Glamdora, It's a Girl Thing This young mom wasn't intent on staying home--she wanted to build a brand to cater to tween girls' fashion needs. Here's how she did it.
By Geoff Williams •
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Description: A retail fashion and accessory store fortweens
Founders: Margarita Olivares, 30
Location: Corpus Christi, Texas, and San Antonio
2005 projected sales: $750,000
http://www.glamdora.com
How she got started: Many women find a career and thenstart a family. Margarita Olivares reversed that. At age 20, shefell in love and quit college to marry her husband, JohnnyOlivares, a radio personality, producer, program director andthen-26-year-old widower with two children. By 21, Olivares waspregnant, and long before she reached 30, she had four children tocare for, including the two from Johnny's previousmarriage.
As the youngest kids started going to school, Olivares couldhave spent her days watching Oprah and shopping, sinceJohnny does quite well for himself. But Olivares had other ideas.She wanted to start her own business. She conceived of a store thatwould cater to the tween girl market--consisting of those girls whoaren't quite teenagers yet but are well past worshipping Dorathe Explorer.
How the company evolved during AOL's reality series,The Startup: Olivares had a challenging year--herhusband's job pulled him to another city, so she found herselftrying to grow Glamdora while selling the house and moving thefamily two hours away. Her teenage staff sometimes seemed to be onthe brink of insanity, or at least rampantirresponsibility--talking to boyfriends on the phone at work,gossiping and just doing what teenagers tend to do. But the worstmoment of the year came when Olivares' trademark waschallenged.
Still, she survived, and during the fall of 2004, she was ableto open up a second store in San Antonio, where her new teenagestaff continued to cause problems--one employee, for example, fellasleep in a chair at the front of the store. But as 2005 began,Olivares started weeding out the slackers and becoming extremelyparticular about whom she hires.
What's in a name? Publicity isn't always anentrepreneur's best friend. Back when The Startup beganin April 2004, Margarita Olivares' Corpus Christi, Texas, storewas called Splendora--It's a Girl Thing. When she opened herstore a year earlier, she thought it was a cute, whimsical andcompletely original name. Later, she learned there was a city inTexas called Splendora, with the word Splendora in many of thelocal businesses' names, but that didn't bother her. As faras she understood, the state--and country--was big enough to holdplenty of Splendora stores.
But not everybody felt that way. An online retail search enginecompany with Splendora in its name soon issued a letter toOlivares, suggesting she change her business's name or facethem in court. Both the online company and Olivares had pendingtrademarks on their names, but Olivares eventually acquiesced,making the name switch at some considerable expense. Her pockets,she believed, weren't as deep as the other company's, andshe didn't want to find her resources completely drained in acourt fight.
Even now, she's sanguine about the experience."Everything happens for a reason," says Olivares. "Iwas thrust into the spotlight sooner than I might have been, butI'd rather this have happened now than in five years whenI'm more established and have 10 stores."
What's next? Olivares is in the planning stages ofopening stores in Houston and McAllen, Texas, and she has beenresearching the possibility of franchising her stores in otherstates.
