If you know my present, you also know that I live in Santa Barbara, CA, but guess what? we are moving again. Guaaaaaaat? OMG we were just settling in, and finding a sense of community in this town, and now we are moving again (we moved to Santa Barbara no more than 3 years ago from Miami).
Ok, here I go, I’m going to tell you a briefly some of the ups and downs from my 2024. I will try to don't look for the corrections from Chat GPT or Gemini after writing this post, I prefer to keep this conversation as authentic as possible, and leave a little piece of my personality here.
Hi, this is Fiorella, Juajua's creator and also remote employee for a Shipping Company based in Miami.
Why are we moving again? In short, Santa Barbara is definitely a gorgeous place to live, there is nothing to complain about here... except that now we (Tony and I) are looking forward to keep our finances more secure and we want to find a place where we don't have to pay a mortgage.
We did our research, list of places, weather (I can’t deal with freezing during winter), proximity to family, nice environment (cositas por hacer), real estate prices and taxes, ‘mejor dicho’; all the homewowork. The winners were Phoenix, Colorado, Nevada (I think of Las Vegas and it just doesn't sound like a place to live).
Well, long story short, we went to Phonix, AZ in early November, Tony had an interview and we took the opportunity to look around at houses for sale and that was the eye opening moment, oh wow, all that you can get for half our house in SB, of course it's not SB, but Buckeye, AZ (about 40 minutes away without traffic from Phoenix) is a really nice, mostly new town and Tony's mom and sister live there which means we'll also have more fun having family around and at least for me this is a huge plus.
Do I feel happy? hummmm I'm very happy, but also a bit disoriented about my own vision of making my business growing. I’m excited about the new house, I’m sad about leaving SB, also looking forward to all the cool stuff to do for us in Arizona. But, to be honest reshaping my vision of what I wanted to do here in Santa Barbara and the melancholic feeling of leaving what you call home (again), has been a weird feeling.
Now, let’s talk about how 2024 was for me. The year started with me preparing my taxes and noticing that I had barely broken even in 2023. Why? Well, not to mention that I don’t work enough time on my business I had losses resulting from production errors, which I also assume are my responsibility, some dresses that did not arrive in the correct size, pants with incorrect sizing and also with different finishes than I had chosen, garments made with defective fabrics, cancellations of wholesale orders as a result of too much time in production, and a lot of inventory starting the year.
I stayed motivated and we included some new collections during the year, some just for the boutiques and others to be available on my website. The Spring-Summer season was very good for Juajua, not only because of the orders, but because we made ourselves known in new boutiques in new locations, which is part of my expansion plan, to be present in new boutiques and new markets.
On the other hand, I have been able to work more closely with Amparito, one of dressmakers who makes our pieces, and this has been really great, I love working with her, she really understands my ideas, she is very detail-oriented, and also, business-oriented, in better words, the whole package.
To finish my highlights from 2024, another win from past year is that we managed to design a complete collection including the prints we used, this was really outstanding, because usually we work with pre-existing print patters, some I may change colors or size of the elements of those, in the case I do it, but normally, we were limiting our creativity to what was available, and now we are closer to new materials, new providers, and exploring more ways to bring creativity to the collections.
So what's next for Juajua? Ladies, I don't know for sure. I know I've been quiet lately, quiet trying to be present at my other job, trying to be present for Tony when we're together, trying to manage my anxiety and that includes taking a break from social media, quiet designing new styles for this year, and trying to get on my normal path to move forward my goals.
New styles and new ideas are coming; you will love them all I know that for sure, and thanks a lot to all of you for taking the time to read, for supporting my business and being part of this community.
Do you want to know more details? please leave your comments, I will love to share more here with you.
Fiorella B.