Harajuku Rose

I started an online clothing store inspired by Japanese street fashion when I was in high school. This is what made me fall in love with social media management and marketing. 

In the summer of 2017, I had freshly returned home from going on a family vacation to Japan. I went there to see the Japanese side of my family and to learn more about my own culture, but what ended up striking me the most was the unique fashion that Japanese youth donned. I became obsessed with the unique blends of kawaii (or "cute"), goth, and futuristic looks that were seen on nearly every Tokyo street. I tried very, very hard to emulate that style using what I could find in local malls and shops, but to no avail. It seemed next to impossible for me to find a store that had clothes that truly reflected the style I observed in Japan - and thus came the idea for me to start Harajuku Rose.

There was one thing I knew I was good at at the time, which was my ability to figure things out. I had no experience in commerce aside from selling Girl Scout cookies in elementary school, yet I was undeterred - I knew that if I had a will, there would be a way. I started out by creating a very rudimentary website using the basic initial template that Shopify provides shop owners and researching how to drop ship. I began selecting the clothes I wanted to sell that fit the aesthetic I was going for, and I opened Harajuku Rose's Instagram account. This was where Harajuku Rose really began to take off.

 I started out by just posting pictures of the clothes that were available on my website and interacting with accounts that seemed to enjoy the same styles of fashion I was selling. I garnered a decent amount of followers through this and started getting some orders placed. However, it wasn't until I developed Harajuku Rose's promoter program where things really began to grow quickly. The way the promoter program works is that promoters would get to create their own unique code that would give users 10% off their order at checkout. Once 5 people used the code, the promoter could receive a free item from Harajuku Rose. The creation of this program led to people promoting my store for me, leading to exponential growth that would have been extremely difficult without it.

Another way Harajuku Rose was able to grow quickly was through partnering with Instagram influencers. I gained immense experience in relations through directly communicating and partnering with influencers internationally. Not only would these partnerships create exposure for Harajuku Rose, but they would also provide me with extra content through the photos influencers would take with my merchandise to use as well.

Working on Harajuku Rose allowed me to further develop my content creation skills as well. I created every banner on my website, selected and edited every picture that was uploaded onto Harajuku Rose's Instagram, and desgined my own logo and website. I got to get creative in the things I would post and how I would make my website look. There were no rules I had in place for myself, just to make sure that every aspect of Harajuku Rose visually embraced and conveyed the idea of what a stylish, fashion-forward Harajuku teen is.

After running my store for two years, I decided I wanted to make a real impact with my store. I came across a YouTube video that explained the story of Charity: Water, a nonprofit organization that works to end the world water crisis by giving people access to clean water across the globe. I was shocked to learn about how big of an issue the world water crisis is, as 785,000,000 people lack access to clean water (that's double the population of the U.S.A.!) and diseases from dirty water kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. I was not content with sitting around and doing nothing about this, so I committed to donating 20% of all profits to Charity: Water. Since I began donating, I have raised funds which have helped develop water projects in Burkina Faso, Nepal, and Sierra Leone.