I've spent over 25 years in full-cycle production and product development. But I didn't start out that way.

When I launched my own handbag and accessories brand, I knew absolutely nothing. Not how to design a handbag. Not how the fashion industry worked. Not even how to sew—unless you count a brief and deeply hated stint with a home sewing machine when I was ten. I just woke up one day and decided this was what I wanted to do. Zero money in my pocket. Zero industry connections. Just a stubborn determination to think outside the box and figure it out.

Amazing mentors showed up. I listened. I learned. I made things happen that shouldn't have been possible.

Five years later, I went back to school and earned a degree in Apparel Manufacturing from the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising (FIDM) in Los Angeles. And then I did something most designers never do—I opened and ran my own in-house production facility to manufacture my line.

My factory specialized in small-run production. At our peak, we were turning out over 200 finished products a month. That scale taught me something invaluable: how to make production work when you're not ordering thousands of units. How to find suppliers who will actually take your calls. How to manage costs when your quantities are modest. How to build systems that grow with you.

I know what it takes to turn an idea into a finished product because I've done it myself—from the very first sketch, to the cutting table, to the customer's hands. And I started from exactly where so many founders find themselves now: with a dream and absolutely no clue what comes next.