Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Stephanie Doherty and Allison Panio. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Stephanie & Allison, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

Allison and I are friends from high school and would meet up for weekly coffee dates. Our discussions would start to focus on our shared dreams of starting a business together. We were tired of schlepping countless bags to and from school everyday and knew that there had to be a better solution. We wanted to create a functional bag that was tailored to the needs of a modern and successful teacher. Thus, The Teacher Tote was created.

We did a lot of research into bags made for teachers and none of them included all of the qualities we wanted in a tote. So we figured, why not make our own!

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?

Allison and I are teachers, so we were already in our current market. We had success with our teacher tote and decided to expand our product line to create a backpack, pencil case and folio. The pencil case and folio conveniently fit into pockets in our tote and backpack. We wanted to create other products that complimented our fan favorite tote!

We are most proud of fact that our little idea became an actual business. We had no prior background knowledge of how to create, run or upkeep a business. We each took on roles within the company that compliment our strengths, and we know when to delegate tasks to one another.

We want our followers/buyers to know that we take a lot of pride in our products and are so happy that customers love what we have to offer. We also want customers to know that we look for their feedback, because we want to create products that people find useful.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

In the startup of our business, we would fulfill the orders ourselves from our parents’ basements. As our company became more successful, we realized with full time jobs as well, this model was no longer sustainable. We then went on the search for warehouses/fulfillment centers and found one that suited our needs.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

We started our presence on social media by reaching out to teacher influncers in our community. These women were so excited about the idea, that they would post about our product and that is how we initially started. We currently sell to not just teachers, there are a lot of professions that have found our tote useful. We would say to start by targeting the niche that would most likely use your product, but to not be afraid to branch out to other professions as well.

Contact Info:

• Website: theteachertote.com
• Instagram: @theteachertote
• Facebook: @theteachertote
• Twitter: @theteachertote
• Youtube: @theteachertote

Image Credits
Julia D’Agostino