fbpx
Connect with us
Apply Now

Entrepreneurship

Empowering Vacation Rental Hosts To Create Extraordinary Vacation Rental Spaces, A Founder’s Story with Ashley Ching

The Founder’s Story interview started as an audio interview and now has been listened to seven million times! We interview incredible entrepreneurs who are thought leaders within their industry. In today’s publication, we interviewed Ashley Ching.

 

Ashley Ching is an American businesswoman. She is the Founder and CEO of Inhaven, a vacation rental-focused procurement platform that helps property owners and managers furnish and replenish their rentals with hospitality-grade products in the US. She has over 15 years of experience in merchandising and e-commerce, with previous roles as the Chief Merchandising Officer at The Company Store, a Home Depot company, and head of Global Merchandising Operations at Tiffany & Company.

 

Tell us about your childhood and where you grew up?
I was born in Minnesota and grew up in Lake Forest, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, with my parents and younger sister, Whitney. My mom was a flight attendant for Northwest Airlines and we traveled the world as a family. Since a young child, I have always loved traveling and learning about different cultures and places. At Tiffany & Company, I spent several years living in Hong Kong where I led Asia Merchandising and my travels eventually inspired me to pursue a career in the travel and hospitality industry.

 

How did you get started as an entrepreneur?
The idea of becoming an entrepreneur was born from my frequent family trips around the US. Having 4 young children under the age of 8, I always booked a homestay when traveling but found that there was very little consistency in what to expect on arrival. We are always in need of a fully stocked kitchen and comfortable beds to sleep in, and I found the uncertainty of not knowing what I would walk into precisely the motivation I needed to bring the vision and concept of Inhaven to life. During my travels, I got to personally know many vacation rental hosts and learned about the multitude of joys and challenges that come with hosting a vacation rental. One of the biggest challenges hosts faces is furnishing and replenishing their properties with quality, affordable products. As an experienced online merchant in the home furnishing industry, this piqued my interest. I believed there had to be a better way to simplify the shopping experience for hosts and provide better experiences for guests. And thus, Inhaven was born to help both hosts and guests live a beautiful vacation experience.

 

What is one business lesson you would tell a startup founder?
Every failure is a learning opportunity. Fail fast, understand your failures, learn from them and keep moving forward.
Continue Reading


Copyright © 2022 Disrupt ™ Magazine is a Minority Owned Privately Held Company - Disrupt ™ was founder by Puerto Rican serial entrepreneur and philanthropist Tony Delgado who is on a mission to transform Latin America using the power of education and entrepreneurship.

Disrupt ™ Magazine
151 Calle San Francisco
Suite 200
San Juan, Puerto Rico, 00901

Opinions expressed by Disrupt Contributors are their own. Disrupt Magazine invites voices from many diverse walks of life to share their perspectives on our contributor platform. We are big believers in freedom of speech and while we do enforce our community guidelines, we do not actively censor stories on our platform because we want to give our contributors the freedom to express their opinions. Articles are not commissioned by our editorial team, and opinions expressed by our community contributors do not reflect the opinions of Disrupt or its employees.
We are committed to fighting the spread of misinformation online so if you feel an article on our platform goes against our community guidelines or contains false information, we do encourage you to report it. We need your help to fight the spread of misinformation. For more information please visit our Contributor Guidelines available here.


Disrupt ™ is the voice of latino entrepreneurs around the world. We are part of a movement to increase diversity in the technology industry and we are focused on using entrepreneurship to grow new economies in underserved communities both here in Puerto Rico and throughout Latin America. We enable millennials to become what they want to become in life by learning new skills and leveraging the power of the digital economy. We are living proof that all you need to succeed in this new economy is a landing page and a dream. Disrupt tells the stories of the world top entrepreneurs, developers, creators, and digital marketers and help empower them to teach others the skills they used to grow their careers, chase their passions and create financial freedom for themselves, their families, and their lives, all while living out their true purpose. We recognize the fact that most young people are opting to skip college in exchange for entrepreneurship and real-life experience. Disrupt Magazine was designed to give the world a taste of that.