We were lucky to catch up with Macy Krall recently and have shared our conversation below.

Macy, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Looking back, do you think you started your business at the right time? Do you wish you had started sooner or later

Well I am what you call a serial entrepreneur. I’ve lived many lives in my short 31 years. From going to college for Nursing, becoming a Medical Assistant for 5 years. I loved that, loved my job, co-workers, Doctors and patients. But the upper management was the issue I had. During college I also became a photographer to pay for college and have a hobby. I started photographing wedding and quickly loved the wedding industry.
While owning a photography studio and working part-time at the hospital I knew my end game wasn’t photography and used my loved for vintage to create a vintage rental company in our area.
Borrow My Vintage quickly grew and boomed. We rented out vintage furniture and items for weddings and events and knew we needed more help. I quit my hospital job to take this on this job full-time and even hired my brother full time.
We worked weddings for 10 years and sold BMV in 2022.
During all this time my love for thrifting and finding vintage grew and I had started an Etsy shop.
That grew into finding a space in our small town and opened 223 Vintage Co in March of 2020. We had to shut down 13 days later due to COVID but reopened in June.
Our shop is filled with lots of vintage, plants and fun gifts including baby items. Our baby section was becoming very popular and overtaking our vintage shop. That is when we decided to find a storefront to strictly for a baby boutique.

We created 223 Baby Co and opened October 6th 2021 while 8 months pregnant! We welcomed Agnes in November and she has been a huge part of our little shop. She spent her first 10 months hanging at the shop with me until we needed daycare for the walker :)
223 Baby Co was created since we didn’t have a modern unique baby boutique in our area. I wanted to be in the heart of Downtown Iowa City because the Downtown district offers so much! Plus my grandparents owned a small business around the block for years.

So yes, I wish this baby shop was here longer than almost 2 years. I have so many customers wishing we had something like this 5+ years ago when they had small children.
Leaving the hospital and becoming my own boss has been the best decision but also the hardest. I went from working 20 hours a week, being able to shut off my computer and not working when I wasn’t punched in to working 24/7 and being everything: the buyer, the owner, the employee, marketing, social media guru, etc.

It’s so rewarding to create something from nothing and watch stranger rave over it!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

A little bit more about myself. I was born and raised in Iowa City, Iowa. Thought I wanted to be a nurse my entire childhood/teen life and even went to college for it. But I found my passion with hobbies and becoming my own boss. From photography, weddings, event industry to vintage and babies I have a wide range of interests and hobbies.
I even met my husband photographing a wedding (he was a groomsmen).
After our very unique wedding we found a 1900 Victorian in his hometown and only a few minutes from mine and made a life. We found the perfect space to open 223 Vintage just a block away and then found the perfect space for 223 Baby Co in downtown Iowa city.
We had 5 wonderful years of traveling, working, owning businesses before having our daughter, Agnes Jo who is now 18 months.

We get asked a lot about the number for our business {223} and where it comes from. It comes from our home address. Since I first had an Etsy shop and that was ran out of our garage for a few years I decided to call our vintage shop 223 Vintage Co. I wanted it to be simple + easy. When we moved to our storefront I kept the name because of the following and when we opened Baby I just went with the theme!

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Opening our first storefront just days before COVID shut the world down. We rented out Vintage space in January with a lot of buildout a head of us. Leading up to March I knew we were close and just wanted to get it open and not even knowing what COVID was.
We planned for March 6th 2020 and the grand opening when off with a bang and we had a huge crowd! We were so happy!
A few days later we were getting news that a virus was in the U.S. and many were getting sick and hospitalized.
Our governor shut Iowa down pretty quickly and I got stuck trying to figure out what to do, how to make next months rent and how long it was going to be for. There were SO many other small businesses owners with the same issue and none of us knew what to do.

Over the first few days when we were all at home I saw the opportunity to bring shopping to everyone at home. We did Instagram and Facebook live shopping, porch drop off, and drive by shopping outside our shop.
We noticed everyone moved their office and home and wanted decor and plants for it. Our plant section grew by 50x and we delivered plants all month long to customers front porches. It was fun, different and we made our rent!

We have the best support system and customers and that is how we got through months of not having our storefront open.

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

Following my hobbies was the best thing I could’ve done for myself and family. While working at the hospital I built up my bank account and inventory before taking the leap. That helped so much in the beginning. And knowing I could always fall back on my degree.

Having multiple streams of income also helped so owning wedding business, a storefront and having my husband (and his full time job).

We can now afford to live out lifestyle, while working for myself, having flexible hours and raising a family.
It takes so much work, slowly building up, and lots of help!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.223baby.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/223babyco
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/223babyco
• Linkedin: MacyKrall

Image Credits
None