Victoria Flores (NY), co-founder at Lux Beauty Club shares her experience about her participation at the national competition “Project American Dreams.” She became one of five finalists winners of the business competition that aims at discovering, mentoring and fast-tracking product innovations created by Latino entrepreneurs on the shopping network HSN.
Several months ago, we proudly announced that four of our LIBizus –Latina business owners we had promoted on our pages- had entered and moved to semi-finalists at the national competition “Project American Dreams,” the genius creation of Lili Gil Valetta in partnership with Bob Circosta -the Billion Dollar Man-, HSN and USBank.
Now after the competition’s adrenaline is over and the finalists are working into their Stanford University 4-week Program, Victoria Flores shares her experience during the whole process.
“I cannot be more grateful to Lili Gil and Bob Circosta, founders of Dreamers Ventures, to USBank and HSN experts, coaches and jurors who were so helpful in guiding us through the process,” Victoria told LatinasinBusiness.us. “It was one in a lifetime experience and it gave us an opportunity to branch out our business in unforeseen ways,” she said.
How all started for Victoria Flores and the Lux Beauty Club
After many years holding positions in the financial industry, Victoria found her “Aha!” moment in 2012, when she became a partner with Leslie Wilson and launched Lux Beauty Club to create a one-stop shopping community where customers could buy hair and beauty products on a regular basis.
Today, Lux Beauty Club offers individual hair extensions to people with all type of budgets. This business caters to luxury hair extensions, which are delivered door-to-door.
“What is different about our business is that it offers a range of hair extensions that are affordable and personalized. There are no exorbitant fees or deposits,” Victoria said to LIBizus. Within a few months, her business skyrocketed. Today Victoria Flores is a widely sought spokesperson for many national hair and salon chains.
How Project American Dreams worked for Lux Beauty Club
“The whole process was stressful, even when I had previous experience at TV appearances,” Victoria said. “During our presentation, we needed to hit between $1 and $3000 per minute in our sales, and we did it! We were at a $2000 mark per minute and that is a lot of customers!” she said.
Now Victoria and her partner Leslie are involved in the 4-week online Stanford University program. “The cohort met during a weekend at Stamford and now we need to work online through the program to finally graduate on the weekend of June 24,” she shared with LatinasinBusiness.us.
The program includes knowledge on how to build your company, case studies that candidates can apply to their own businesses, how to build your dream team and, most importantly, how to access capital for their business, Victoria explained.
“We must submit a one-page descriptor of our business plan to meet with potential investors one-on-one on a 10-minute pitch opportunity and hopefully match the right investor for our business,” she said.
What’s in the stars for Lux Beauty Club
This unique opportunity to find potential investors for their business fits perfectly in the partners’ plans for the future. “We have a 5-year plan to grow our business and raise a few rounds of private equity,” Victoria explained.
As Victoria sees it, the beauty industry is lacking a big deal of innovative ideas. “The hair extension business in this country is chaotic, prohibitively expensive and with a growth potential of almost $500 billion. About 70 percent of the hair industry customers are African-American women but less than one percent of them own a hair extension shop. Worse, Latino females are out both as customers and owners,” Victoria explains.
The Lux Beauty Club’s goal is to generate the interest of a bigger company –such as Unilever did with the Dollar Shaver Club for a whooping $1 Billion deal – that can implement the service nationally and globally.
“Project American Dream has energized our customer-base and we constantly receive emails from our grateful customers,” Victoria said. “We are still wearing many hats, from CEO to customer service but we are very focused on building an excellent customer experience so we put our best foot forward,” Victoria said. “The testimonial emails are amazing!”
Project American Dreams has announced it second year continuation with HSN Shopping Network. Stay tuned for more information about this one in a lifetime opportunity to go from startup to stardom!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSbJR36GUH4
[…] Victoria Flores decided to leave corporate America and start her own small business, little she knew she would end up as one of the twenty-four Latina entrepreneurs that recently […]