Less than a decade ago Diana Harbour was toiling away in a cubicle, crafting corporate-ese into snappy brochure copy for a financial services firm.
Today, The Red Dress, her independently owned clothing boutique is raking in many millions in revenue.
The beginning of Harbour’s story will be familiar to many startup founders. “I’m really creative,” she tells Fast Company, “I grew up reading Vogue and Elle and I was feeling stifled.” Indeed, the work environment at her former employer was so oppressive, “I had a CD on my desk to use as a rearview mirror,” says Harbour, to ensure no one would sneak up behind her and catch her daydreaming.
Diana Harbour FOUNDATION GARMENTSThough her father suggested she might be better served working for herself, Harbour had recently graduated from the University of Georgia, gotten married, and purchased a home. Entrepreneurship would mean not only pulling the plug on a steady paycheck, but pulling up stakes to relocate from Columbus back to her college town of Athens.
She did it anyway. “We sold our house, got a loan, and slept on air mattresses for a year in rented spare rooms,” she recalls. “The only goal was we hoped it would take off,” she confesses, after being warned by her father’s accountant that many small businesses fail to thrive. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates only half survive past the five-year mark.
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