We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ruby Rachman. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ruby below.

Hi Ruby, thanks for joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

“If only I had more free time, I would…” That’s what most people say.

In 2020, amid a global pandemic, my life came to a standstill. I was a sophomore in high school. My school was closed, and worse still, my ballet school – the place I’d spent my afternoons for the past 14 years – was ordered to be shut.

So yes, I had A LOT of free time.

While many of my friends were bingeing their favorite shows on Netflix, I was searching for a creative outlet. I tried knitting, but it required too much counting. Painting was fun, but there were too many things to clean. Origami had too many steps, and my cranes would end up in a crumpled mess.

It wasn’t until I saw a video online that showed someone doing hand embroidery on a pair of jeans that I felt excitement. Without hesitation, I ordered my first embroidery kit on Amazon, waited for it to arrive, and went straight to work. My first few attempts at creating a leaf looked more like my tangled hair, but I kept practicing. Soon, I realized I wasn’t satisfied with just embroidering traditional floral motifs.

I wanted to create my own style.

So, I stayed up many nights obsessed with exploring and experimenting with this new craft. I combined my love of simple line drawings with embroidery where I stitch over the lines to create my designs. That became my signature style. I call it “drawing with threads.”

I embroidered my designs on t-shirts, belts, hats, and bags and gave them to friends as presents. My mom was making face masks, so I embroidered on them and gave them to our relatives. I posted my work on Instagram, and soon my friends and their friends began asking me to create custom embroidery for them and to start selling my work. I had not planned to sell my creations, and yet that prospect intrigued me. So, with the help of my mom and encouragement from my friends, I started my small handmade business on Etsy and named it Taroobi! It has become a great outlet for me to explore my creativity and create new products. We have expanded our product line from hand-embroidered apparel to graphic apparel, tote bags, keychains, stickers, notepads, fluffy scrunchies and other handmade items.

I am glad having more free time has led to my newfound creative skill as well as the discovery of my entrepreneurial side.

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?

What’s with that name Taroobi? Most people ask me.

Well, I love boba milk tea, especially taro. So I combined taro with my name Ruby but spelled it differently, so Taroobi was born. It took me 2 seconds to come up with that. Nothing conceptual, I know! Taroobi happened out of boredom, and I’d never planned for it to become a business. So my Etsy store sat for 2 years just selling my embroidered face masks and sweatshirts.

I wasn’t satisfied, so I started fantasizing about developing Taroobi into a boutique store offering different products for people who may like the same things I do. But how? I was about to embark on my college journey as a dance major at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). How can I possibly manage to run a small business as a full-time college student, especially as a dance major with a ton of rehearsals? Luckily for me, my mom came on board to help me. She is a professional graphic designer with many years of experience in design and branding. And she is also great at making things!

Taroobi is about to get serious!

In the beginning, I would come home from college almost every weekend to work with my mom. We decided our design aesthetic should be clean, simple, and minimalist with a touch of cuteness. We turned my hand-drawn illustrations of Asian foods such as dim sum, sushi, ramen, and boba milk teas into our signature Taroobi style — a straightforward illustration style using simple colors, shapes, and lines.

The online “business gurus” were advising us to niche down, determine a specific target audience, and sell products we may not like to be successful, blah, blah, blah. Well, oops, or maybe not?

Like a typical teenager, I didn’t listen.

We did the opposite. We didn’t want to niche down or sell products we didn’t like. Instead, we wanted to be a store that sells different products we like and that appeal to a wide range of audiences and age groups. So we took our designs and applied them to products such as sweatshirts, t-shirts, keychains, tote bags, stickers, and notepads.

We didn’t just stop there. We’ve expanded our product line to handmade fluffy scrunchies, crochet wristlets, and phone charms. Having a range of price points also enables us to offer our products to everyone. That strategy seems to be working! We have sold our goodies to customers as young as 5 to a 90-year-old grandma!

We still have plenty to learn and we love creating new products. I feel very fortunate to work with my mom as a mother-daughter team for Taroobi.

Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?

Nothing about Taroobi was pre-planned.

During my first year at UCI, I was walking around campus when I chanced upon a long row of tents with lots of students crowding at the booths. At first, I thought it was the usual campus club fundraising event. But it was the popular UCI Vendor Fair! There were vendors selling stickers, plushies, hats, pins, posters, jewelry, burritos, cakes, and more. I imagined how nice it would be if Taroobi could have a booth like that too.

Wishful thinking I thought. Why not? I applied and was accepted!

Wait, now what? Should we do it? Could we do it? It wasn’t a one-day event but five!! The booth fee was a few hundred dollars. We had no tent, signage, tables, chairs, displays, clothing racks, or enough products to fill a 10’ x 10’ tent. We needed business liability insurance and a credit card payment system. We also had no experience selling in person.

No problem. They say when there’s a will, there’s a way!

We spent the next two months learning as much as we could about selling at a vendor fair. We bought or borrowed everything we needed. We created enough products to make us look legit. Some customers were surprised that it was our very first in-person market. A few of them were inspired and wanted to become vendors as well. We shared our process and told them, “Do it! Do it!” Three of them did! Now we look forward to vending together.

That was a big and expensive risk for us, but it was rewarding. And luckily, it paid off.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

Hi. Welcome!

I never thought I would be saying that greeting so often. It is the typical greeting we say to anyone who comes into our booth. Being a vendor at an in-person fair/market is the best source of new customers for Taroobi. Meeting our customers in person helps us connect more with them. Sometimes we get feedback on our products that led to product improvements or the creation of new products.

Occasionally, the customers who come to our booth also become our Etsy customers. We love it when our online customers tell us where they’d met us at an in-person market. To grow our social media following, we offer a free sticker or raffle giveaway to people who follow us on Instagram and join our mailing list. We connect with them via our monthly newsletter with a free digital calendar download. Meeting other vendors also led to the discovery of different fairs and markets we had not known of before.

What we love the most about these events are meeting new people and seeing familiar faces!

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.taroobi.etsy.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/taroobi.shop
• Facebook: Brand page: @Taroobi
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Taroobi
• Other: Email: [email protected]

Image Credits

Taesung Hwang, Ruby Rachman, Roseline Seng, and Ashlie Valerio