We were lucky to catch up with Elisa Molina recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Elisa, thanks for joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

The idea for COVEDOZA was born from my 3-year Peace Corps service in rural Costa Rica in 2010. As a Community Economic Development volunteer, I witnessed firsthand the struggles faced by local artisans due to language barriers, limited access to capital and training resources, and competition among them. Their craftsmanship deeply inspired me to create a platform that provided them sustainable economic opportunities. With no knowledge of export and import law, I thought I could create a brand that would work with the artisans to sell their pottery in the U.S. Yet, I quickly realized I didn’t have the preparation or capital needed to import such heavy items so I had to give up on that idea. A few years later (circa 2017), I was on my way home listening to the podcast “The Side Hustle Show” by Nick Loper and there was an episode that talked about a successful e-commerce side hustle. I can’t remember the exact episode but all I remember is the aha moment and all the ideas that went through my head. “I could partner with artisans and artists to market their art, share their stories, and create deeper connections with the customers that support them.” So I got to work. I used Instagram as a source to find artists I fell in love with. I came across several artists and creatives and when I reached out only one said yes to my idea of commercializing their products and bringing them to the U.S. market. Her name is Maria-José Garcia Butler, founder of EMEJOTA. I fell in love with her work which at the time were hand-painted phone covers with a unique doll she called EME. Since she lived in the Dominican Republic, I used WhatsApp to set up a call and explain my idea. Even though I didn’t have an established brand at the time – no website, no structure or plan on how I would make this work – I leaped and asked if she’d like to be my first artist collaboration and she said YES!

At the end of 2017, I used $400 of my funds to import a curated number of cellphone covers she hand-pained and I decided to test the market at a local sorority event. I invested in 100 cases and had a hard time getting them shipped to the U.S. at a decent cost. The sale was a success but I also noticed I had a lot of unsold inventory due to the limited number of case models I had available. So as you can imagine, I faced my first obstacle which was that this business model was not going to be sustainable. After this first failure, I lost motivation and it wasn’t until after I gave birth to my daughter in 2018 that I regained the strength and motivation to go back to the drawing board and rethink how I could make my idea work. So, I decided to sign up for a 6-week entrepreneurship program that was free of charge through my local Latin American Association called Avanzando Juntas. While the hubby took care of our 7-month-old at the time, I took classes once a week so I could strengthen my business idea, create a business plan, and present it to the graduating class. I called it EPLUSJ which was supposed to be a partnership between my sister and me until we decided it wasn’t the best course of action.

After a lot of trial and error, EPLUSJ wasn’t working. The brand wasn’t connecting with my target audience and I had very little traction. Additionally, I faced the challenge of phone models changing every 6 months which affected my ability to invest in proper inventory. This was the second time I tried to make the business work. It wasn’t until the end of 2018 that I discovered a business model called Print-on-Demand (POD) and I became obsessed. I spent weeks researching the model, figuring out how I could still uplift artists and creatives, and then it clicked: digital art. Why didn’t I think about this before? I knew I had a good idea and I just couldn’t give up. So, I decided to go back to EMEJOTA and asked if she’d be willing to create a collection exclusively for me where I’d share her story, generate new followers for her, and market her art in front of an audience she couldn’t reach on her own. She said yes and in a matter of a month, she had 20 designs ready for our first collection where she’d get paid an agreed-upon commission from each product sold from her collection and would be paid her earnings at the end of each quarter. I called it “The Unapologetic Collection.”

So, I decided to try this again for the third time, but this time my business model would be different and I’d introduce the brand with a completely new name and brand identity. So COVEDOZA was born. Using Shopify as my e-commerce platform (which I highly recommend), digital art as my go-to for higher impact and artist reach, and a new brand identity inspired by Educadorian artist, Gaby Moreno from OneWomanStudio, I launched the new brand in March 2019 and it was a huge success. I will never forget the feeling of my first ‘ping’ sound when I received my first online order. Almost seven years later, COVEDOZA is now an award-winning registered and trademarked lifestyle brand with over 200 products on our website, over $4,000 generated in commissions for our artists, and over $10,000 invested in women artists for special projects. The moral of the story: keep moving forward.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m Elisa Molina, a passionate entrepreneur, non-profit director, and the Founder and CEO of COVEDOZA – an award-winning Latina lifestyle brand that connects Latina artists and creatives with conscious consumers through inspirational collaborative product collections. As a former Peace Corps volunteer, I used design thinking to create a platform that connects women artists worldwide with customers through digital art.

While leading COVEDOZA, I also work as a Director of Operations at the Junior Achievement Discovery Center in Gwinnett where I received the “Onward and Upward Employee Award” in 2014. I also served on the Executive Board of Omega Phi Beta Sorority, Incorporated’s Professional Atlanta Chapter, and served short-term as a board member for Because One Matters, a nonprofit supporting Georgia’s foster children.

Born and raised until the age of 12 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, I became a New Yorker in 2000 and earned my bachelor’s degree in international business from Buffalo State University in 2008. After working at the Pan American Health Organization in D.C., I joined the Peace Corps in 2010 as a Community Economic Development volunteer in Guailtil de Santa Cruz, Costa Rica, where I helped secure funding to establish the first $25,000 computer lab to bridge the tech literacy gap in a small rural community called Guaitil.

These experiences, along with my feminist values, led me to create businesses that empower and uplift the Latino community. Today, I’m also working on two more ventures, Jefa Mom Podcast and CrediGrants Academy, which support Latino entrepreneurs and mothers by addressing language barriers and helping them navigate the application process to access small business grants.

Without question, I am the most proud of not giving up when things get hard. It’s no surprise to many that launching a profitable business is very hard and life will get in the way of your breakthrough but you have to persevere. If you’re interested in becoming an entrepreneur, I recommend you do some introspection and assess if you have the skills and growth mindset needed to give it your all and fight for what you believe in. Make sure your why is stronger than your desire to build wealth. You’ll thank me later!

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

One of the biggest lessons I had to unlearn was focusing on the branding first instead of building a strong foundation and putting in the work to clearly understand what problem my business idea was going to solve and who was my target audience. As a creative, I’ve always been very passionate about design and marketing. I clearly remember the very first thing I did, in the beginning, was to look for a graphic designer to create my logo when the focus should have been on writing a strong business plan and developing a sustainable pricing and profit strategy. Moreover, the importance of a strong business foundation became very evident during COVID-19 when all businesses had to close for a short period and we had to completely reinvent ourselves to stay open and adapt to changing consumer behaviors, increased prices of raw materials and blanks, as well as economic uncertainty. If it wasn’t for the community we built and the financial support we received during these times, COVEDOZA wouldn’t be here today. Therefore, make sure you have a clearly outlined business plan that includes your mission, vision, values, target audience, and revenue plan before you start spending money on anything else.

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

COVEDOZA was bootstrapped until I launched my first crowdfunding campaign via GoFundMe to save the business in 2020. Crowdfunding is a way to raise money for an individual or organization by collecting donations through family, friends, friends of friends, strangers, businesses, and more using social media to reach more potential donors, compared to traditional forms of fundraising. When I started, I used the income from my day job to make the initial investments to import product samples, and travel to a regional event to sell my first products and test market-product fit. In 2020, I learned about crowdfunding and raised $1,500 to cover operational costs and at the time GoFundMe.Org launched a micro-grant which I applied for and won. That same year, I launched my second crowdfunding campaign via IFundWomen which raised $1800+ from my community and qualified me to win a $25,000 grant from American Express in November 2020. That was the first time I learned about small business grants which became one of the main sources of initial capital that catapulted the COVEDOZA brand to new heights. To date, I’ve secured over $56,000 in small business grants and over $10,000 in apprised technology and service grants.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://covedoza.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/covedoza/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/covedoza
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elisamolina/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9vJSFMGJOCJjLHKXBHk_zg
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@covedoza

Image Credits

Photos of Me: Wild and Soul Photography
Products: covedoza.com