Up next in 10
We're back with another Speaking of Curves series where we spotlight, celebrate, and support entrepreneurs and businesses in the Plus community!
Join us every Thursday at 12pm, EST we will interview different businesses, designers, indies, and influencers in the community!
Today's guest is Boutique Owners, Kimberly, and Keyondra Lockett!
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0:06
hello hello hello i know we're a little bit late today little technical difficulties but
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we are back so i'm marie janae the creator of the kirby fashionista and we're back with another speaking of
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curves now i have a fun guest we're actually there's two of them they're sisters
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they're joining us today and we're going to talk a little bit about fashion journey business pivoting all those
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things in our speaking of curves facebook live if you're unfamiliar we do these lives
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every thursday
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we invite and we invite different business owners different guests to come on board tell us a little bit
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about their business and you know really talk about how we can support y'all right so as you're joining in do me a favor um
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let us know where you're tuning in from uh if this is your first or second or you tune in for every face uh speaking
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of curse and let's have a fun conversation so our our um guests guests there's two of them
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um are the creators behind julie noir now you may know them individually
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but together they have been well they have been they've already launched but they're really going to
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pivot into um this athleisure collection that goes up to a 6x
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y'all so do me a favor and welcome the sisters behind jolie noire
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um hello ladies come on
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thank you so much for joining and coming in and and and chatting with us and having some fun
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i'm it's a little warm the weather's weird it's not as cold as i was thinking it's rainy
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so it's a little like i find myself a little like hot my nose is shiny we want the cold
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weather back
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yes so do me a favor for those people who aren't familiar with the two of you
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introduce yourself and introduce like your brand as well because you guys are like badasses
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individually you guys come together and have this amazing project
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tell us about your pro um tell us about you yourselves and then tell us about your project okay
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well i'm kiandra i am a two-time stellar award nominated gospel artist
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i am also a number one billboard charting artist that means that my song was the number one song in the
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country over um artists such as marvin sapp
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uh tim man um and the list goes on and on james fortune yeah so
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um not to brag but like i'm an independent artist or being here i'm like look
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yes i'm super excited about it i just got my plaque so look i'm i'm on the 10 i am but
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but um thank you so much thank you i'm a songwriter i've written for artists such as kiera sheard
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brianna babano um crystal aiken which was uh the first bet sunday best winner
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and i write for myself as well so yeah i'm really super excited about that and
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my sister styles me so that's a great segue into what she does yeah so i am a wardrobe stylist i
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look at kiandra said i do um style her and of course i do personal styling so i
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do both celebrities and just regular everyday clients and i have a lot of fun with
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that but um i have kind of set that to the side a little bit i'm not picking as much you know many
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clients up as much because of joey noir because it is such a new baby of ours um so i really don't wear that hat
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as much as you know i would like to and as you know once she grows i'll be able to kind of set
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that to you know kind of let that be on autopilot but as far as joey moan joey does simply mean pretty black um kiandra
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and i we were looking for a name we were the red glasses sisters way back in the day and that name was
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not marketable enough for us we couldn't expand with it um it was very limiting so we decided to branch off into
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um we dissolved that business and did you know uh jolinois we are from louisiana so that
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is where the french name comes from meaning just pretty black and uh yeah so that is how we got our
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name we've always been into uh focusing on women's empowerment and what better way to show that empowerment
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than to focus on black women well awesome so funny thing two things
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you didn't say your name so people need to know your name i'm kim i'm sorry
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that's okay i want to make sure people know the votes of y'all right so and then two like kim and i like we
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go back yes i want to be like a few years yes
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and then just watching you grow and evolve and then coming together with your sister for this project i was like
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what you doing over there what is this everybody girl great bro
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and then you also have and so for those who don't know like what can we expect and i'm imagining that what you have behind you
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are some of the pieces in your collection yes yes so some of them are yes
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does that mean we'll get like a little like teaser are you gonna show us some like fun pieces to expect i mean obviously
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since you're showing it right yeah we will and actually we have some
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yeah we have gone on like i'm wearing it right now we have some unreleased things on right now
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we can definitely show you awesome so awesome so what can people expect with jolie noir
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and the fact that you've launched a brand during the roma is a very unique thing
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we've had people who have completely pivoted during the this corona virus situation
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we've had people like start a whole new job and a whole new business during the
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pandemic and for you guys you guys went like kind of full steam ahead so before we go more into the into the
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collection can you share a little bit about like the intentionality with that like why now
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yeah well i mean we had a really great opportunity to be able to do that right now um we
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started like two years ago with our company but um being that we had uh the partners that
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we have on printful which is one of the top leading printing companies in the world um we
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had them to help to push us to where we are during this this whole pandemic like it's i think that because me and kim we
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work well together we'd be able to do this but we wouldn't be able to go as hard and heavy as we have without printful
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so we can't take all of the credit um they have really helped us to you know
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push forward um uh the way that we have so and i think what you can expect from us
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is first just continue to give what we've been giving um you know women's empowerment as it
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relates to you know black women um some really great and awesome pieces
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you know um and just you know the the sisterhood which we have together but we lend that to our
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following as well yeah so and then also i just want to add on to what she was saying about because we
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did we did a soft lunch in 2018. our soft lunch was not as fabulous as we wanted to have it
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so um
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because people need to understand like you know sometimes what you see is like part of the journey and they you
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know they have to take a pretty picture and think like oh they've fallen out of control like girl you don't even understand
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we got a little discouraged okay and then so um and of course with her music career
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we kind of focused on that a little bit more in 2018 and so we didn't actually do a
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hard launch until 2019 with our girl with tear and girl with hats t-shirt and sweatshirt combinations
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and um those are actually still our best sellers to date so it was a really good um you know
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opportunity the way that we even decided to kind of um do put all of our you know
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eggs in this basket and really was because we saw that there were companies that were coming out with
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beautiful graphic highly illustrated teas that did not really include us and that
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did not include size range okay so like can i squeeze into
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the one black girl so um that's how we ended up doing that and then
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we had such high hopes for 2020 we were like we're doing this we're doing that like we can't wait we're doing pop-up
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shops all of these things at the end of 2019 that we have planned for 2020 but of course
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the pain yes so we um had to really we did have to pivot quite a bit
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and you know thankfully we um we actually were contemplating kind of shutting our doors for a while
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because we didn't know if printful was going to be able to provide you know
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so and we didn't we love the quality of printful so we didn't want to do um you know
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local in atlanta because we they're our fulfillment as well so printful does our fulfillment they do our printing they
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do all of that and so we were like there's no other option there are other options but there's not enough options
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for you no no don't worry so for those of you guys who are just joining us like
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i'm here with the creators behind julie noir this is the locket sisters and they're
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sharing with us a little bit about their journey um especially here and you know we're listening to
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their pivot kind of what led to their pivot to go harder in the paint and come with a new collection um for this year and especially kind of
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you know a little bit about their journey so kim like you were talking a little bit about
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like this pivot and kind of coming into 2020 and you got all the things planned give
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me all we all have the things planned at the top in the world said pause
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and what did you do from there like you had even though you saw you you looked at your supplier
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there you were like okay what y'all doing what y'all working with y'all can keep going and you kept pushing forward so
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what did that look like in his business owners like what was going through your head oh my gosh i was afraid i was really
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afraid because i was like oh my goodness we're just kind of picking up steam because we had just had a nice christmas
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holiday you know season and we were like oh my gosh more people are finding out about us but there was like a little glory
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in it and it was an unfortunate series of events that really kind of gave us our push you know
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if you will and got us a lot more traction which is like the george boys amman uh
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barry uh all of those you know events that took place that really put a lot of you know
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spotlight on black businesses and so our customers they're so amazing they started you know putting out hey
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like this is a black business that you want to you know support like we love their stuff you know things like that and of
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course we promote black women obviously um they were going to you know kind of stand for us for that
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and so um it was a lot just shout outs and things like that that really
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your community encouraged you absolutely absolutely that is beautiful so i have
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to point that out for any of our business owners here because i know tammy joy she's in here she's here from dallas tani is a business owner and
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like i know that we have other business owners who watch and to check in so as a business owner if you are um
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like paying attention and listening to their story their community they leaned on their community their
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community helped inspire them push them forward to really like drive
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that home so so continuing the conversation um your community is inspiring you
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you are learning about like you know what how far you can go with your range
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what can we expect from this collection because i you know i know that you guys have specified athleisure like what can we expect with
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this collection and what is like your uber favorite piece so my
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favorite piece i'm gonna start with that one first my favorite piece has to be and surprisingly to me are the hoodies
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um because and i don't like hoodies because you know you have to take them off your hair and all that kind of stuff like that but they're so comfortable you don't
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want to take them off in my opinion i don't know i will wear them you know
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like a sweatshirt i and um people are like you know well it's getting hot well i wear stuff like that all year round yeah with
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shorts and yeah i mean you have plenty of people who wear sweatshirts so because people are valley girls so i'm very much team
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sweatshirt sweatshirts and shorts like that's my like i get that i get it
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so and then casual one of your favorites um my favorite would have to be uh the
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unity collection period um but out of that collection would be anything like the hoodie or the
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sweatshirt in himalaya um that color is kind of like a salmon color and i love pink it's my favorite
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but it's it's also like it complements brown skin and hey anything that works
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well with my skin i like it [Laughter] what do we have behind you like what's
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behind you like what collection what pieces are there because i i i we need to see that like
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we need to know from here on is jolie noir and so we do have the schwartz
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and himalaya and we have the shorts and chai
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these shorts are super comfortable and super stretchy like yeah so they are
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if you're a short girl these are nice shorts like i'm sure yeah so um i'm i don't really
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like my shorts to go super short and so these actually hit pretty good i'm five nine
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um and so you're inch taller than me am i it is
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we have our shorts and then we have our um dad hats here too
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yeah so these are some of our like this is one of our popular ones here
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with the puffed embroidery red oh you're taking it back honey
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yes and then this one is distressed navy and orange and it has noibe
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that's what we call our community noise yes and then we have a pretty
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which um it is basically named after a sweatshirt and t-shirt series that we
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have um pretty cool so sweatshirt says i'm pretty for black girl
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and it's scratched out but then at the bottom it says pretty period because of course there's so many black
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girls who get told that oh you're pretty for a black girl but yeah no all right so you're pretty for a dark
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skinned girl or pretty for all these qualifiers and you don't need the qualifier
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pretty perry people period right yeah yeah and so i noticed that you have is
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this a chocolate brown next to this pink color like what's the the shorts like
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what could we use so we do and so all of these come in so we have
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sweatshirts hoodies shorts and um joggers and joggers yes
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these are from the unity collection yeah so these are like a range of skin tone
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cues like yeah so we have the chocolate we have the chai we have almond almond
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which is a really pretty like um cinnamony kind of color
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like kind of like in the that i would be wearing the almond color yeah possibly yeah yeah so the almond
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color would be probably anybody between you and us so like a really good range so yeah we
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came out with four colors and then himalaya would kind of be just your fun pinky nude it's not really a
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representation of a skin tone like really good but it looks great it's kind of like
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all right and what wrinkles these jackets on the end these are not ours but they've been featured in all of our shoots
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during the winter because um we love coats but we do it's funny because we have
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some things that we are working on because everybody loves our outerwear so we are um we're we're working on some
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things to try to you're working on some things i love it
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so will will this you went um so you referenced the unity collection is it live or if
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and if it's not like when can we anticipate the unity collection is live
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and so i'm gonna drop the url so that people can um support if they are curious
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about you yeah of course and so my question might i have a couple more
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questions so you should say you go up to a 6x yeah so is this a 6x
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towards 6x or is this like a 6x like four five-ish x you know what i'm saying
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from a size range perspective like what's equivalent like what's a brand that's kind of equivalent
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so i would say because um so we go up to a 6x in our leggings um and
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i can stand up and show you our leggings as well but we go up to 6x in our leggings and those are
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um if you are in between sizes you can actually go down a size so i would equi equate that
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to maybe more of a like a plus size a tree plus size our um sweatshirts and t-shirts are
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unisex so um our basic line goes up to a 5x in sweatshirts up to a
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4x in t-shirts our t-shirts this is one this is a 2x they are more on the slim fit side
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they are unisex um so if you are typically let's say a 2x in
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women's clothing then you would go down a size if you want like a more relaxed fit
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um if you um but for our and even that's true for our slim fit because all of our customers do go down still a size
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for just more relaxed fit and then um most people want to do oversized for sweatshirts so you have that wider range
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so if you are like for instance you wear a forex in women's clothing you can still you
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know wear a nice um wear our foreheads and have a nice oversized look or a 5x and still have a
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good oversized look so yeah it's really roomy spacious um collection
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now in the unity collection we do only go up to the 3x and um the pieces the joggers are slim fit
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um and then the uh so are the sweatshirts and the hoodies yeah so
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those are uh keep going well i was gonna say so
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you just have to make sure like when you're when you're shopping the brand that you're actually paying attention to
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the size ranges so there's different different goals and fits based off of
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the availability now you mentioned that you're going to be working on some
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outerwear what else could we expect to see from jolenois so we have we do have some
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other things we have not because um we've not really been talking about them um i think we should say she loves to
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drop all of the gym you know because we've talked to our team and we're like well we're not really gonna i wasn't supposed to say
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anything about the outerwear either but so we just i'm gonna have to be just conversationally we're talking
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exclusive so we are working on a bag we're working on a weekender bag um so we are going to be in your
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traveling life it's super cute uh we just actually sourced all of the pieces and we are about to go into production
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with our second round of our sample and hopefully so
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and i like how um like pacing yourself right so you're not trying to come out with like a whole bunch of
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things and then kind of like what where are you who are you you're kind of slowly growing and taking
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your time with this collection and so like what would you say then
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um if you like from all what you've learned especially now during the rona like you're
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building your community and your followers like what would you say to that aspiring business owner
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who is probably struggling or has an idea they've been sitting on but haven't
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really like done anything with it what would you tell them after kind of experiencing this
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um to make sure that you're consistent and accountable to the work um
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most of it it's as simple as that you know there's no special science to it no
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no special method to becoming a great business owner you just have to do the work and uh we can tell you that
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from our own experience the first year yeah yeah the first year we started um
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we set it to the side because of the other things that we had going on but it wasn't until
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the next year that we you know put the work in and you have to have a um a great niche
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and a great product as well but i mean still if you can if you can if you can gather people who
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who love you and and have a team of people or um a a fan base or
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you know a group of people who love you and you continue to put out you know
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put love into whatever it is that you do wherever your product is then they'll buy into it and you continue to do it they're
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they'll spread the word about it you know and that's what yeah definitely what
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about you ken yeah i would say um to we're to get if you're not get planful or remain
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planful if you are because that's the way that we were able to really pivot business last year because we had a plan
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we had a game plan we of course it wasn't the game plan that we wanted
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but that you know um and make you know something of it
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and then also i say don't ever get married to anything that you have because we've had
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designs that have not done well at all um thankfully with printful we you know
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it wasn't such a high risk but still we had to invest some sort of money in it and you
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know of course when you invest money into something you're like oh no this has to go but your customer your consumer will tell
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you a lot of times which way you really need to go and so yeah listen to them listen to your
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consumer listen to yourself
24:05
and together and separately like what does your support system look like
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okay um well actually the past year or so i've really started
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introducing things josh to my support system which is the gospel community so in the beginning they were
24:24
all like what's jolly no ray they don't know them
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so you're right having to break this down to them um it's been kind of kind of hard but
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for them to see um celebrities such as uh raspberry or coco from swv
24:46
or q parker from 112 they get that you know so you gotta you gotta learn how to
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place um what they know in front of them and they know those things
24:57
um that's what i've done you know it's shown them how far we've pushed this how far we've
25:04
you know really worked this and um for them to be able to see you know noteworthy people in it it's
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like oh okay yeah y'all doing something you know and um yeah and um also we
25:18
we're support system of course for each other and we um not only bounce ideas off of each other but we encourage each
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other we do have a business consultant and our mom is also our third partner she
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i know right she does like all of our finance stuff and she's our financial backing she gave us our startup money
25:36
for it um and then so i know right and then she has her group of friends
25:42
that she you know kind of uh uses as a support system and then i have mine as well
25:48
and of course much much much much prayer yeah so you know um it's a lot going on
25:56
and so how do you how do you like what is the i guess guiding light to keep you going
26:02
like your why like what i guess like that's a you know let me start there what is your why with this because it's
26:08
important that um as we're sharing and introducing my folks understand why it's important to have
26:14
that why because that's what's going to fuel everything else that you do in your journey can you share a little bit more i know
26:20
you mentioned women's empowerment but can you dig into that a little bit yeah
26:25
so um for me the why is i have a couple so i've always wanted to
26:31
have a clothing line so that's my why like i've always something that i've always wanted to do it's always been a patch of mine as you
26:37
can tell i'm in fashion so that just naturally you know that sits there but also just seeing all of the
26:43
women and men because our unit our unity collection we just launched kind of a unisex piece to our um so it's not just
26:50
for women because not only black women have struggles and you know insecurities black men have
26:56
told us that they've been empowered by our message and you know so it's not
27:02
just the women but we get so many messages about how we are really encouraging people and touching
27:08
people not and not even just for their color for their size yeah so it's like a lot and of course
27:15
being plus-sized black women you know we are the outliers of outliers we are glasses we're
27:20
heavyset and we're black you know it's like we have to keep going
27:27
like i will always advocate for us because like this gives me something to wear
27:32
that i love that's highly fashionable you know so it's like i'm still a
27:37
representation of our of our you know of the people that we serve
27:43
yeah so let me ask you then um you know so being fat black and you also
27:50
are both women of faith and you are also kind of you know
27:55
acknowledging like where you are where the country is and and where your goals are like how do
28:02
you see because i and i'm going to ask this to canada because you didn't because you didn't answer the other one but i interrupted so
28:07
let's just go with it where do you see like julie moir like five years from now
28:15
like how do you see that journey wow um
28:21
i i see i'm challenging you i want you to i want you to think about that like
28:27
you've already seen it so i just just say it i already know you've seen it right well um definitely
28:35
um being a part of a forbes le forbes list or you know something like that um actually
28:43
you know they have said that black women in business are basically the we're the forerunners
28:49
like we're the ones who watch yeah yeah and so um to be able to see something like
28:56
that's very inspiring so it helps us to push even harder but i mean when we see the back office and
29:02
how things are growing yeah that's very possible in the next five years um as well as uh just continual growth
29:10
um you know and finally finding uh and hopefully you understand this in other business owners um finally
29:17
finding our our demographic girl because of course there are so many supporters and so many people who love
29:24
what it is that we do but then there's like this one this one girl or this one set of women you know
29:31
who is like that's the one she'll buy anything she'll like she'll eat it up i don't care what it is she supports the mission
29:37
the brand kiandra and a cam like it's like you know we want that girl we want all of our girls we love
29:43
and support or love with the support from all of our tribe but there's this one girl who no matter
29:50
what she's gonna always shop with us we'll always be down for jolenois she's gonna stand for jolenoid we want
29:56
to find that girl you know and so i i feel like in the next five years we'll for sure have that girl and i hope nobody will
30:03
not listen to me i believe it i believe it the way he said that with such conviction like i feel like
30:10
already like you've already like like claimed like spoken and spoken it
30:17
into existence like it i believe you i believe you i believe you so do me a
30:23
favor because we are we're at 30 minutes already if you can't believe it or not okay it went fast right
30:30
so and tell everyone where they can find you where they can follow you and how they
30:36
can contact you okay well please follow us on all of our social media
30:42
that's at jolie x moi that's the blog page at julie x noir apparel is the apparel
30:49
page and um of course go to our website and shop
30:54
www.joliexnoir.com j-o-l-i-e-x-n-o-i-r-e.com
31:00
and uh we got that so you can comment and we'll always you know say whatever it is that we got to say
31:06
we don't we don't mind um please follow me on all of my social media that's at camberlocket
31:11
um i got a blue check but i still talk back okay and um yeah yeah and then i'm okay
31:19
keith looks like on all social medias because you you actually said that
31:26
really fast i'm keys to lux life on all of my social media
31:32
thank you thank you and you guys thank you so much for joining us thank you guys for watching in the audience again we are here with the
31:39
locket sisters behind julie um julian wall i'm i'm hoping i'm saying that right
31:46
okay julie mar they're they are a business that um has really been growing and in spite
31:52
of the rona and they are they've just shared with us like their journey what to expect how to support what
31:59
they're up to and how you can support them so um we'll be back next week with another guest we come and
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do these every week around 12 p.m eastern standard time and we're
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interviewing different guests chatting about the journey of business and we will catch you guys next week
32:16
again i'm marie janae the creator of the kirby fashionista thank you so much for tuning in and thank you ladies for joining us you
32:24
guys have an amazing day bye
#Fashion Designers & Collections
#Other
#Business Formation