Although many of us have thought about starting a small business, significantly less actually take the plunge. So when I read on Dennis’ Young Money Blog back in July that he had opened up his own custom Greek Apparel store, I was intrigued and have been following his adventures on and off since. Fast forward to today, and he’s attending trade shows and just spent over $20,000 on new equipment.
I wanted to learn more about his story, so I asked him for an interview. Here it is, condensed from an instant messenger chat we had:
Can you please give me a quick mini-bio of yourself?
I’m a 23-year old student at the University of Florida studying Marketing and Political Science.
So, when did you feel like you first started getting the entrepreneurial bug?
Actually, I was reading your blog a lot, as well as NevBlog.com. That got me started. I didn’t find any blogs that talked about students who didn’t have an income, so I figured I should start something. But along the way… my blog became an entrepreneurial blog too!
So no newspaper route when you were five or anything like that?
Nope, my family was poor, so that stuff wasn’t even on our minds.
So how did you come up with the Greek store idea?
I’m in an Asian American fraternity, and I recognized that this portion of the Greek community, along with Hispanic/Latino and multicultural organizations, were growing. When you do a general search for “Greek store”, “Greek apparel”, etc. on Google, most of the sites focused on the National Interfraternity Conference (white fraternities) and Panhellenic Conference (white sororities). So I wanted to target a niche.
Did you have any experience in the clothing area beforehand?
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