We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Silvano & Melissa Barba. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Silvano & Melissa below.

Silvano & Melissa, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?

We’re both creative people that have always liked putting our own twist on things. Silvano being a musician and artist whose Father and Grandfather actually dabbled in the leather making business, and Melissa from making her own doll clothes as a kid, to cutting and styling her own funky hair styles, doing her own halloween face paint and making her own costumes.

We started with the idea of making fashion accessories, that lead us to a local fabric store. At this store, we came across some hides of leather that caught our attention. Then ideas of leather bags and wallet designs came to us.
We then started making a few leather bags and wallets for ourselves to use. After a few months, people would give us compliments on these and asked if we could make them one. We eventually expanded our line to jewelry, belts and harnesses. This led us to start our online store www.clarkeandbarba.com, and we began promoting it by participating at local craft festivals and doing pop-ups at different stores.

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

Clarke & Barba is an L.A. based company established in 2009 by wife and husband Melissa Clarke & Silvano Barba. Inspired by a mutual love of fashion and their unique take on everyday classics, we created a line of fine handcrafted leather goods and accessories that combine elegance with edge, and solely create each product from start to finish.

Silvano worked many retail jobs and started getting more involved in the fashion industry. By working in various positions from stockroom/shipping to customer service, sales and marketing…in 2015 he felt he had enough well-rounded knowledge to take the leap and leave the corporate world and focus on Clarke and Barba full time to fulfill his dream of having his own business while simultaneously satisfying his creative outlet.

The designs we come up with and the image we put forward follow our motto Elegance with Edge. We base our designs on what we we would like to wear and use. We love the fashion and styles we grew up with, and we want to bring that edgy goth/rock look for everyday wear. Pairing one of our leather harnesses with a summer dress or knit sweater gives what would be a simple everyday outfit, an edgy elegant look. With our ideas and artistic skills we put our talents together & created a collection where elegance meets rebellion in timeless sophistication.

One thing we pride ourselves in is our customer service. We feel that it is a very important part of any business. We know every customer is different and we pride ourselves in responding quickly and trying to accommodate any request that comes our way. Customers are the reason our and any business survives. That’s why we always put maximum effort and love to every single product we hand make for each order. We also include a personalized note to every order that we ship, telling each customer how much we appreciate their business.

We want this company to have the same values that we live by. Fashion is about confidence. Wearing something that makes you look good on the outside will make you feel good inside. What you wear is a form of self-expression; anyone can buy what’s on the mannequin and follow trends. Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn! We want to share this way of positive thinking with the things that inspire us in fashion. To share the confidence, share the fashion, share who we are.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

A little history about how we met.

We were both on separate trips to Denver when we first connected in 1993. We discovered we were both from the L.A. area and had a lot of common interest. But since we where both young in ’93, (and neither of us had our own cars and relied on friends to give us rides to see each other) our teenage relationship was short lived.
Later, Silvano went on to start the band Brutus Gets the Girl with his younger sister. Playing around L.A. and promoting the band online, Melissa and Silvano reconnected again by chance on Myspace in 2005. They instantly fell for each other again, started dating and married in 2009.

How’d you think through whether to sell directly on your own site or through a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc.

We started selling only on our website at first. Later we started adding some of our popular items on Etsy, which has been a great move for us. We found that Etsy and its marketing strategy, reach a larger audience that we aren’t able to reach ourselves. They take a small percentage of any sales you make, but we see it as another marketing expense.
Our goal is to have all our sales come directly from our website. But at this time, we like to explore multiple avenues (i.e., Etsy, Google ads, Facebook ads, Tik Tok ads) that ultimately will drive sales solely to our site in the future.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.clarkeandbarba.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/clarkeandbarba
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/clarkeandbarba
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/clarkeandbarba
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/@clarkebarba8722
• Other: www.etsy.com/shop/CLARKEandBARBA https://linktr.ee/clarkeandbarba https://www.tiktok.com/@clarkeandbarba

Image Credits
All photographs taken by: Clarke & Barba