Rising Stars: Meet Vickie Fustokjian of Los Angeles

Today we’d like to introduce you to Vickie Fustokjian.

Hi Vickie, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
Victoria Bella Design really started organically, long before I ever thought of it as a business. I’ve always loved decorating for the holidays and, apparently, had an eye for putting colors, ornaments, ribbons and different pieces together. Friends and family would ask me to help with their trees, and I genuinely just enjoyed doing it.

About 15 years ago, one of my girlfriends said, “You should make this a business.” I remember thinking, Who is going to pay me to decorate their Christmas tree? But I decided to give it a try. In the beginning, I was charging a couple hundred dollars just for installation. That first season I made a few thousand dollars, and I remember being so excited because I thought, Well, the kids’ and family’s Christmas gifts are paid for! At that point, I still wasn’t thinking about building a company.

Then word of mouth started to take over. One client referred another, and the business continued to grow. Along the way, I was purchasing ornaments and décor specifically for clients, but many of them didn’t want to keep all of the extra pieces afterward. Before I knew it, I had accumulated quite a bit of inventory. One day, a client asked me, “Can I just rent everything from you?” That was really the moment the Victoria Bella Design model was born.

In 2022, I decided it was time to officially establish Victoria Bella Design as a business. Since then, we’ve grown tremendously. Today, we stock more than 30 Christmas trees and an extensive collection of ornaments and décor in almost every color and style, along with statement pieces like polar bears, brown bears, reindeer, Santas, sleighs and oversized ornaments. We now create everything from residential installations to large-scale commercial projects and dealership displays.

One of my favorite parts is that even as the business has grown, it has remained very much a family business. I work from home, my family works alongside me, and when we have one of those big installations—multiple trees in a home or an entire dealership—everyone comes together to make it happen. It can be exhausting, but there is something really special about standing back afterward and seeing what we created together.

What started as something I simply loved doing has evolved into a real business, almost without me realizing it was happening. I think that’s what makes Victoria Bella Design so personal to me. It wasn’t created from a business plan—it grew from creativity, relationships, word of mouth and finding a way to turn something I genuinely love into an experience that our clients look forward to every year.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It definitely has not always been a smooth road. In fact, sometimes I look at where we are today and wonder how we actually got here!

We are still a very small, family-owned and operated business, and most of our growth has really happened over the last four years. Victoria Bella Design started as a hobby and a side hustle for me, and I always joke that I still have my “grown-up job.” I work full-time in corporate America as a pharmaceutical sales representative in oncology, so VBD has always been my creative outlet—a completely different side of who I am and something that allows me to express myself creatively.

Balancing the two has probably been one of my biggest challenges. During the holiday season, I’m managing my corporate career while also preparing for installations, organizing inventory, packing and unpacking, coordinating job sites, and somehow still trying to host and enjoy the holidays with my own family.

What people see is the beautiful finished tree or installation. What they don’t see are the hours and hours of work behind it. This is an incredibly labor-intensive business. During our busy season, my husband and I work most evenings after our regular workdays and practically every weekend—organizing, prepping, packing, loading and getting everything ready for the week ahead.

Storage has become an adventure of its own. Every October, I have two storage pods delivered to our home, in addition to a climate-controlled storage unit where we keep our trees and anything that can’t withstand the heat. Sometimes I look around at the amount of Christmas décor surrounding us and just laugh.

It can be physically and mentally exhausting, and there have definitely been plenty of laughs—and maybe a few secret cries—along the way. But I’m incredibly grateful. We’ve built this little business together as a family, one client, one tree and one holiday season at a time. And I think the fact that it hasn’t always been easy makes me appreciate how far Victoria Bella Design has come that much more

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
Victoria Bella Design truly is a family business. My husband, my two sons, my daughter, my daughter-in-law and my son’s girlfriend are all involved, even though they have their own professional careers, school and responsibilities. Somehow, when we’re on a job, everyone naturally knows their role. I rarely have to delegate. They each bring a different strength and a different creative opinion, and somehow all of those personalities come together to create something beautiful.

There are definitely moments when we disagree creatively—and being family, we’re not shy about saying so—but that’s part of what makes it work. At the end of an installation, we can stand back together and say, “We did that.” That is probably what I’m proudest of.

At its core, I think what sets Victoria Bella Design apart is the combination of quality, creativity, flexibility, attention to detail and the very personal level of care that comes from being a small family-run business. Our clients aren’t just another installation on the calendar. We genuinely care about creating something they are excited to come home to—or excited to have their customers walk in and see—during the holidays

Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
This is an interesting question because, by nature, I actually don’t consider myself a risk-taker. My husband is definitely the risk-taker in our family. I like security, routine and knowing what to expect—which is probably part of the reason I’ve spent my professional career in corporate America.

But when I really think about it, Victoria Bella Design may be one of the biggest risks I’ve ever taken because it required me to invest in myself and believe that something I created could actually become a business.

My husband and I joke that we sometimes feel like we work for free because, especially during these growth years, so much of what the business earns gets reinvested right back into it. Whether it’s purchasing inventory, adding trees and statement pieces, storage, transportation or all of the other expenses that come with growing, we’ve made the decision to continually invest in building VBD rather than simply taking the profits out.

There is also a unique financial risk in what we do because Christmas is such a concentrated season. We essentially have a very short window each year to generate the majority of our business, while many of our expenses—particularly inventory and storage—continue throughout the year. So I’ve had to become comfortable with taking calculated risks and looking beyond one season to what we’re building long term.

I think the next risk for me may actually be the hardest one: learning to let go.

Right now, I personally design and touch virtually every tree and installation that leaves Victoria Bella Design. That level of involvement is part of why our quality and attention to detail are so important to me, but I also recognize that it isn’t infinitely scalable. My husband and I physically cannot continue doing everything ourselves if we want the company to grow.

So I’m at an interesting point where risk looks different than it did in the beginning. Initially, the risk was, Do I invest this money? Do I buy this inventory? Will anyone actually hire us? Now the questions are, When do we expand? When do we bring people outside of our family into the business? And how do I trust someone else with something I’ve been so personally involved in creating?

I’ve learned that being a risk-taker doesn’t necessarily mean being fearless or making impulsive decisions. For me, it’s being willing to be uncomfortable when I believe there is an opportunity on the other side of it. I’m probably never going to be the person who jumps without looking—but Victoria Bella Design has taught me that sometimes you have to believe enough in what you’re building to take the next step before you know exactly where it’s going to lead.

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