Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Nisha Shah and Aroosa Shaikh. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alright, Nisha and Aroosa thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea
Amara’s Enchanted Forest (AEF) was founded by Nisha Shah and Aroosa Shaikh. AEF was inspired by Nisha’s daughter, Amara, who is a magical 6-year-old with a VERY colorful imagination. Amara loves everything unicorn, pink, rainbow, and enchanted. Nisha came up with the idea to bring Amara’s enchanted universe to life through a boutique that would also provide a magical experience. Nisha has a successful entrepreneurial career and knew she could make this enchanted world come to life. Aroosa is a creative with a decade of design experience in the fashion world. Nisha enlisted Aroosa to use her creative mind to help turn her idea into a reality. Together, they created Amara’s Enchanted Forest, catering to both women and kids. All items are unique and magical in their own way, curated thoughtfully and carefully. Nisha and Aroosa are also big on ethics, so every brand carried in Amara’s Enchanted Forest isn’t just a one-of-a-kind brand, but is also either a woman-owned, mom-owned, family-owned, minority-owned, eco-conscious, socially-aware, and/or small business. Amara’s Enchanted Forest carries everything from apparel to accessories to beauty to wellness products to home/office products. All from beautifully founded brands so one can shop guilt-free and feel the enchantment of this magical universe called Amra’s Enchanted Forest.
Getting Amara’s Enchanted Forest up and running took a lot of careful thought, time, and hard work. It took Nisha and Aroosa a full year to build Amara’s Enchanted Forest before they were able to actually launch. This was all done in the heart of COVID-19 and the launch officially occurred in January 2020. The design of the logo and finalizing the color scheme and aesthetic came first. Amara’s Enchanted Forest would be a magical and imaginative world, but still, have a modern and relevant twist. So, the logo was created as a unicorn, but with a modern geometric aspect. After the logo and aesthetic was finalized, Aroosa built a matching magical, yet organized, website to match the entire aura of what would be Amara’s Enchanted Forest. Nisha, Aroosa, and Jose (AEF’s right-hand man) dug through various industries to find the right product that would go into AEF. This included apparel, jewelry, handbags, beauty products, home goods, office/school supplies, and even magical treats! (AEF also just recently added a wellness section to push for self-care among women and kids!) The AEF team made sure to pull from only ethical and unique brands. Finding brands that would sell to a startup with very tiny minimums was an obstacle for AEF, but they took what they could get and created an enchanting merchandised collection. All brands in AEF have a magical founding story and some sort of social good or eco-conscious aspect. Nisha and Aroosa didn’t want AEF to just be magical in an aesthetic sense, but also in a morally do-good sense. AEF’s pillars then became Kindness, Compassion, Mindfulness, and Empathy. Every product carried on AEF reflects at least one or more of these founding pillars. Besides gathering magical products and creating an online presence, Aroosa really pushed to create a strong social media presence, starting off with Instagram. AEF collaborated with numerous influencers during the launch stage and kept strict diversity standards. Nisha and Aroosa really wanted to push that AEF was/is for EVERYONE. A strong social media presence really made AEF come to life as a fully breathing, magical unicorn of a business! Another aspect to push sales and brand awareness for AEF was integrating pop-up shows into its business dynamic. Nisha and Aroosa started doing pop-up shows across Los Angeles through small-business-based pop-up markets. This really helped move inventory and further create a loyal customer base. AEF went from getting no orders for weeks on end to shipping nationwide and providing to a decent-sized audience locally. Watching AEF start in a tiny and dingy storage space in South Gate to a fully functional office/showroom in Downtown, Los Angeles was one of the AEF Team’s main highlights. AEF recently upgraded into their LA office/showroom this year in August. The walls are PINK, there is a vibrant rainbow running through all four walls, and a giant 5-foot geometric unicorn sits on the main office wall. AEF is taking New York City next in 2023!
Nisha and Aroosa are also both of Indian origin, so AEF is a women-of-color-owned small business pushing for social good, diversity, eco-consciousness, and overall awareness of self-love and self-care.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Nisha comes from a business background and has a successful staffing business. Her clients include major international airports across the nation, such as LAX, JFK, John Wayne, Austin-Bergstrom, etc. Aroosa comes from a design background and has worked for and with brands like Ella Moss, Bebe, Pull&Bear, Desigual, and more. Together, they created the perfect business-minded and creatively powerful team. Nisha takes care of the business side and Aroosa handles all the creative aspects of the business. The AEF Team also includes Jose, AEF’s right-hand man, and Cordelia, an actual Fairy who manages the magical, all-pink, rainbow-filled, and unicorn-aesthetic-heavy office in Downtown, Los Angeles. The AEF Team would say that they are the proudest of going from a blank slate to a nationwide eCommerce small business providing not only magical and unique products to their customers, but also providing ethical brands and a positive message to the world. AEF is spreading good magic all over the country! Also, bringing a child’s (Amara’s) imaginative world to life with unicorns, mermaids, dragons, rainbows, etc. is a truly amazing and joyful experience. Seeing the smiles on AEFs customers’ faces is another amazing feeling. Seeing the joy of a mother being able to shop magical products along with her daughter and bring the kid inside of herself out is also truly wonderful to see in person at AEF pop-ups.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
It took Nisha and Aroosa a year to build Amara’s Enchanted Forest (AEF) before it was able to fully launch. AEF launched in Jan 2020, still in the thick of the COVID-19 era. Nisha invested a big chunk of her own money into creating AEF and Aroosa left her safe and stable full-time job to be able to concentrate solely on AEF so that it could be up and going. Once AEF was launched, sales didn’t exactly roll in. No one knew about the business. AEF was set up beautifully. The graphics were on point. The products were one-of-a-kind and absolutely magical. All the brands collected were ethical and/or eco-friendly. But, no one was shopping at AEF simply because no one knew about it. As soon as Aroosa completed building the AEF online boutique and released it to the public, it was time to get down and dirty with social media. It took months before Nisha and Aroosa saw their first sale. A LOT of merchandise had to be sent out for free to influencers. A lot of creativity had to be utilized in creating AEF’s IG presence. All the little details mattered in creating the AEF Instagram page to attract followers who could potentially turn into customers. Even more money had to be put into IG ads and promotions. And, even after the first sale, there was a long pause until a second sale was made and then a third. The first year was a lot of work and money put into AEF with little to show in return on the books. But, Nisha and Aroosa didn’t give up. They had it in their hearts that AEF would take off. It was only a matter of time (and way more effort). Hope was never lost. There was faith in the fact that if the AEF Team kept persisting and pushing, they would see some light very soon. Eventually, the idea of also doing physical pop-up shops came about and Nisha and Aroosa began to buy booth spaces at any pop-up they could find in LA. The combination of consistent hard work on social media and consistent physical pop-up events caused AEF to start seeing sales weekly and then daily. Pop-ups also helped make up for sales lacking in e-commerce. Now, AEF is finally starting to see the light. Sales online have finally become consistent and on the daily mark. AEF physical pop-ups do absolutely wonderful. AEF has had to restock inventory numerous times at this point AND was able to create a new Wellness section and Mommy&Me section this year. The AEF presence on social media has also expanded to TikTok and Pinterest. AEF is also planning to take NYC by storm in 2023 with its magical pop-up experience. The AEF Team only knows one direction and that’s forwards, no matter the loss or hard work it takes. AEF moves forward. There is still a lot of work to do and a lot of hills to climb, but the team stays positive and persistent, as it always will.
How did you build your audience on social media?
The AEF Team basically owes all of its online sales to social media marketing. The AEF Team’s strategy was to tackle one monster at a time instead of fighting them all at once. Instagram was the first platform AEF concentrated on. Once a decent IG presence was built, AEF moved onto Pinterest, and then TikTok. AEF is still working on TikTok and Pinterest, but AEF has a decent IG following. One lesson learned on IG was that a business does not need 50k+ followers to start seeing sales and building a true customer base. The key is to attract organic and genuine followers from the start and a business will generally start to see sales around the 1k follower mark. AEF just surpassed the 3.5k follower mark and is starting to see a proper formation of its customer base and regular sales online. Another lesson AEF learned was that a business can not simply just post on social media once in a while. Social media is a daily task and needs daily management. This includes evenings and this includes weekends. As a business owner that’s marketing on social media, you can’t just take the weekend off or put away your work at 5pm. If a strong social media presence is to be made, it needs daily, almost hourly work put into it. AEF’s general rule is one story, 1-3 main feed posts, and 1 reel released each and everyday day. Reels, as much as small businesses hate doing them, are a very prominent and essential part of marketing on Instagram. And, small businesses do need influencers. There are actually a lot of genuine and considerate influencers out there that will willingly work with small businesses for affordable and gifted collabs. They can be hard to find sometimes, and their posts can be a hit or miss, but the good ones are out there. Influencers not only promote your business, product, and message, but they also provide businesses with amazing visual content to post on their own pages. A business’s IG page needs to showcase a lifestyle, not just a product. Finding influencers similar to your target market or with a similar target market helps to showcase the lifestyle your brand is promoting. Investing in social media ads is another key in being successful on social media. Each business has its own strategy. AEF found that sponsored ads on IG don’t work for AEF, but sponsored ads on Pinterest do. As a small business works on its social media presence, it learns what works and doesn’t. As you grow, you will have to pay attention, make notes, and keep restrategizing! Hope that information helps any other fellow small business people trying to get their startups off the ground!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.shopaef.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shopaef/
Image Credits
Instagram handles of models/influencers in pictures: Amara of Amara’s Enchanted Forest herself Kassidy Dior Hailey Glam Kid River Rogers Nina Svet