 Niche
businesses deliver the unique
By KELLY A. GOFF
Photography ROBERT FRENCH
The heartbeat of ingenuity,
creativity and entrepreneurship is beating strong in the
Alamo City. In many cases, it is young women who are turning
dreams into designs and passions into profits. If you’ve
ever thought about taking that career leap of faith, read
on and prepare to be inspired by these five women.
CLAUDIA
LOBÅO —
Claudia Lobão Designs
Born and raised in Brazil, Claudia Lobão identified
her passion early. “I’ve always liked to make
things,” she recalls. “I would find whatever
I could around the house, like one of my mother’s curtains,
and see what I could make with it. One time I took the strings
off my father’s Spanish guitar and made a necklace.”
At 14 she began modeling and took every opportunity to hang
out with the stylists between shoots. “I was so energized
by the fashion industry. I knew it was my passion. I just
didn’t know if it would be handbags, shoes, clothes
or what,” says Lobão. “Then I found jewelry
and I knew it was the right fit for me because it was something
I could do in my house.”
As an adult she ended up in New York City working at a bank,
mostly for the stability it offered. “But all the time
I kept working on my jewelry,” she says. “I sold
it to my co-workers, friends and family.” She met and
married Paulo Lobão, who was a personal chef. Then
the buildings came crashing down on Sept. 11, 2001.
“It was very emotional. It made me realize time is
short and I should devote myself to doing what I love. We
were depressed and really wanted to leave New York,” remembers
Lobão. While selling her jewelry at an open-air market
in Manhattan, a beautiful woman with a suntan and chic clothing
bought some of her jewelry. “Since it was winter, I
knew she couldn’t be from New York,” Lobão
says. “She said she was from San Antonio. She was so
friendly. I asked her what San Antonio was like and if everyone
there was as nice as she was. I just knew that’s where
we were meant to be.”
SERENDIPITY OR FATE?
Claudia grew up in
a neighborhood called San Antonio in Brazil. The name
of the open-air market in Manhattan was Saint Anthony.
It seemed the stars were aligning and pointing her to
San Antonio. Her husband came to scout it out. “When
he came back, he joked that everyone there must work
for the government because they all said how great it
was to live there,” she says. Soon after, they
bought a house and moved their then 1-year-old daughter
to San Antonio.
She and Paulo started with a kiosk in North Star Mall in
2003, then moved to a location in Alamo Heights. They targeted
the wholesale market, which required extensive travel. “That’s
when we started showing at Julian Gold because the wholesale
business was taking off,” she recalls. “Julian
Gold is such a historic place. They’ve been in business
for 65 years, weathering all kinds of ups and downs. I
told them I would close my store and let them show my collection
exclusively. I tell them all the time they are our family
here. I’m happy we have such a good relationship.”
Tip: Because of its proximity and their relationship, Julian
Gold often features new Lobão pieces before anyone
else in the marketplace has seen them.
Lobão designs her necklaces, earrings and bracelets
with platinum and gold. “It’s very lightweight,” she
says. “Women tell me they love that their ears don't
hurt at the end of the day.” Famous women also love
Claudia Lobão jewelry. Eva Longoria is a huge fan: “I’m
good friends with Tony Parker’s mother. She brought
Eva to the store, and Eva then flew me to introduce me
to the costumer of Desperate Housewives.” To date,
Lobão’s jewelry has been featured on the show
18 times, more than any other jewelry brand.
Other famed femme fatales who wear Lobão’s
designs include Jennifer Alba, Kate Hudson, Goldie Hawn
and Jessica Simpson. Oh yes, and all those other desperate
housewives.
Today, Lobão has a factory in Brazil with 12 craftspeople.
Her line is in more than 500 stores worldwide, including
Japan, Spain, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Mexico, England and
Dubai.
“You have to love what you do; then there’s
no issue about how much you work because you’re happy,” advises
Lobão. “People tell me I’m so lucky,
but they weren’t there when Paulo and I woke up at
4 a.m. for eight months in New York, hauling and setting
up 12 tables at the market, cold-calling on stores that
wouldn’t even talk to us, moving our family across
the country to a city where we knew no one. We took every
negative or mean-spirited thing that happened to us and
took it as a challenge. We used that energy and made Claudia
Lobão jewelry with it.”
 KATY
MIMARI —
Caden Lane and
Nursery Couture
For six years Katy Mimari photographed moms and babies. “I
saw that every mom carries a diaper bag and got to thinking
there was an opportunity to inject some fashion and functionality
into that market,” says Mimari, a San Antonio native
and University of Texas graduate. “I thought young
mothers would welcome something different, something other
than dowdy toile fabric diaper bags.”
She set about learning everything she could about designing,
manufacturing and marketing a new product. “I met with
any attorney, designer, retailer or manufacturer that I thought
could give me some insight,” she says. “I knew
that manufacturing overseas would be significantly cheaper,
but the minimum quantities were too high since I was just
starting out.”
Perseverance and serendipity led her to a small manufacturer
who was visiting San Antonio and managed a small fabric manufacturing
plant in Guadalajara, Mexico, and she began to develop prototype
bags. After several months of testing designs and materials,
she placed her first production order of 600 diaper bags.
On the same day, Mimari found out that she was pregnant with
her first child.
Armed with her new bags, Mimari immediately began making
personal sales calls on boutiques in San Antonio and Austin. “Maybe
it was because I was pregnant and had morning sickness, but
every store placed an order,” she laughs. “In
hindsight, it was a great marketing scheme.”
Her confidence growing, Mimari headed to Houston and Dallas
for more sales calls. Again, everyone placed an order. Sensing
that she was onto something, Mimari approached her lender
for a credit line so she could immediately start production
on another lot of bags, this time doubling her order. Her
first 600 bags were all sold within a matter of months.
Working out of her garage for the first year, Mimari launched
two new styles of diaper bags and a crib bedding collection
within days of her son's arrival. Soon celebrities were noticing
her Caden Lane brand of diaper bags. “Jennifer Garner’s
best friend called us for a diaper bag for Jennifer’s
baby shower,” says Mimari. “Then Tori Spelling
saw our crib bedding. She wanted a real modern-looking nursery.
She contacted us for decorating advice for two nurseries — one
at her home and one at her bed and breakfast. I offered to
design them for her.” US Weekly, In Touch and Life & Style
magazines ran features on Caden Lane’s nursery designs
for Tori Spelling’s home and reality show.
OPPORTUNITY
KEEPS KNOCKING
The producers of NBC’s The Biggest Loser asked Mimari
to provide a nursery makeover for a pregnant finalist. More
than 17 million television viewers saw the season finale that
prominently featured the nursery. Needless to say, consumer
response has been unbelievable!
Perhaps even more amazing is the fact that Mimari has done
most of her sales via her two Web sites, www.cadenlaneco.com
and www.nurserycouture.com. She developed NurseryCouture.com
as a press outlet for Caden Lane products, but also wanted
to feature baby products from other manufacturers that she
preferred or used in her nursery designs.
It wasn’t until 2007 that she opened a brick-and-mortar
location. The 2,000-square-foot retail Nursery Couture flagship
store is located in the new Ventura Plaza on Loop 1604 between
Stone Oak and Blanco.
The Caden Lane items are now being manufactured overseas. In
order to meet the exploding demand for her product, Mimari’s
garage days are over. She now has a 20,000-square-foot fulfillment
center in Colorado. Oh yes, and revenues are through the roof.
She went from $250,000 her first year of business to a projected
$4,000,000 in 2007.
JUST DO IT!
Mimari admits it sounds trite, but if you have an idea, you just have to do it. “I
think people are so quick to second-guess themselves or go with other people’s
advice. I’ve always gone with my gut,” confides Mimari. “If
you believe in it 100 percent, then all you have to do is convince others to
believe in it too.”
 GALEANA
YOUNGER —
Galeana
Born and raised in San Antonio, Galeana Younger has always
loved the power of fashion. “I find it amazing what
putting on a new outfit does for a woman,” says the
36-year-old Younger.
Her route to trendy clothing boutique owner has been anything
but a straight line. After graduating from high school, she
lived in Austria for a year and became fluent in German. “I
just wanted to live abroad. It was hard in many ways, but
looking back, I’m so glad I did it,” she says.
She came back to the states and went to college in Ohio,
graduating with a double major in sociology and German.
“I was one of those college students who waited until
after they graduated to start looking for a job,” she
laughs. “I ended up in Austin doing public relations
work in the health care industry. I hated it.” After
two years of working, she decided to go back to school, this
time in Arizona, for a graduate degree. “I felt like
I should capitalize on my experience abroad, so I got an
M.B.A. in international management.”
She met her now ex-husband while in grad school. Once she
finished, they moved to San Francisco, and she began working
for a small brand management firm. “The man who owned
the company was extremely intelligent and very creative,” she
says. “He was also difficult to work with, but I benefited
from the experience immensely because he demanded we work
only with the top decision-makers of a company. This allowed
us to do some very interesting work with companies such as
Honey-Baked Ham, Lane Bryant, Kahlúa and Gap.”
In 2000 she moved back to San Antonio because of her husband’s
work and landed a job with Garcia 360°, a creative communication
firm that specializes in reaching consumers in a multicultural
and bilingual environment. Again she found herself doing
exciting work, this time with the Centers for Disease Control,
on a national youth media campaign aimed at “tweens” to
promote positive physical activity and displace unhealthy,
risky behaviors.
CROSSROADS
Unfortunately, with the war in Iraq came funding cuts that
impacted the CDC campaign she had been supervising. As her
professional life slowed down, she also came to a crossroads
in her personal life. “At the time I was finalizing my
divorce and got to thinking it was now or never to make a career
change,” Younger recalls. She did some soul searching,
took a year off work and charted a new course for herself and
her now 4-year-old son.
“I’d always wanted to open a store and thought
it was a natural course to make it about clothes since I loved
fashion,” she says. She talked with the Small Business
Administration and a bank and started working on her business
plan. “I had a unique opportunity because it was the
first time in my life that I wasn’t working. It was nice
to have the time to start a business and focus on my child,” she
says.
Younger went to market a few times and started establishing
some relationships. She got a loan and in September 2006, she
opened a clothing store that she aptly named Galeana on North
Main in San Antonio. Specializing in women’s apparel,
jewelry and handbags, Galeana is billed to be “The Girl’s
Guide to Fabulous.”
“Starting and running a clothing store business is intense,” she
says. From laying down large amounts of cash for inventory
to finding the right location, Younger has learned a lot about
business that her agency experience never taught her. In addition,
she’s enjoying the risks and rewards that come from doing
what you want to do.
She explains, “The clothes are just the icing on the
cake. The more time goes by, the more it all expands in my
mind. This isn’t ‘it’ for me — it’s
just the beginning. I’m always thinking and planning.
Maybe I’ll add more categories, make it a larger concept
store. My high aspirations make me antsy to do more — and
I will.
 LANE
HOOTON —
Memory Lane
If you’d asked Lane Hooton five years ago what her
future plans were, her store wouldn’t have been part
of them. A San Antonio native and a graduate of the University
of Texas at Austin, Hooton was using her master’s degree
in professional accounting at PricewaterhouseCoopers as an
external auditor.
Today she’s the owner of Memory Lane, a specialty retail
shop in Alamo Heights that provides personalized gifts, seasonal
gifts, seasonal decorations and monogramming services.
How did she go from number cruncher to personalization professional? “About
four years ago my mom and I were driving around Alamo Heights
and thought a gift shop that offered personalized gifts would
be a fun addition,” recalls Hooton. Her cousin had
recently purchased a monogram machine and was interested
in selling it, so Hooton bought it from her. “At the
time I was still working for PwC in Austin, so my mom took
monogramming lessons at a local sewing store. I came home
on weekends, and she taught me what she had learned,” she
says.
The idea of a retail business still percolating in her mind,
Hooton decided to do some hands-on research. In November
2004, she got a job at a gift shop in Austin called Personally
Yours. “Looking back, the seven months I spent working
there were invaluable,” says Hooton. “The owner,
Susan Parker, has been in this business for more than 25
years. The lessons and tips she taught me from her experience
have helped me in ways I can’t begin to recount.
LEAP
OF FAITH
After just two years at PwC and gaining valuable insight with
Personally Yours, Hooton decided to test-drive her business
concept. In June 2005, she moved back to San Antonio and starting
doing monogramming out of her parents’ house, as well
as working on her business plan. “I think this is where
I faced the biggest hurdle in the start-up process. I knew
once I got a loan for the business, there was no turning back,” says
Hooton. “It was a big step of faith, not to mention contrary
to my personality, to go from a secure, steady profession to
one of uncertainty.”
Hooton credits the steady encouragement and support of her
parents, as well as her abiding faith, in giving her the courage
to move forward: “I still remember kneeling by the bed
with them one morning and praying about this step. The confidence
and excitement my parents showed was contagious. Looking back,
it is amazing to see how things fell into place.”
After signing her lease, she and her mom went off to the market
in Dallas to buy the inventory. Memory Lane opened its doors
in November 2005.
“The past two years have been exciting, scary and fun — not
to mention a major learning experience,” says Hooton,
now age 28. “I hear that the first three years are the
roughest part of running a business, which is where I’m
at right now. I put in a lot of hours. To be honest, if I had
a family of my own, I don’t think I would have been able
to open the store and give them the attention they would deserve.”
MAKING MEMORIES
The good thing is that San Antonio, and Alamo
Heights in particular, have welcomed Memory Lane with open
arms from the beginning. Hooton has had to do very little advertising
because the word-of-mouth generated by her customers has been
overwhelming. “We’re unique to the marketplace
because personalization is really our main product,” she
says. From embroidered items, etched glass and hot-stamped
leather to engraved silver and acrylic pieces, the gift selection
offered at Memory Lane appeals to a wide variety of customers
and occasions.
For anyone considering opening a business, Hooton suggests
you make sure you have a mentor or business advisor with experience
that you can call with questions or to bounce around ideas. “Also
make sure you have the support of your family and friends,” she
advises. Hooton says Memory Lane is definitely a family and
friend affair. At the beginning, her friends and relatives
donated a lot of time that was essential to the store’s
success. “Plus I have my mom, who is really the creative
side of our duo — she spends as much time at the store
as I do,” she comments.
And, of course, CPA Hooton’s last words of advice are “Keep
your books up to date!”
 ADRIANA
S. DE MORENO
The Shoe Club
“I loved chemistry in high school,” confesses
Adriana S. de Moreno, owner of The Shoe Club in Alamo Heights. “I
got a chemistry degree in Mexico and then came to Texas A&M
to get my master’s degree and Ph.D. in analytical chemistry.
Although I enjoyed the chemistry, it was a really stressful
career.”
ANALYZE THIS
So
Moreno left chemistry behind when she moved to San Antonio
with her husband, who is a real estate developer. “When I moved here, I had no
friends and nothing to do. I got depressed, so to make myself
feel better, I tried to go shoe shopping,” she remembers. “I’ve
always loved shoes with high, sexy heels. I went all over
San Antonio and couldn’t find anything I liked. Shoe
shopping here was as bad as it was in College Station. I
couldn’t believe it! Here I was, trying to get a little
shoe therapy, and instead had to get clothes, which I took
home and dumped in my closet. I didn’t even open the
bags. Clothes don’t make me happy. Shoes make me happy.”
As her disgust and obsession grew, she joked to her husband
that she should just open up a shoe store and stock it with
shoes she liked.
“At first it was a joke, but the more I looked around,
I started to think there was an opportunity here,” she
says. “With all my shopping, I knew the type of shoes
I was after weren’t available, except maybe at Saks,
and I didn’t want to pay $500 for my shoe habit and
figured other women probably felt the same.”
Moreno started to do her homework, tracking down reps of
wholesalers, trying to find a location and going to market
to see what the industry had to offer. Six months after moving
to San Antonio, she opened The Shoe Club at The Collection
shopping center on Broadway.
She settled on Alamo Heights for a location, explaining, “It
seemed like the best option because there are so many boutiques
in the area.” She chose to sublease between two other
boutiques, figuring she would benefit from the foot traffic
between the two shops. She opened The Shoe Club in October
2004 and has been going steadily ever since.
IF THE SHOE FITS
“My husband kept asking
me if I thought I could sell since I had never done it before,” recalls
Moreno. “But I knew I could do it because of my personality.” That’s
not to say there weren’t obstacles and frustrations
to getting the business off the ground. “I had many
moments when I thought maybe I shouldn’t do this (open
a shoe store), but I’m the type of person who finishes
what I start — for good or for bad,” she says.
The Nuevo Laredo native is glad she gutted it out: “I
love it. Even with all its ups and downs, it really makes
me happy. I know my customers and enjoy finding the perfect
shoe for them.” Moreno also appreciates the flexibility
owning her own business gives her since she has a 2-year-old
son. “I’m able to work here in the mornings and
have my afternoons free to be with my son,” she says.
The 34-year-old fashionista strives to make The Shoe Club
a destination for shoe shoppers. She carries many brands
not available anywhere else in San Antonio, and for brands
like Kors or BCBG, she gets with the rep to make sure she
is carrying different colors than other stores are selling.
There’s not a shoe in her store that she wouldn’t
proudly wear herself. Although she is in love with high heels,
she also carries ballet flats and sneakers, along with jewelry
and handbags. Shoe prices range from $75 to $450.
Moreno says anyone who wants to own their own business can’t
go into it blindly. “You have to do the research,” she
states plainly. “You go to school to get some kind
of training, but then after that, the rest is up to you.
Basically, if you set your heart on something, you can do
whatever you want."
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