Today we’d like to introduce you to Oksana Avila
Hi Oksana, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I have always been surrounded by fabrics, threads, and sewing machines. My mom is a seamstress and has worked in a clothing factory in Ukraine since she was a teenager. When I was in my early teens she took clients in our apartment and made custom suits, wedding dresses, skirts, you name it. I often had to help her do the finishes, she taught me how to hand stitch zippers, hems, iron delicate fabrics. After high school I went to a fashion design school but it wasn’t years later after I pursued a career as an interpreter that I decided to start sewing and selling online beautiful vacation kaftans. When I was pregnant with my first son I decided to try making a few maternity dresses and my business exploded. Now, 8 years after my first maternity dress, and 13 years after I set up my first online shop I decided to pivot my business and build a marketplace exclusively for American boutiques. Handmade goods have a space like Etsy, used goods have eBay and Poshmark, the whole world has Amazon, but small American shops and boutiques don’t have a space for them.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Being an entrepreneur is never an easy path. Being a woman/mom/wife entrepreneur is a whole different level. Retail business is very fun but it also always changes. The biggest challenge I find in this business is competing with big marketplaces like Amazon and SHEIN. Finding my own designs or my own photography of the products that I carry being sold on those marketplace for a fraction of a price, is hard to watch. Sacrificing time with kids and family is tough as well. I remember I had a very busy season for maternity dresses and had a few orders that had to be made but I went into labor. From the hospital bed I was emailing other mamas telling them I won’t be able to ship their dresses and if they were able to wait a few days until I was out of the hospital to complete the orders. I was sitting at a sewing machine 2 days after I was released, there was no “sleep when baby sleeps” for me.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
ShopAmericanSellers was born at the beginning of this year. I was scrolling through social media and saw a post about a boutique owner feeling defeated from competition from big marketplaces. The response on that post had a huge impact on me as I saw so many other online and brick and mortar shops struggle. I thought if we could just get all these shops together and sell together, maybe next time when someone needs a date dress or kids pajama, or a jewelry piece they could shop with us, local boutiques instead of Amazon. I started researching and couldn’t find a platform like that, so followed by many more months of research and analyzing the benefits that a marketplace can bring to sellers and local economy, I said “Why not me?” ShopAmericanSellers is a marketplace that helps local economy because our sellers are only American businesses. While shoppers can be from anywhere in the world, buyers can feel good about shopping on our platform because they are supporting local families, entrepreneurs and local economy. The money stays in the community, which means our local shops don’t have to close their doors, and our cities don’t have to become ghost towns. ShopAmericanSellers wants to change how people shop; buyers want to support local businesses but often don’t know how or where, our site is giving an opportunity to sellers in the US to stay in business and to buyers to support them.
Are there any important lessons you’ve learned that you can share with us?
Everything is constantly changing and everything takes time, and it’s ok. If you are in business, it’s ok to pivot and take new direction, it’s ok to start something new and different. Right now we are a brand new platform and getting vendors to trust us and start selling on our platform is going to take some time. Same applies to buyers, it is going to take time to become a household name but shopping on ShopAmericanSellers will feel good, like doing the right thing good, because you will be supporting your neighbors, your friends, your community.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.shopamericansellers.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shopamericansellers/
