These Founders Started a Global Business with Just $4k (2024) – Shopify

Cofounders Heather Aiu and Rachael Leinaʻala Soares are former roommates who each contributed $2,000 of their own money to start Aloha Collection. Considering it was a sizable chunk of their respective savings at the time, the investment symbolized their commitment to solving what they saw as a gap in the market for waterproof bags.

After a successful Kickstarter campaign, the two launched Aloha Collection to produce Hawaii inspired waterproof bags. That Kickstarter campaign helped them secure their first customers and distributors. Today, their company is a multimillion-dollar brand with retail stores in Hawaii, California, and at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida.

Here’s how they turned that initial $4,000 investment into a business that lets them live a dream lifestyle.

 

Navigating early challenges

Starting a business with minimal capital required Rachael and Heather to be scrappy and resourceful. They invested the first $4,000 in essentials like a partnership agreement, a trademark, and samples of their first bag.

At the time, Rachael was a flight attendant, and she couldn’t find a stylish, water-resistant bag to put her bikini in while she was traveling. Heather also knew gym-goers and yogis could use a bag like that to tote their sweaty athletic wear. 

The two launched their initial Kickstarter campaign to gauge market interest and found a healthy demand for their idea. Aloha Collection raised a little more than $6,000 on the platform and catalyzed the next step of their business.

Taking a risk on a trade show

Thanks to the success of their Kickstarter campaign, Heather and Rachael could order some samples and put some of that money toward meeting potential buyers. So they spent $2,000 on a booth at Magic, a fashion trade show in Las Vegas they had heard about through a friend. They road-tripped from Southern California to Vegas, got the cheapest room they could find ($29 a night at Excalibur) and bought some fake palm trees at Home Depot to decorate their booth. “We ended up getting some of our very first Hawaii accounts that are still our customers today,” Heather says.

Aloha Collection also caught the eye of a Japanese distributor, who wrote a $30,000 check as a deposit on the spot. “That’s the most money I’d ever seen in my life,” Rachael says. “ I look at Heather. I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, we just hit it big in Vegas.’”

Developing the hero product

Rachael had found that Tyvek, a synthetic material, had the functionality she wanted for Aloha Collection’s first bags, but it wasn’t common to add designs to the material. “One time, we got our bags, and the print just started wiping off of the bag,” Rachael says. “ It took a while to figure out how to actually keep the print on coated Tyvek.”

Rachael says specializing in different areas of the business made working together easier.

Heather handled the business aspects of working with a manufacturer while Rachael designed the products and sourced materials. “Rachael’s special sauce is like really having an eye for things,” Heather says.

Going omnichannel

Heather and Rachael’s big bets paid off, and the brand grew steadily over the next few years with wholesale and ecommerce sales. But during the pandemic, Heather and Rachael began to get worried about how reliant the business was on ecommerce. By 2021, 80% of their sales were from their website. “ We never want to have all of our eggs in one basket,” Heather says. “ Our dream had always been to be like 50% ecommerce and 50% everything else.”

With the volatility in wholesale and rising customer acquisition costs online during the pandemic, Heather and Rachael decided to take matters into their own hands. They took advantage of some COVID leasing deals and opened two Aloha Collection stores in two popular beach destinations: Waikiki, Hawaii, and Encinitas, California.

The stores helped them reach new customers and create a brand experience that evoked the spirit of Aloha that they hoped to spread. “We wanted our stores to feel welcoming, as if you’re walking into someone’s home,” Rachael says.

Living and growing the business authentically

Heather and Rachael are both Native Hawaiian, and they say the brand’s authenticity around Hawaiian culture and creating a global “o’hana” (or family in Hawaiian) has been part of their success. The business contributes 5% of profits annually to Hawaiian conservation organizations.

Aloha Collection’s founders couldn’t have done it without being true to themselves as well. Both cofounders love to travel, and they set up their business as remote in 2014, before it was as popular as it is now. “The beach is our home. Travel has always been our inspiration,” Heather says.

To learn more about Aloha Collection’s growth over the past 10 years, listen to the full interview on Shopify Masters.