Meet Innovative Woman, F
ashion Designer, and Philanthropist Angela Lee.
1. How/why did you begin your business?
Growing up, my mother molded my interest in fashion; she bought me the best quality and most beautifully crafted handbags, always styling my outfits with impeccable taste, she showed me a whole new world. As I grew older, and independent of my parents, I learned the truth behind fashion. As a college student, it was too expensive to buy these handbags that I love and grew up with. I could no longer afford those high quality bags; I quickly realized no one sold quality bags with classic design for an affordable price. I thought, why can’t luxury be affordable? Expensive does not mean classy. Roi has always been a businessman, he found me and saw a future in the fashion industry with me. He saw my love for fashion and he loves me, he found a way to intertwine our passions.
Angela & Roi’s core mission, Donate by Color was born when Roi and I attended a fashion show that supported AIDS with the red ribbon; we got inspired and applied the concept to the Angela & Roi handbag brand. We believe that we can create a sustainable model where fashion consumerism meets philanthropy. Roi’s father had diabetes and faced a serious cerebral hemorrhage when Roi was ten; he realized the most significant factor in an individual’s life is health. Together, we decided to focus on health issues when we started our company Angela & Roi. There are so many people and families in the world who struggle with health problems and they don’t get enough support.
2. What has been your biggest challenge and how did you overcome it?
We have a big dream, trying to start a movement, but something that we cannot control is how other people perceive our company. We have concern over this because there are many companies with “do good” concepts in the U.S. market, and not all of them build a brand that is meant purely to help others. We try to clearly communicate our core values (concept, mission, and movement) and be as transparent as possible to build a trustworthy relationship with our followers.
We believe in what we are doing and ourselves. We are always telling ourselves that we can do it together no matter how hard it gets, we extend this mantra to our team as well. It is so important to be able to work together as a team and be productive, effective, and efficient. Self-improvement is key in life! Roi and I are proud that we built a structure that can successfully help people by purely doing good. We believe overtime, other people will understand why we are applying this do good mission to our brand and join our movement. We are ambitious and enthusiastic about our work because we love Angela & Roi.
3. How do you define SUCCESS?
Angela & Roi is brand set out to create a movement. We want to not only fulfill our mission, but also make it thrive and inspire change for others. Through our local charity partners, we plan to build personal relationships with the patients that we support through Angela & Roi donations. We want fashion to thrive in the hands of philanthropy, not only with Angela & Roi, but the entire industry can indulge positive change. A community that A&R builds to support such a great cause would define our success.
4. If there was one thing you wish you knew before you began your business, what would that be?
Both Roi and I had no fashion background since I was still in school studying political science and Roi had just graduated from college. We had to learn more about the Fashion industry. If we had some fashion experience and expertise in the start, it could have helped us to establish the brand and foundation of our mission faster. As time went on, we developed the knowledge and are able to build a public relations platform in the fashion industry.
5. What makes you an innovative woman?
I believe fashion is defined as expression of human creativity, artistic skill, and built from imagination. Fashion is part of everyone because your style choices are defined by your creative power and by the expression of your imagination. Reality what our minds imagine it to be and then work to create it.
Based on my own philosophy and definition of fashion, I created the Angela&Roi brand with the Donate by Color mission, a very disruptive model in the high fashion market. We created Angela & Roi to see cause, significance, and meaning when someone wears Angela&Roi handbags.
For more information visit www.AngelaRoi.com or connect with Angela on Facebook or Twitter.