The year was 2010 and I was a senior in high school, a college student, and 17 years old. I took my passion for business to the next step and co-signed a lease with my mom to transform an old building to my first retail store. As I mentioned, I was in High School when I opened my first business. My age played a role in my exposure to the news cycle of 2010 and my local town put me in the newspaper (twice actually). I worked at Papa John’s Pizza while running the store because I couldn’t afford to pay myself. During this time I was dedicated towards making the store a success by any means possible.

A few months after opening it, I started to lean on e-commerce as an avenue for the business to expand, since my town was too small to support my ambitions. I began selling on Ebay in 2010, except this time I didn’t have to source my inventory from the clearance rack. I had established wholesale accounts and I was able to have a steady flow of inventory to offer to the world.

I ended up closing my store to pursue higher education. Although I didn’t regret closing the store, I always had a feeling I wouldn’t be able to stay away from business. Fast forward to 2016, that feeling came full circle and my second retail store was born. Before opening this store, I learned everything I needed to know about Amazon to support my store with a serious stream of revenue.

After my time was over with retail stores, but my time with e-commerce was no where near ending. My experience during this time catapulted me to where I am today.