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Name: Parisa Wang

Business: ParisaNYC

Location: New York, New York, U.S.

Industry: Apparel & Accessories

Reason for starting? Uniformity is the key to social success in China, however, the very opposite is required to thrive: an incentive to be original and express your emotions in a supportive environment. Having suffered through a romantic disappointment, I decided to use my extensive fashion expertise to create a new-fangled line of premium quality handbags, the Parisa Love Affair Collection. It is a line of handbags that encourages women to celebrate love, independence and growth and create a heartfelt affinity between women.

How do you define success? To me, success is about bringing a vision to life. It is about solving customers’ problems and helping to advance their life. Disappointment in a love affair inspired me to create the brand Parisa. As soon as I recovered, I realized that I owed it to my incredible support network to spread an uplifting message. I also noticed that so many women struggled with problems on their own while so few find an empowering environment to flourish in. ParisaNYC aims to build this community, one handbag at a time.

Biggest success: My biggest success to date is that I was able to find a high quality and reliable leather workshop overseas willing to take small orders to develop and make handbags that I design. We successfully finished the first sample round and I then used them to film my kickstarter film.

What is your top challenge and how you have addressed it? My top challenge currently is to spread the word for this newly established business. I need to get my products into consumer’s hands as soon as possible to hear feedback. I am building expectations for my kickstarter campaign to raise awareness of the brand. Though it is challenging, it is a part of the work-in-progress. I go to different events for women entrepreneurship and learn more about how to spread the news. I reach out to journalists for story coverage. The top challenge for me is definitely finding the early customers and how to build my loyal customer base.

Who is your most important role model? Diana Vreeland is one of my most important role models. “There is only one really good life and that’s the life you know you want and you make it yourself.” She is a big believer of making things happen for oneself. I am inspired by her creative personality and unique point of view. I think that entrepreneurship is about creating opportunities for yourself. Things that haven’t existed before and creative works that you want to be made, and it wants to be made through you. It is up to you to bring it to life.

[box_light]Website   www.parisanyc.co
Twitter   http://twitter.com/parisa_nyc
Facebook   http://facebook.com/parisaloveaffair/
Instagram   http://instagram.com/parisaloveaffair/[/box_light]

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Edited by The Story Exchange