We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Dame Powell. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Dame below.
Alright, Dame thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?
Our mission is to empower & inspire our community by creating timeless pieces that blend urban edge with sophisticated elegance. We strive to bring a touch of luxury to the everyday, and to be a beacon of pride for our city & our culture. to create a legacy brand that started from the inner-city of buffalo. I think the idea that you need to leave the city to be successful isn’t entirely true. while I know that there are opportunities outside of buffalo that we should explore, i don’t believe we need to move away to pursue them. Not all problems are geographical. With that said we are striving to get people to look inward for luxury, meaning buying local or domestically for your high end pieces. the big box stores have a chokehold on the American consumer and I think we are doing ourselves a disservice by not trying to occupy that space at the same level as the European brands. Thats where DAME comes in. We intend to push the envelope of American luxury with timeless unique silhouettes. We strive to sell confidence and self esteem, that comes in the form of a bag.
Dame, 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?
I started out making clothes. I focused on hoodies, coats, and jackets. Being able to dress athletes and celebrities all while traveling the nation. Then the pandemic hit and nobody was going anywhere any time soon. so I took the opportunity to think of another avenue I could take. I realized that when people are able to leave their homes and countries again that travel would be on the rise and that I wanted to be apart of that boom. so the pivot from clothes to bags mad the most sense to me. not knowing anything about leather or how to construct bags I started going to through girlfriend’s bags and began to dismantle them to see how they were constructed. I soon realized I had a journey ahead of me and decided to start with the basics of hand stitching wallets. I started to build my clientele through my friends, from there xmas rolled around and my friends would ask if I could make bags as gifts for their girlfriends. I started out making mini duffle bags or Speedy’s as they’re often called. Their partners loved the bags and the work so much that they would come to me on there own and request their own custom bags for themselves. Thats when my clientele started to change from men to predominantly women. I understood that my clients where just wanted to be different, they wanted to feel unique and special and they found a way to express that through my work. I started to play into that by creating memorable shopping experiences. Inviting clients to my shop (my home) and greeting them at the door with champagne and hors d’oeuvres. We would seat them and begin to tell them about the brand, showing them color swatches, leather samples and bag silhouettes and we would build the bag together. I tell all my clients that “DAME is the bag but the client is in the details”. We pride ourselves to create an environment that makes them feel like superstars and that the bag would carry that feeling long after they’ve purchased it.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
seeing people light up when they see their bag for the first time. Or watching their facial expressions when they touch our signature piece. its a feeling that never gets old. The idea that people would give me pennies for my thoughts is still crazy to me even after all the business i’ve done. I’m blessed and grateful that I get to do this everyday.
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
creating relationships with my clients and showing the work! I used to keep everything very transactional, but over time I noticed people do consistent business with people they liked. I’m an introvert that needed to learn how to have extroverted skills, like talking to people and being likable lol. So I started to just have conversations with my customers at pop-ups and in our comment sections of our Ig posts and that lead to a lot of opportunities that wouldn’t have happened had I just stayed to myself. now I make it a point to speak to everyone. when it comes to showing work people like to be in on the journey even if its for 30 seconds. by knocking down that wall and letting people in on the process they feel like the work they see is the work they can trust.
Contact Info:
- Website: Dameave.com
- Instagram: shop.dameave
- Facebook: Dame Ave
Image Credits
Legacy House, Dame, and Melissa Mjoen