Darya Shingiater is looking for a new challenge.
An engineer with a full-time job, she took the leap into wholesale cosmetics to find out what it would be like to run her own business.
Letique.dk is the home of her range and the frist of its kind in Denmark.
This is the story of Darya, and how she launched a new side of her life with a new Zyro website.
I’ve worked for big companies all my life
By day I’m a reservoir engineer in the oil and gas sector. I model oil and gas reservoirs to find out how much we can get out of there.
I get big projects all the time but crises in the sector mean that often a lot of your hard work will be for something that will never be finished.
It’s frustrating to put your energy into something that doesn’t make a difference and doesn’t make a change in the world.
That’s what triggered me to start a project where I would be the one taking decisions.
I would be the one taking responsibility and the success would only depend on what I put into it.
I ask myself, did I do anything good for anyone today?
For me, that means delivering this quality cosmetics to a real person every day.
That’s what inspires me. I can do something good for an individual and brighten their day.
Although it’s not my own product, it still brings me massive satisfaction.
It’s an experiment everyday. I’m finding out what it takes to run a small business on my own, and learning whether it’s my thing.
It is the beginning of a journey to find out if I’m still a corporate kind of person or not.
There’s nothing like it in Denmark but that can make it harder
It’s a unique product but the Danish people are practical by nature.
If they see a new product on the shelf they would say, “why do I need something new when this works fine?”
Even if a product comes from Sweden, chances are that it will not last.
So, I thought that the online shop is a safe model until people understand the brand.
I’m bringing salon quality to the home
My main product lines are the anti cellulite complexes, the body scrub, and the body wrap.
The body wrap is something special, they’re popular treatments in the salons but if you wanted to do that every week it would cost a fortune.
Still, in Denmark it is an uphill battle. One customer asked why she would pay for a coffee scrub when she could take it straight out of the machine?
It is moments like that where you have to stop and think about how well you know your product and that is essential in business.
It’s even better afterwards when you are justified in your products and all the people who have tried the product have given nothing but positive reviews.
I love making customers happy
It doesn’t matter how tired I am after I finish work. I love telling people about the product and showing off the things I have to sell.
A few of the early customers that already knew about the product line were over the moon that someone had finally been able to bring to Denmark.
The fact that I was that person, well, I must say that was a great feeling.
I love the selling process too
I never had a businessperson in the family, well, maybe my Grandma. She was still selling when she retired.
That’s probably impacted me from childhood somehow because I’ll never forget my first sale.
But it was when the first customers that I didn’t know started to arrive from Instagram, that’s when I really felt it.
This is going somewhere. This is going to grow.
Start it in the morning and by the evening you have your website
Zyro – the easiest way to build an online store
Zyro was perfect for me because I needed to get my website online fast.
I knew that I had a great product, but I also knew that in Denmark, I wasn’t the only one.
If I was going to secure my domain name and build my website it had to look good and work perfectly right away.
When I found out that there was another person working with Letique in Denmark I couldn’t wait around anymore.
That was the trigger for me to get up and start running the show.
Marketing has been my biggest challenge
Instagram stories are really not my thing and I’m already thinking about outsourcing that work to a professional.
I don’t really use Instagram in my day-to-day life and that’s also why I knew I needed a website.
With a website, I could take advantage of different marketing strategies.
I want to learn how to grow my business organically with SEO and Zyro’s templates seemed like the perfect introduction.
Customer support inspired me to keep going
I only had to contact them twice and the response was immediate. I was surprised the first time but not the second.
It doesn’t matter if it is a simple question or a more technical one – they respond whenever you need them.
I still have a full-time job and being able to get that support whenever you need it is invaluable.
I have one little rule. Do something every day.
In business, there are ups and downs. Some days you’re just too tired to work and it feels like there is no energy to keep it up.
On that day, more than ever, you need to do something. Even if you can only dedicate half an hour to your business you are keeping it going.
If you don’t do anything for two days in a row, that is the beginning of probably the beginning of the end.
My advice? It can’t just be about the money
You need motivation and energy because no business will be profitable in the beginning. You shouldn’t be afraid to do something just because you haven’t done it before.
When you talk to people they say “you need a web designer”.
You need this or you need that. Well, so far, I’m proving that is manageable with just one pair of hands.
Get rid of the fear that things are not possible. Everyone has to start somewhere. Everyone is doing it for the first time once.
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