How A Viral Video Propelled A Veteran Fashion Industry Buyer To Start Her Own E-commerce Coaching Business

The journey for Aimee, a veteran fashion industry buyer, started with a Tiktok video.   

One 60 sec video giving advice on E-commerce best practices was the first spark that would prove to be a whirlwind year and a 180 degree post pandemic career transition.

Fast forward to date and her Tiktok account has grown to 14k followers in a matter of weeks with every new video upload gaining thousands of views and hundreds of likes. It has propelled Aimee to create her own business as a E-commerce coach, become an authority in her field, be featured on multiple online publications and be a featured guest of several business Podcasts.

Before all of this happened, Aimee was working as a buyer for department stores in her native New York City. Working with multi million dollar brands such as Tommy Hilfiger, David Yurman and Hugo Boss all while creating businesses and concepts from the ground up.  

As a fashion industry buyer her job wasn’t just to create a product, put it up on a website, throw it at the wall and see if it sticks. It was far more than that. The process of building a business is methodical and strategic. Nothing is done and no decisions are made that do not have profit and revenue at its core.

“There is so much knowledge that comes from the corporate world that the average entrepreneur just does not possess.”

The job of a buyer can be a daunting one. Buyers are usually given multi million dollar budgets and told to go out into the market and create a business that is smart, concise and on trend all while maintaining the strict profit margin constraints of the company.

A buyer has to be equal parts trend watcher, master negotiator, marketing dynamo, mathematician, designer, and puzzle genius.

“The ultimate balancing act”

Aimee quickly realized that most E-commerce entrepreneurs work off of passion but generally lack the strategy skills to truly grow their businesses.  This realization proved to be the foundation on which Aimee built her business and thus E-commerce Maven was born.

Leveraging her over 10+ years of industry experience she developed a formula. A 4 part “Secret Sauce” to create, grow and scale a brand. Many E-commerce entrepreneurs and small business owners never set strategic goals, and then wonder why they are not achieving consistent sales growth. There’s a technique to the art of E-commerce, which many wouldn’t know unless they had professional experience . It all comes down to planning and strategy.

Becoming a full-time coach has its risks. Switching careers, especially during a global pandemic, is not without difficulties. As a working mom with a toddler, like most mothers who worked from home this past year, Aimee had to find a way to balance work life with family life, under one roof.  With tears in her eyes she said, “It almost broke me – but it also became my main motivator. I wanted to have a fulfilling career, but I also wanted to be a present force in my daughter’s life.”

But what really keeps her going is simply this:

“All the times I hear a client tell me that they made their first sale, or that they learned more about ecommerce after a 1 hour session with me than they did with a 2-week course from a so-called ” Guru”. It validates me, my experience, and the leap of faith I took into my new career”