Location: Ventura, CA
Established: 1996
Employees: 2 employees and contract photographers, artists, models

Design studio for apparel manufacturers; original swimwear and beachwear lines; costume design for events and commercials

The constant drain of commuting to Los Angeles from her home in Ventura was wearing on Margie’s energy for her apparel design consulting. She decided to start a business to service the market in Ventura County and still serve clients in Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Ojai and Santa Barbara. Since graduating from WEV’s SET course in 2004, Margie has grown the business into a two-fold venture; she serves the apparel industry and commercial productions through her design studio - and has recently launched her own swimwear/beachwear division.

Margie credits WEV’s SET course for empowering her to achieve a salary from her business, and then to double that income, hire and expand.

What has been your biggest business challenge?
My biggest business challenge is financing and keeping a steady income of clients to support myself.

What has been your biggest business success?
My biggest business success through WEV has been that it’s empowered me to really strive and go forward with my goals and achieve my goals. Not only did I achieve an income from absolute zero, it has been doubling my income from whence I started with WEV. I’ve had clients in Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Santa Barbara, Ventura, Camarillo, Ojai—serving three different counties to produce Blue Barrell Design Studio’s income. And that is just a wonderful, wonderful step forward of high achievement for me and Blue Barrell.

Who is your ideal customer?
My ideal customer is a woman who is between the ages of 16 and 60; she’s very athletic, she’s very confident in her body, so she wears sexy swimsuits (for the Playa de Chica line). For the Blue Barrell studio, it’s any customer who has a product made of fabric that we can put together and go forward with.

What has been the biggest surprise about owning a business?
The biggest surprise in owning my own business has been financing, accounting, financial planning, budgeting for magazine advertisement, marketing ads, trade shows—there’s so much involved in the way of marketing your product.

How do you juggle all the pieces of your life and make it all come together?
What I do is I get up in the morning, I go exercise and walk along the beach, I socialize at the local coffee shops, I come home, I tackle a project, I write a list of what I’ve got to do, I schedule in Monday-Friday or Monday-Sunday what I’ve got to do for each day and just adhere to it.

What advice do you offer other women who might want to start their own company?
The advice I would give to most women who would like to start their own company is go through a training process, and I would recommend going to WEV. I would recommend doing your financial business plan, going to trade shows—whatever market you’re in or whatever market you want to do business with, go to those trade shows, see what they’re doing, ask questions, how do they market, what does it cost, talk to a business coach, talk to a life coach, talk to consultants in the business. Really do a formal plan, do a back-up plan, see what companies are investing, talk to your local banks—all of that. And then if you’re still driven to do it, go for it.

How did WEV help you achieve your goal or dream?
Blue Barrell was established in 1996, and then we came into WEV in 2004, and that’s when we got more formal training and really took my business seriously, which really enhanced the height of my business.

WEV helped me achieve my goals and dreams by helping me conceptualize and visualize what I wanted for myself. WEV taught me to work with the community, ask other vendors, other businesses to participate in fashion shows, and as a collective, we also offer our services to the community, and the community brings about awareness of what we’re doing to support our businesses.

SET opened up doors for me: it helped me really develop my networking skills—and emphasized how my lifestyle and life plan could be part of my business. It brought the importance of people bonding and staying together throughout their training and throughout their careers to strengthen and support each other in our businesses. The financial plan was a big part of WEV and our class, and the organization is just a real tight-knit group that supports you and enables you to empower yourself to go forward with your dreams and goals in business.

Is there something that you learned from WEV that you use every day?
What I learned from WEV that I use every day is to be open-minded, to look outside the box, be creative, don’t just settle for what is there. There’s always a way to make it happen. And networking, networking is critical for every day. Most of my business is done by referral only so I rely heavily on a person-to-person relationship.

What is the biggest reward you get from your business?
The biggest reward that I get from my business that makes it all worthwhile is the freedom to do what I want: freedom of creativity, freedom to work my schedule, to juggle my personal life, to juggle my business life—I can work as hard as I want; I can take a day off when I think I’ve worked too much or if I need to just chill down, relax, reinvent, just get those creative juices flowing again, then go back to work again. And that’s my creative process flow. This is the freedom to do what I would like and empower myself to take care of myself.

Photography courtesy of Julie Callahan