Women who run their own businesses. In our monthly Small Business Spotlight series, we talk to independent fashion entrepreneurs about their journey to becoming bosses. Here are some tips from women who have actually started their own businesses, including fundraising, marketing strategies, and using social media.

Nigerian-born Teni "Tia" Adeola's aesthetic could be called "Renaissance fair, but fashion. "At 23, she started her eponymous ready-to-wear brand, Tia Adeola (opens in new tab), in her dorm room at New School She started it in her dorm room at the New School in New York City. And she has made it her mission to rewrite history to make the Renaissance era work for people of color. Black people, she says, "are missing from these images."

Her signature frill tops are contemporary interpretations of the past by designers. Thanks to Instagram, Adeola's bold pieces caught the attention of musician SZA, who put Adeola on the fashion map in 2018 when she performed at Coachella wearing a Tia Adeola scort set (opens in new tab). The designer, who was still in college at the time, recalls seeing the scort set sell out rapidly, something she had never experienced before. She says, "We didn't have enough product to meet everyone's needs." From there, her designs were discovered by Gigi Hadid, Dua Lipa, and Rizzo - all before graduation in 2019.

But as any small business owner knows, success can bring unwanted attention - in this case, counterfeit products. Fast fashion brands copied her designs, produced them, and sold them faster than she did. 'I was a 19-year-old college sophomore trying to figure out fashion in New York City. I spent hours in the library going through the archives and coming up with concepts, but then I saw fast fashion brands copying my designs. I was devastated," says Adeola.

Now, with several years of experience and a team of four women working under her, Adeola sees things differently. She says, "When people imitate you, it means you are doing the right thing. 'I've learned that they can't do anything until you make the next move or design the next thing. That way, people will always recognize true artistry."

This mentality helped Adeola move forward when faced with another unexpected obstacle for her small business, the COVID-19 pandemic. When the closure began, the designer was visiting family in Lagos, Nigeria, and was stranded there for about four months. There, along with her aunt, who owns a factory, she got to work, and the two trained a team of tailors to produce clothes and ruffled face masks (opens in new tab), accomplishing one of Adeola's goals of bringing jobs back to her home country. (Prior to 2020, her designs were produced in Turkey and the United States.)

Although the company has been in existence for only three years, Adeola has already experienced many of the ups and downs of small business management and has much wisdom to share.

"Ultimately, I want to be a high-end designer, own a fashion house, with a primarily black female staff, well trained, well paid, and expand my label throughout the empire."

Fundraising 101

"To be 100% honest, I've just been winging it. I fully own my business and have no investors. Projects like the face masks and basics I launched in the Tia Adeola ecomm store are doing well and helping me generate the profits I need to grow my brand. I will have to keep reinvesting in myself and my ideas until I am fully established."

Better Together

"To each his own, but I personally really believe in karma. There is always room for someone to be great in any industry. I strive to do my best for people, work with my community, and work with the people around me and other artists.

Overcoming Obstacles

"I face many challenges because I am not only a woman, but a black woman. I have to be careful about a lot of things, even just how I talk to the people I work with and around. If I don't like something, I have to be polite about it.

[For example] when another creator comes into the room and says, 'I don't like this, I don't want this,' I have to be a little more polite. The moment I lose my temper, they say, 'Oh, she's an angry black woman,' or 'She's a diva. I have to be careful about those things, but I've learned how to work through it, so I don't worry about it anymore. I always try to remain honest and express myself to the best of my ability. I am very conscious of the space I am in and how easily I can be portrayed in a certain image."

Social Currency

"Social media and its influence is amazing. I use it as a tool to figure out what to do next, because, after all, I have an audience and target market that I want to maintain. Through social media, I can see what they are interested in and how they are responding to my posts. But I don't like to overthink things. Especially in college, I used to wake up in the morning and post whatever I wanted.

I would spread out the clothes I made on the floor and post them and people would love it. As an artist, I think you should be yourself and post images as you are passionate about. Once my brand got bigger, I started having a social media manager. My social media manager is a good friend that I met my freshman year of college. We email each other what to post, so it's very casual and authentic."