To celebrate International Women’s Day & Women’s history month, we will be highlighting a few of the incredible female franchisees behind Clothes Mentor.
I have always wanted to be my own boss. I love the flexibility being a small business owner provides, but growing up in a family of small business operators, I also understand that it is a 24/7/365 job. Knowing that I wanted to own my own business someday, I studied entrepreneurship in college. While attending Drake University, through my entrepreneurship classes, I built a business plan to start my own solar powered LED lighting company. After graduation in May of 2013, I moved back to my hometown to try to start this business from the ground up. To have some sort of income, I decided to get a part time job at Clothes Mentor. I had stumbled upon a Clothes Mentor store in the Chicago suburbs the summer before and was in love with the business model. I was so excited not only to have a Clothes Mentor in town, but also to be working there!
About a year in I was promoted to be the full time Assistant Manager. While that left little time for me to work on starting my company, I loved my job at Clothes Mentor! I started to eat, sleep, and breathe Clothes Mentor. When on vacation, I always check to see if there are any local Clothes Mentors so that I can shop and look for new ideas to bring back to the store. I have been to over 40 Clothes Mentor stores to date!
In August of 2016 I became the Store Manager. The longer I worked at Clothes Mentor, the more I envisioned Clothes Mentor being a part of my life for the long haul. By this time my passion for this business was apparent to anyone who knew me. I didn't have to start a business from scratch to fulfill my dreams of being a small business owner, therefore I worked hard to make the store the best it could be. My deep desire to make the business successful lead me to pay my own way to conference as the Store Manager on numerous occasions, where I learned that my responsibilities encompassed more than the average Store Manager.
In January of 2019 the Owner mentioned to me that he was considering retiring and selling the business. I immediately expressed interest in purchasing the business from him. After many years of negotiating we came to an agreement on January 1, 2021 and he was ready to proceed with selling the business with an intended closing date of April 1, 2021. It took a lot of perseverance and hard work, but with the help of my attorney and real estate expert I was finally able to close on the transaction on December 16, 2021. It has been a crazy, wild ride, but I’m just getting started! I am so thankful to my family for all of their love and support, to my amazing staff, the dedicated corporate team, and my loyal customers. The best is yet to come!
