Tori Torres made a profit the first week her product hit eBay.
Within five years she landed her first celebrity client.
Now, eleven years after its launch, Posh Life Bling has Beyoncé, Jessica Alba, Paris Hilton and Eva Longoria on its clientele list.
Torres started the accessory company at home after having her first son because she wanted to make money but also be able to stay at home to raise him. Five years from its start, her company had its products in the hands of celebrities.
How did she do it?
Keeping it simple
With downtime on her hands when her son was taking a nap, she began fiddling with designs for the outsides of razor phones.
She experimented with a few different materials before deciding to use Swarovski crystals, and said that she loves to make things beautiful and this helped her when making the phones.
“I make what I like and I still do to this day. I make what I like and people buy it,” Torres told us.
Perfect timing
When she began designing the phones in 2002, eBay had just launched and cell phones were just becoming popular. She was one of the first ones to decorate cell phones.
Torres realized she was on to something and decided to buy razor phones wholesale and in bulk. There were no cell phone cases at the time so she created her designs right on the phones.
Rapid execution
She designed quickly and put her phones on ebay right away.
“It caught on immediately. Immediately it was a hit,” Torres said. “And before I knew it I was crazy busy, my husband would be blinging out phones. I taught him to do it and we did them until I got a handle on everything and got a website.”
After almost instantaneous success, Torres developed her own website to give her product the chance to gain momentum.
High quality standards
As her company grew and she sold more phones, Torres kept her standards of quality high which helped her gain the right kind of attention.
Steve Harvey and the American Music Awards noticed Torres and her company and invited her to two major events in 2007. At the Steve Harvey’s Hoodie Awards, Torres met her first celebrity client, Monique.
A few months later at the AMAs, she met Khloe Kardashian.
With just two celebrities to start, Torres used their names and networks to find more customers willing to pay the big bucks.
“If you take care of your clients they definitely send more people and its a product that really does sell itself. So if they’re out and someone sees it, they want to know where they got it.” Torres said.
“If they like you and they are happy with your service they are going to refer you so it changed my business in a major way. It opened me up to other products, other lines of products. These are people that can afford to spend $2,000 on a mirror to be crystaled. Or $2,000 on a cookie jar.”
SEE ALSO: Kate Upton's Latest Vogue Cover Is Missing Something... >
Please follow Retail on Twitter and Facebook.
Join the conversation about this story »
