A Beauty Pageant Contestant's Success Story

Here is a startup company story you don't hear every day.

Erica Yuen was a beauty pageant contestant.  She started blogging as a way to tell her relatives what's going on in the pageant.  Shortly after she won the 5th place in a beauty pageant contest, she thought she could be a star and be good at it.  Unfortunately things didn't turn out as expected.  The media pictured her as a fiery person who liked to make enemies with other female stars.

She continued to blog and somehow the media exposed her blog to the public.  Her fans started to read her blog regularly.  Occasionally she would write about a certain beauty product she used and things got interesting when she asked if anyone wanted to buy the same product.  She would bulk order the product from the USA.  She got over 300 requests through email.

Erica saw a business opportunity.  In the beginning, she would hang out at Starbucks and distribute the products to her new found customers.  But doing this was very time consuming.  She thought she needed some kind of e-commerce website that could handle the orders better.

She didn't know how to build a website.  She knew that those web design companies would rip her off.  She was wary of freelancers.  Finally she struck a deal with elle.com.hk.  Erica was a guest blogger on elle.com.hk before, so she asked elle.com.hk to build a website for her and in return, her e-commerce website would provide elle.com.hk with a few banner ads.  Her website was up in a couple of months.

Erica uses a lot of web tools to help with the marketing of her new business.  She has a Youtube channel.  She interacts with her customers through her own blog, her blog in elle.com.hk and her facebook page.  She monitors the comments in her blogs, facebook and other forums very closely to make sure that there are no unhappy customers.  Since business was so successful, she opened two brick-and-mortar stores to sell her products.  Her business has now acquired over 10,000 customers within a few months.

Erica knew in her heart that she wanted to take control of her life and be her own boss.  Her beauty pageant fame might have helped her get a head start, but it is the relentless pursuit of her goals that keeps her business moving forward.