We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Charlie Quinones. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Charlie below.

Charlie, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What do you think it takes to be successful?

Success takes a balance between working harder and smarter. People often separate the two but the people who prioritize both will see the most success. I pride myself on being the hardest worker in the room but if I’m not actively making sure my time and effort is being spent the most efficiently than a large portion of my hard work will be wasted.

Work hard, work smart, and always give 10% more.

Charlie, 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?

My name’s Charlie Quinones, in May of 2021 I opened my own sneaker and clothing store in Ridgewood, NJ. I decided to start this business just 5 months before because I wanted to run a business that blended my business, marketing, and creative minds. After opening I brought on my two friends, Matthew Miller and Matthew Gotrell, and together we’ve been able to grow this local shop into an international brand.

Through social media content, we’ve organically grown over 130k followers across platforms, with over 100 million views. Received features in popular industry platforms such as NiceKicks, Hypebeast, Bleacher Report Kicks, and many more! Our small local shop has developed this incredible online presence and community that allows us to ship all over the world. The three of us have done all of this without spending a dime on marketing, nothing but pure creativity, content, and hustle.

We actively look to expand our brand by creating the best content and offering the best products at the most competitive prices. We’re always proud but never satisfied.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

We opened The Villa in the height of the sneaker reselling boom. Sneaker prices were high and items sold easily. Then a year later the economy crashed and sneaker prices dropped, since then the market has leveled out and margins are 50% lower than what they used to be.

We luckily picked up on this trend early and was able to pivot into focusing on our Vintage and other sections more, allowing us to expand even faster and sell products at better prices while still growing our business, brand, and revenue.

Being lean and able to pivot on a dime in business is crucial because the market can change overnight, and if your business takes a while to adapt, you could be left stranded playing catch up.

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

Since opening in May 2021, we’ve been able to grow our audience to over 130k followers across platforms, with over 100 million views, while spending zero dollars on advertisement. This massive organic growth came from creativity and consistency, and has allowed us to reach potential customers all over the world.

Creativity and consistency are the two pillars to success when wanting to build a social media presence for your business. Being creative requires taking trends and making them your own, building an image and personality for your brand that people can relate to and support. Consistency comes from posting regularly, create a schedule and stick to it. We create content and post everyday, most people post daily for a month and fall off, but if you stick with it no matter the view count, eventually these platforms will push your content to the right audience.

Treat your brand like it’s a person. Create your ideal customer in your mind, what’s their interests, their humor, their look, their personality, and mold your brand in that likeness. Social media will eventually find those people and put your brand in front of it. Instagram, Tik Tok, and all of these other platforms WANT you to win, because it helps their business when yours succeeds, all it takes is creativity and consistency.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://buythevilla.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/buythevilla/