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

Hi Vida, thanks for joining us today. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.

Along with professionally decorating residences and businesses for the holidays, my holiday decor services include custom designed “mannequin/ dress form” Christmas trees, wreaths, garland, floral arrangements, teardrop/swags, and more.

Although I did not invent the “mannequin/dress form” Christmas tree, I have perfected how to custom-make them with quality precision skills. My very first “mannequin/dress form” Christmas tree was for a client’s home I was decorating for Christmas 2019 and the client was very adamant about having this type of tree. Unbeknownst to me, not being able to find it in any retail store, it was much more conducive for me to make one myself. I just didn’t know it was going to turn out as beautiful as it did- beautiful enough for me to take a chance to post and sell online. The rest is history, historically my most popular item.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

Over the recent years, I have had the joy of festively decorating residences and businesses during the holidays. My passion for decorating during the holidays started out as a hobby for friends and colleagues. As compliments increased, I started getting referrals and eventually decided to offer services and become a business. My talent in holiday decor came from my mother, who has a December birthday and insistently decorates her home from top to bottom EVERY season. While adopting my mother’s traditional decorating style, I have added my own flair of colorful patterns and accent decor that has become admirable year after year. I specialize in using various color patterns, floral inserts, & other accent pieces. Some other specialties include wiring and blending skills, tree trimming, accent size pairing, custom tree toppers, gift wrap color pairing, and faux gift wrapping.

I have had the pleasure of making clients’ holiday decor vision come to life, especially clients that request non-traditional color palettes. In addition to this capability, what sets me apart from others in this industry is that I not only custom make beautiful “mannequin/dress form” Christmas trees for customers, but I build them in a way to where they can be broken down and shipped to the customer’s address. It’s important to know that it is IMPOSSIBLE to find a “mannequin tree” in retail stores (or online) for purchase- especially one of quality work. Because of this, most people resort to making “mannequin trees” themselves (DIY) but will not sell them. Most people won’t sell them because quality work takes a lot of time and there can be shipping challenges.

ONE “mannequin/dress form” Christmas tree takes a minimum of 21 hours for me to build. My mission is to not make any “mannequin tree” the same (regardless if colors are similar), No matter what type of holiday decor item/service I provide, my overall mission is to provide joy to residences and businesses throughout the holidays each year.

I am most proud of the following work:

– Decorating the home of a national donut & coffee chain CEO/business mogul for the Christmas season. (Denver, CO)
– Decorating the Fountainview Mansion Wedding Venue for the Christmas season. (Auburn, AL)
– Decorating the Christmas tree in Puff & Petals Lounge (singer, K. Michelle’s restaurant). (Atlanta, GA)
– Decorating The Herndon Home Museum for the Christmas season. (Atlanta, GA)
– Teaching “Modern Christmas Tree Decorating” classes at Michaels craft store during past holiday seasons. (Alpharetta, GA)
– Providing holiday decor for customers online in multiple cities over 18 states across the United States.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

The main lesson I’ve learned from being a business owner is that if you have a niche business or provide a certain product/service within a niche market (such as myself), then you don’t have to have a HUGE following on social media platforms in order to be successful. People have gotten so conditioned to believing that the main way to be successful in business is to have a lot of followers- failing to realize that most followers may not even be your target audience. Some followers are just around to be in an audience, but not to be targeted. Recent statistics show that the average attention span of a follower on social media is between 1.7-2.5 seconds. All that to say, don’t be afraid to take your time, learn your clientele so you can target more of the same clientele, and continuously improve your product/service/business.

We’d love to hear your thoughts about selling platforms like Amazon/Etsy vs selling on your own site.

Alongside of providing decor services for residences and businesses, I sell my “mannequin/dress form” Christmas trees on Etsy. My best opportunities in making sales has been with Etsy. It is a familiar site to a lot of consumers that shop for custom work online. The pros of selling on Etsy is that it allows me to connect my other social media presences (i.e. Pinterest, Instagram, etc.) to my shop on their site. By doing that, they automatically do their own advertising to draw consumers to my shop, which has worked. The main con is their fees. However, they provide great thorough data analytics on how my shop performs on their site, which helps me make certain decisions AND set certain goals for my business.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.dreamholidayllc.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dreamholidayllc/
• Other: Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/shop/LilGEMSbyDREAM Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/dreamholidayllc/

Image Credits
(NONE; all images were taken by me.)