Let’s get down to Business with Luba de Bie

At Breda University of Applied Sciences there are several students who already started their own business. I had the privilege to interview Luba de Bie about her business.

Luba is a twenty-three-year-old, fourth year Leisure and Event Management student that runs her own business named Favoured Fashion.

What is your business about?
“My business is an online web shop where I sell clothing, accessories, and jewellery. With my web shop, I try to focus on being unique and different from most web shops, since there are so many that all look the same. Currently I am working on my own products, this way it will be for sure different than what the competition offers.”

How did you come up with the idea to start your own business?
“Before I started at Breda University of Applied Sciences, I studied Fashion Management at Suma College in Eindhoven. During this study I did multiple internships at fashion web shops and fashion brands. When I graduated, I decided that I wanted to do something with events, however, I started missing the fashion industry.

In my fourth year at BUAS, I had the opportunity to do a minor, so I decided to do a minor in Nijmegen and study E-commerce. During this semester, every student needed to make their own web shop. This web shop needed to go live within six weeks, which made the official launch month October. It was a lot of work and a lot of pressure to build something within such a short time, however, it turned out really good. Luckily, the school helped during this process and I was able to use my experience from the internships that I did.

The minor finished in January, but I continued with my web shop. Even though Leisure and Event Management might sound completely different from Fashion Management, it has a lot of similarities and connections. During my Event and Leisure study, I learn a lot about marketing which is very useful for the promotion of my web shop.”

How do you combine school with your own business?
“During my minor it was easier to combine the web shop Favoured Fashion with school, since it was such a big part of the learning process. This does not mean that it did not consume a lot of my free time, because it definitely did and still does. A web shop is a company that is always running, even during the weekends and holidays, the work never stops. This literally means that I do not have days where I do not work on the web shop.

Social media needs to be updated every single day; besides that, you need to keep looking for suppliers, stay on top of the latest trends, take photos of the items, arrange models, edit the photos etcetera.

Preferably I work one full day a week on the web shop and the rest needs to be done in between. It takes a lot of time, because I do everything myself, to save costs as well.”

What are your future plans with your business?
In future, the web shop needs to keep growing, and eventually I would love to design my own clothing line. I would also want to have stands on festivals and events to promote my web shop as well and to make it more known among people.”

Which accomplishment are you most proud of regarding your business?
“I am just very happy and proud of myself that I finally took the step to start my own company, since I have been thinking about it for so long. I think it is one of the most fun things to do and I really enjoy it. The company is not yet known enough that I can live from it, however, the more work I put in, the more the outcome.”

Do you have advice you would like to give students?
“The most important thing is to really think it through. Having your own company means not having a fixed salary, working every day, and investing a lot, but if this is really what you want to do, you should definitely do so. I am still very happy that I took the step.”

If you like to take a look at the web shop of Favoured Fashion, you can go to her website FavouredFashion.com and also do not forget to follow her on Instagram for your daily doses of fashion inspiration.