Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kalonni Daly. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Kalonni, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

About a year after High School graduation I was walking down the mall shopping and I couldn’t find anything I liked or anything someone didn’t already have on. That day I went home and did some research on ways I can make shirts myself. I started mocking up ideas for other brands I had in mind until one day my cousin called me and said we should start a brand. Now I had a partner and things seemed real. I could no longer sit behind my computer and dream, work had to be done so LAHÉRA was born.

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

My name is Kalonni Daly I am an entrepreneur/artist from Maryland. Since kindergarten I was enrolled into art school (Thomas G pullen) where we took classes in all forms of visual and performing arts, I really took to art and design. when I was in highschool (Suitland) I was introduced to computer graphics, I was obsessed and excelled in it, I would skip lunch just to work on my designs. After High school I got the opportunity to designs for some prominent brands in the DMV area. I took the knowledge I gained from those experiences and applied it to LAHÉRA. I wanted to give the people in my community something different than everything else in the city. I wanted to give them clean simplistic designs on high quality fabrics. I wanted you to be able to stand next to a high fashion name brand and gauner the same respect. That is what makes me most proud, visually customers like the designs and color choices we choose but when they get to feel it on their skin they understand that we took the time to give them the best quality possible.

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

Funding the business came from working 9-5’s. we both had jobs and bills to pay but this is something we seriously wanted to accomplish, so any money we had leftover went to the business. I had an experience with getting a print shop to complete my order and I didn’t like it so I knew I wanted to be able to print ourselves. we looked at a couple if different options and financially the heat press route made the most since, about a year into the business we were able to upgrade to screen printing and we no longer had to use our personal money for the business. it began to pay for itself.

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

Content is king. it seems very easy to think “hey I can just post my products on social media and it will grow”. that’s not the case at all . you need quality content you want your products to be represented in a professional manner. that gives your customers confidence that you care about what they are buying. you have to be consistent and tell a story make your customers connect with your brand. we are all about family so we incorporate that into our social media post also making our customers feel apart of our journey.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.lahera.shop
• Instagram: @Lonni_theartist

Image Credits
photos all taken by myself