Today we’d like to introduce you to Debra Jambor.
Debra, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I never thought I would be in the fashion store online business as a goal in life. I had a full-time job. a good one, but fear of losing it directed me to study at night and become a Nurse Assistant (because I never had a college degree). I worked part-time as an in-home nurse assistant for two years at the same time as my full-time job. When I lost the nurse assistant job, I looked for another supplemental income and thus my garage selling and eBay store was born. But after I paid off my house, the task of running around on weekends became tedious. I looked for alternative sources of clothing which seemed to sell well on eBay and thus my fashion store journey began. I sourced fashion clothing at Dallas Market and once I had enough clothing to create an actual store I pursued my own online business and thus debraspassionboutique.com was born on Nov. 13, 2014. It’s been quite a journey as the company I worked for before starting this had IT, customer service, sales, marketing departments totaling 250 people and here I am doing all these jobs including shipping, photography etc myself!! So, I continue to plug along now and have some marketing companies helping me now. I hope to continue doing this as long as I can.
Has it been a smooth road?
The worst hurdle was my computer file inexperience. I accidentally uploaded a corrupt file while making some changes and lost almost the entire website. Photos, descriptions were blank and lost and inventory was corrupted. I happened December 13, 2018, and it took me literally two days with 1 hour of sleep to restore the photos from a third party company that stored them and then another nine days restoring a full count of all the inventory. while this was a nightmare no one wants it turned out to be a blessing as it caused me to improve my photos and it caused me to do an inventory count of over 1600 products which was a lot of work. It was done day and night until I finished December 24th so I could enjoy Christmas with my husband. This will never happen again as I have an app now called Rewind that saves the entire store, so at the push of a button, everything can be restored! So now, I can relax.
Please tell us more about what you do, what you are currently focused on and most proud of.
Actually, it is funny that my husband has always had a knack of selecting clothing for me personally at thrift stores and I always got compliments on my personal clothing at my former job, so he agreed to help me find the styles and together we are a team of looking and pouring over thousands of offerings to get just the right ones. I have been told that my style choices are more “mother’s” styles, but I also have lots that are enjoyed by the younger generation. I try to also carry styles not well known, like Kerisma sweaters, and higher quality brands not offered by other boutique stores. I look for high-quality clothing not cheap. If it does not meet my standards, I garage sale the rejects. You won’t see T-shirts on my website for the most part. I look for pretty fashions that make a girl feel special.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
Hard to know where I will end up on this journey. I hope to make enough money just to support myself and my extracurricular love of dancing (West Coast Swing and Argentine Tango). If this journey ends up making a better living, I will be very grateful at having succeeded.
Contact Info:
- Website: debraspassionboutique.com
- Phone: 832-681-0904
- Email: info@debraspassionboutique.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/debraspassionboutique/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/debraspassionboutique/?ref=bookmarks
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/debraboutique
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