We recently connected with Kimberly Tipton and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Kimberly, thanks for joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
Simply put, my business partner Shanequa Alexander and I were attending an anime convention in 2021 and we attended a panel focused on anime businesses. By the end of the panel, we were super inspired to “just try”, as one of the panelists had suggested. We kinda looked at each other and had this aha! moment and decided we’d create a business that 1) we were both passionate about and 2) where we saw a gap in the anime merch market. And that’s how we created Otaka House! Luxury anime-inspired bags and accessories that meet at the intersection of fashion, function, and fandom.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
For fellow geeky bag ladies, fandom fashionistas, and aesthetic anime adults who want timeless, minimalist luxury that proudly expresses their inner weeb, we design functional, fashionable bags and accessories that don’t compromise subtlety, quality, or that quintessential anime flair that we all know and love (and wish the big brands like Hot Topic or Box Lunch would cater to).
Otaka House is a NYC design house producing luxury bags and accessories inspired by iconic anime and niche nerdy franchises both old and new. Our goal is to appeal to the fashion-conscious nerd, who wants to express their fandom in everyday life with subtle but stylish merch.
We also handle end-to-end design, production, and distribution of our products and all products produced in collaboration with our brand(s).
We combined all the things we love into a brand that we love even more. Otaka House is a love language, it’s a movement, and it’s a passion.
Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?
So Shanequa and I met in 2019 at a small anime convention in North Carolina called QuirkCon. We had a mutual friend, one I knew from college and one she knew from working with Black Girls Anime (@blackgirlsanime). We meshed as a unit pretty quickly and by the end of that con, I’d also joined the Black Girls Anime team to help with marketing and business development! We’ve remained close throughout the years, traveling with each other and growing into a sisterhood with the other BGA members Eunice and Briauna. But in 2021 we both really looked at each other after that panel at DreamCon and said we wanted to do something a little bit more. We’ve both avid shoppers, and at cons, we love to go to the vendor halls and spend money, so we had that common interest. Shanequa is really operational and organized as a healthcare professional and Mom and I’m a bit more spastic as a creative & marketing professional. So we created the perfect storm of sorts!
How’d you think through whether to sell directly on your own site or through a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc.
We sell on Shopify! It’s what we’ve used since we started and it’s a fantastic platform. We’ve never had any problems and it continues to scale with us as we grow. Our web designer is able to customize to our liking as we’re developing our brand presence but its UI is also very intuitive and user-friendly. It makes fulfillment super easy and we’d recommend it for anyone getting started with a Ecomm business!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.otakahouse.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/otakahouse
- Twitter: twitter.com/otakahouse
- Other: tiktok.com/@otakahouse
Image Credits
Otaka House, LLC **NOTE: WE HAVE PHOTOS BEING MADE OF THE TWO OF US SO PLEASE ACTUALLY JUST FOLLOW UP, WE’LL BE ABLE TO PROVIDE THE EDITED PHOTOS IN A FEW DAYS!*