Today we’d like to introduce you to Tuana Schumacher
Hi Tuana, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
Having grown up in a family with businesses in the fashion-industry, my heart was always with the latest trends in fashion. When I was a little girl, I cut photographs from magazines and newspapers, and created combos by pasting the different photos in a notebook. Then I tried to convince my parents to buy me similar clothes, or have it tailored. That’s how I was unique and popular at school. As soon as Instagram appeared, I started to share my photo-combo’s in there, with anybody who was interested, to get their opinions. It was just a hobby at first, but over the years it became more and more serious, until a slimming coffee brand approached me to do a collaboration, in which I had to show my actual self on Instagram. That’s where I started to post photos and video’s of myself wearing my daily combo’s. At this moment, I am busy with Instagram on a daily basis, and I see my followers as friends or family. With my followers being interested in seeing more of my life, I expanded my account with showing moments of my lifestyle, traveling, and even sometimes interesting content for the foodies among us. Next to Instagram, I wrote columns for European fashion magazines, gave courses to micro-influencers and guest-presentations to college students on how to manage social media, and was a speaker in a YouTube documentary about the negative sides – such as verbal abuse, family threats – of social media for women being popular on platforms such as Instagram.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
In the early days, the camera equipment was an issue. I spend a lot time on researching for and a lot of money for purchasing / renting of cameras, lenses, lights, photographers and so on. Also, finding interesting locations for photo-shoots is often a struggle : shooting many photos and selecting that perfect shot costs a lot of time and effort. Another struggle is how to make daily content interesting and unique enough for my followers, to not bore them and have them unfollow me. Of course, there are the sponsors / collaboration companies that do not comply with agreements, sent the wrong sizes or items, do not pay on time or at all (if applicable), sent broken items, or change their requirements all of a sudden. Also, social media demands a lot of time and energy to create nice, clear, unique and interesting content, complying with sponsors’ requirements when it’s a collaboration, while being a mother of a teenage college student and lovely wife to my husband.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I motivate people to create great lookings with the clothes that they have, or can afford. Also, I promote only the products that I use myself, like myself and have good experience with : honesty to and loyalty with my followers is my priority. My specialization is creating unique looks and styles, affordable, focussing on young to old people, from business women to students.
Any big plans?
Make my own fashion-of-the-future creations : futuristic fashion items that people can wear over their existing clothes, or wear separately. These items will enable people to wear the same clothes whole day long, day and night, from location to location, with just changing the accessorizes, to fit any event they’ll attend. The big change will be, that sofar I ran this ‘business’ alone, but now I will run it together with my husband and start engineering our own creations.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/tuanaschumacher
