Today we’d like to introduce you to Phoenix Gonzalez.
Phoenix, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I am the co-founder of, first “dotstudioPRO a Video Management and Distribution platform” we are founded in Vancouver Canada, operate in Canada and the USA and are located in LA. My husband and co-founder Joe Pascual, CEO/CTO at dotstudioPRO and I came up with the idea in 2009. At the time Joe owned a boutique post-production company called Deep Sky Digital, it was through his work at Deep Sky Digital we saw that our industry peers who were in content distribution needed more control of their digital video management and distribution, so they would have more opportunities to monetization of the content.
Ten years later that once-dream is now a reality! With 3 founder, 16 employees across 3 continents, 2 rounds of investment, 4 advisors, 30 plus enterprise customers like the Minnesota Vikings, Washington Redskins and more, dotstudioPRO delivery over three Million content assets, to platforms like Vikings Now, Popstar TV, The Roku Channel, XUMO and many more we help our clients content reach 300 million-plus end consumers who watch that movie and TV content on Connected TV’s, Mobile devices and via websites over internets connections, globally!
If you visualize it and do the work it comes!
I am a firm believer that we can achieve anything and with that idea, I solved a beauty skin/hair issue for myself that two years later is in the hands of over 12,000 customers and counting! My second company is Silked that I co-founded with my best-friend Sandra McCurdy in 2017. I invented The Silked Pillow Sleeve on a Saturday morning in April of 2017, when my husband challenged me to make something that I thought would work to solve my dry hair issues. I like to create:). I had been doing research on Silk Pillowcases and had found that customers online kept complaining that the Silk Pillowcase was slippery and they kept finding it off the pillow in the morning.
So I decided to get a piece of Silk and a piece of Jersey material from Mood’s fabric store in LA, went home cut and pinned it, found a seamstress on yelp and at 4 pm that same day the Pillow Sleeve was born and the prototype was being made. Not sure what would the result would be I took it on a trip with me to Las Vegas and slide The Silk Pillow Sleeve over my Hotel pillow and to my surprise my hair and skin turned out amazing over seven days, in Vegas, while at a convention. Another benefit, the Hotel Staff did not touch my pillow while I was there and what’s even better was I didn’t have to deal with gross hotel pillow germs. Who would have known! I came home from Vegas call my best friend and well the rest is history in the making!
Great, 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?
Being a second-time entrepreneur made things easier as I had a benchmark of things to go off of that made building this business smoother. Don’t get me wrong every business has obstacles. I consider all of my experience to be like going back to school to get your MBA “The real-world-way”, no books or teachers. You have to find mentors, knockdown their door, do a ton of research with a lot of trial and error and oh yes a LOT of highs, lows, bumps, and bruises to the ego. Then you arrive at loving every step of the way when you realize its all so that you can be the change you want to see in the world.
Please tell us more about your business.
For Silked co-founders, female entrepreneurs and friends, Phoenix Gonzalez and Sandra McCurdy, silk was never a beauty secret, but a constant nightly ritual that their Afro-Caribbean mothers performed to promote manageable hair. We wanted to create an easy and accessible way to share this age-old, age-defying secret with the world.
Driven by a desire to share a more environmentally responsible, innovative, and travel-friendly beauty sleep product we brought to market The Pillow Sleeve. Our product offers a convenient and versatile way to boost your beauty sleep offering consumers the beauty benefits of silk and satin for skin and hair with the convenience of an open-ended pillowcase design that easily slips over most standard, queen or king pillow, making them perfect for home or travel. YOU SLEEP…SILKED DOES THE WORK.
Over the past two years, Silked has refined and enhanced our innovative open-ended, eco-conscious pillow sleeve design for all skin and hair types in satin or mulberry silk with vibrant patterns and classic tones.
As a two person team, I am proud of what we have achieved in such a short period of time. Silked’s Pillow Sleeves are now sold in 15 small boutique stores across the USA, directly to our consumer through our online storefront https://silked.co and have expanded to work with well-known brands like Fab Fit Fun, Beautycon POP, Wayfair, HSN, Join Dough, Amazon, Uncommon Goods, Boss Bases, West Elm and Unique Markets, delivering over 12,000 units to men and woman across the USA, Canada, and Europe.
What sets us apart truly is our beauty innovation, I always say we aren’t the inventors of the pillowcase but we are the innovators of it!
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
My family is from Trinidad and Tobago which is home to the biggest street party on Earth- Trinidad and Tobago’s Carnival is officially celebrated on the Monday and Tuesday before Ash Wednesday every year. My favorite childhood memory is playing kiddies carnival in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where I was born. Toronto has a very vibrant Carribean community and my family always made sure growing up that my sister and I had the opportunity to carry on the tradition of playing MASS, a term used for this celebration. It’s a time where we would get to join a mass camp group and that group would wear the same beautiful glittery feathered costumes.
On the day of the carnival, we would dance down the parade route to calypso music and at the end of the route, we would pass a group of judges who would judge the different groups on their costumes to award a mass camp with the winning prize for their camps costumes. I have such fond memories of this as my culture believes that we as people need to take a break and let loose to have fun and celebrate. Its the spice in my life and I am so grateful for Carnival!
Carnival, as it is celebrated in Trinidad and Tobago, is also celebrated in several cities worldwide. These celebrations include Toronto’s Caribana, Miami’s Miami Carnival, Hollywood Carnival in Hollywood, Houston Carifest, London’s Notting Hill Carnival, as well as New York City’s Labor Day Carnival.
To learn more about Trinidad Carnival go here: https://www.gotrinidadandtobago.com/trinidad-and-tobago/carnival-in-trinidad.html
Pricing:
- Silk Pillow Sleeve’s are 69.50
- Satin Pillow Sleeve’s are 29.50
- Special Promo for this Article to support our local small business: Pillow Sleeve code “voyage25”
Contact Info:
- Website: https://silked.co/
- Shop Local LA: Forum Store 8406 Melrose Ave. West Hollywood CA.
- Phone: (323) 538-1440
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/silkedco
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/silkedco
Image Credit:
Photographer – Matt Carmody
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