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

Claudia , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s start with something countless entrepreneurs have had to figure out on the fly – how have you dealt with the rise of remote work?

Our story was born remotely…. My Happy Cabaña is a dream that took shape while my friend/partner Roberta and I were living in Panama and Miami respectively. As time passed, we realized that it would be impossible to see each other as often as we would have liked and therefore we had to adapt our remote team working method. At the beginning it was difficult because the phone calls are often made while you are taking the children to sports or when you are in a noisy place, which is why we created a very effective method that even today, when there are three of us (+ Lucia) and we even live in three different and distant countries works great!
From the outset, we focused on maintaining a strong sense of collaboration and creativity. We started by establishing a fixed day a week on which we have our Zoom call, always trying to share the topics we want to talk about first. When we have our creative moment Roberta naturally takes the lead to be able to explain the new mood boards or the new line ups. For shootings and brand documents, I always try to prepare the interlocutor with a written document so that his attention is already directed to the topic of the day.
Naturally, there are then more specific calls that must be made ad hoc and perhaps unplanned, but in general what we say to each other is then reported on the weekly sheets on our drive so that every week we can see the progress of what we set ourselves as a goal. Certainly the time difference doesn’t help but we always try to facilitate all three so we can also take care of our mum’s role.
Every time we have a Pop up or event we then make a brief summary of the do’s and dont’s so we can leave a trace and not repeat the same mistakes (as well as see together which styles have sold the most and how much we have achieved!).

Claudia , 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?

Italian, born in a small city where bicycles and good food are a must, she moved to Paris at her 20’s to work as a PR in fashion, her dream since she was a child. and many fashion shows and fashion dramas, After 20 years in the fashion industry (and many fashion shows and fashion dramas,) working mainly for the luxury sector between Paris, Milan and Amsterdam, I moved with my family to Panama in 2018. There, the love for fabrics, colors and the sweet life that I was able to enjoy together with the desire to get involved meant that, together with Roberta Donato, always my partner in crime, we created My Happy Cabana, which symbolizes precisely the happiness of having our own place where our styles blend and create unexpected combinations of color and prints. In 2021 our friend Lucia reached the team, our fantastic CFO who not only gave us direction but now also takes care of distribution and sales in Miami. I, having returned to live in Italy for a couple of years, am responsible for the development of the brand at a marketing level and on the Italian territory, where in the space of two years we have already achieved excellent results in terms of brand awareness as well as sales!

My Happy Cabaña is for everyone.. who is fun, chic but effortless, curious, daring, offbeat style, confident, passionate about family, friends and travel, art & design.
Our clothes and accessories have a tropical feeling , we always say you can wear it from the morning to the night in a fun and confident way!

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I certainly don’t say anything new for many women who have decided to start their own business, but I would say that my pivot moment was absolutely when I decided to leave big luxury companies to try to find my way as an entrepreneur. The reasons were mostly family, but as time went by I realized that in reality my creativity and even my abilities had been somehow “channeled” towards many aspects of PR and communication work that stayed very “tight” to me or someway they didn’t value what I could do and what I wanted to learn how to do.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

Since our brand is the representation of ourselves as friends and as a lifestyle, our best and most effective strategy has always been to be present and very active at every event or pop up. This meant that people fell in love not only with our clothes, but also with how they can be worn: with joy and good humor, as we always do! We could certainly do more personal branding on Instagram and other platforms but we are convinced that the values ​​of our brand can be perceived very well through quality and materials as well as by us when we wear it!
As a PR professional, I am still convinced that word of mouth and the ability to transmit fascinating and unique storytelling is the most important part of being able to become strong on the market.
Lately, in Italy, we have been trying to create valuable partnerships with other brands that share our vision and lifestyle. Two weeks ago we launched an exclusive mini capsule of hats with personalized My Happy Cabaña patches, together with the made in Italy brand Just Hat. We launched the new product with a collaborative event at their showroom which was a real success!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.myhappycabana.com or .it
• Instagram: @myhappycabana
• Linkedin: My Happy Cabaña

Image Credits

Violante Dossena