We recently connected with Jessica Bargenquast and have shared our conversation below.

Jessica, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. So, let’s start with trends – what are some of the largest or more impactful trends you are seeing in the industry?

There are some really exciting economic trends happening for women-owned businesses. 83% of women want to support women-owned businesses but 62% don’t know where to find them.

This alone is why Lady ChangeMakers exists. We are out to make it easy for the consumer to not only find but to shop women-owned.

Women hold most of the purchasing power in the U.S. Women influence up to 80% of purchasing decisions. This results in $20 Trillion in annual consumer spending and is expected to increase by 40% in the next five years!

The other exciting trend is that 17% of households refuse to shop with Amazon. That’s roughly 22 million households.

What do these three stats tell us? They tell us that women truly do want to support women-owned, they just don’t know where to go to support them. It tells us that it’s women who hold the spending power in the U.S, and, if given an easy option, they will support women-owned. Lastly, consumers are moving towards platforms that support causes they believe in.

This is where Lady ChangeMakers comes in!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Jessica Bargenquast and I’m the founder of Lady ChangeMakers. Lady ChangeMakers is an exclusive e-commerce platform for women-owned businesses to gain exposure and sales. We really started to grow our business in 2020. We started as a directory and I called us the Yelp for women. It was your go-to directory to find women-owned businesses to support.

In 2020, we quickly grew from 50 businesses to now over 750 in our directory! In 2021 we revamped our platform and went from the Yelp for women to the Amazon for women. Now consumers can not only find but they can now shop women-owned products and services. We are out to become the platform to go to when supporting women-owned businesses.

What makes our platform different is that we don’t charge our vendors a bunch of fees. There are no listing fees, advertising fees, transaction fees…no more fees! Our vendors pay a one-time payment to enter the marketplace and that’s it!

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

We recently pivoted our entire business model in 2021. I had bigger dreams for the platform but bootstrapping my business meant that I needed to find the funds to do so.

I had hired a business consultant to help me see the blindspots I was missing. My current business model of free business listings and selling SEO services just was not profitable. Especially since I was doing most of the marketing and outreach myself to get businesses into the directory.

My business consultant help me to restructure my business to be profitable almost immediately.

There are times in your business when you need to realize things are just not working. It is in those moments where you need to let go of what you created so that you can move forward in obtaining your bigger vision.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

My business has been bootstrapped thus far, just like so many other women-owned businesses. Having a full-time job allowed me to be able to have security while growing a business.

When I realized that my business model was not working, I hired a business consultant to help assess my strategy.

I wanted to take my business in a new direction. From just a directory to a marketplace where women-owned could sell their products and services. We were able to restructure my business to where we would pre-sell businesses into our new platform. We call these amazing businesses, our Founding Members. Because of pre-selling businesses into our vision we were able to afford a completely new platform.

There are always ways to fund your business, but sometimes you just don’t know what you don’t know. Seeking professional advice is something I always recommend. The moment we came out with a new strategy we sold out the Founding Members and immediately became profitable.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://ladychangemakers.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ladychangemakers
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ladychangemakers/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ladychangemakers
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ladychangemaker
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCD6v2v8Ldxuvoa9MTZNfNCQ
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@ladychangemakers

Image Credits
FemForce®️ Photoshoots