hard way to motivate you to find your purpose. So, in January of 2022 I started an Instagram. Began sourcing vendors and had rugs (which I know and love from a personal obsession) as a side hustle.
I set out with the goal of transforming the rug industry (as all entrepreneurs do) because I had been on the other end of buying and sourcing rugs and felt there was a need to be met. I wanted to have a varied array of beautiful and quality rug types with exemplary customer service & transparency at great prices. Rugs for the people.
In July of 2022, a designer named Lisa Mende sent me an Instagram message asking if I would be interested in developing rugs for her room in the Flower Magazine Inspiration Home. I knew, at this point, something felt different… was I building a real business out of a side hustle? Was I worthy of this level of work? I felt like I was faking it with the amazing community of friends and family allowing me to make them rugs that made me look good on social media-when an awesome opportunity just dropped into my lap! Sometimes, you just need someone to place a bet on you, so you can bet on yourself.
With a demanding corporate job, 2 young children at home & now a growing business on my hands, I had a choice to make. In September of 2023, I walked away from the corporate security, the safety of the benefits and 401K, company car and the hardest thing to walk away from… free skincare! to take the leap of faith. And it was the best, most freeing (albeit terrifying) thing I have ever done.
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
100% customer service. I don’t care whose fault it might be. I take 100% ownership when things aren’t right & transparency builds trust. 1 raving fan is worth their weight in gold and they don’t always come from everything going right.
I have found that true loyalty usually comes from when things didn’t go right- and it’s how you handle it from there.
Have you ever had to pivot?
I really didn’t anticipate leaving my corporate role within a short 9 months of starting English Village Lane. Things always happen the way they should, but the business was growing quickly. I was overwhelmed with a demanding corporate travel schedule, being a mom to 2 littles, being a wife, a friend and… now a rug slinger. I had to let something go.
Leaving Corporate America was the scariest pivot I have ever made, but the most rewarding yet. The week I put in my 2 weeks, I polished off the details on my not yet launched website and had it ready to go within a week of my final day at Allergan.
Contact Info:
- Website: Www.EnglishVillageLane.com
- Instagram: EnglishVillageLane
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EnglishVillageLane?mibextid=LQQJ4d
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/mwlite/in/angie-burge-1a118515
Image Credits
Becca Brown Photo Lisa Mende Design