Christina and Teresa Jaide of JLUXLABEL: True Entrepreneurial Longevity Requires Dedication, Sacrifice, and Endless Reinvestment

As a part of our series about “Why We Need More Women Founders”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Christina and Teresa Jaide, Co-Founders of JLUXLABEL.

The making of JLUXLABEL all began 15 years ago in a 400sqft basement and 3 sewing machines! Driven by a love for fashion, sisters Christina & Teresa Jaide had a vision to create unique designs for every woman’s most memorable occasions. As sisters, growing up they gravitated to much of the same things, the biggest being fashion. Without any formal training, the sisters began designing, sewing, and pattern making their own creations and wearing it to special occasions of their own. Before they knew it, JLUXLABEL was born and in demand. Navigating through the rise of e-commerce they were able to become industry leaders and are now available worldwide and in select Nordstrom stores.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?

Teresa: An undeniable passion, 3 sewing machines, an $8000 investment, and a supportive family birthed our vision to life. Our mom was the greatest teacher and taught us everything we know about garment construction and our dad was an entrepreneur himself. We were raised with an understanding of business that we truly fell in love with both worlds. After presenting a 30-page business plan to our dad, he decided to invest with $8000 and 3 sewing machines. From there we were off and running from our 400sqft basement.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?

Christina: Each year brings its own challenges, but the pandemic is one for the books. We sent our entire team home and while some continued to work through it, all of our logistics were at a pause. We decided to reopen our doors to our warehouse and ran all of our shipping and inventory ourselves with the help of our significant others. At that time, we were undergoing the biggest system integration yet and our warehouse was not numbered. We would call our warehouse leads asking for the location of a product and the instructions were, ”Go to the dress room, fourth row, behind the overstock, 4 boxes behind that.” I bought a hoverboard and had so much fun with it. Thank you, leads! While we found it challenging and did not get a break for 4 straight months, we will never forget it!

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

Christina: There are so many dresses we look back on today and wonder what we were thinking! I used to product model for the brand and Teresa was behind the camera. We used to have this very exaggerated pose we did that was so awful. Let’s just say our style has evolved so much, and as we’ve grown, the brand has grown!

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

Teresa: Our parents! Our pursuit would have been much different without them. My mom taught us how to sew at the ages of 14 & 16, and my dad was always there to give us sound advice on running a business. Without their guidance, we know we wouldn’t be where we are today.

Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. According to this EY report, only about 20 percent of funded companies have women founders. This reflects great historical progress, but it also shows that more work still has to be done to empower women to create companies. In your opinion and experience what is currently holding back women from founding companies?

Christina: Things have certainly improved here, but I think the thought of being out on your own two feet and starting a business is a scary thought for anyone. Women are resilient, we are detail- oriented, and we give everything we’ve got to all that we do. I think it’s difficult to believe that we are capable of balancing it all — without selling yourself short in all the areas we want to commit to, but I hope that they believe in their self and their product enough to bless the world with it. You never know until you try, and you’ve never really tried unless you’ve failed. It’s in those times that you learn the most. The fear of failure is an emotion most entrepreneurs learn to not only overcome, but to embrace.

Can you help articulate a few things that can be done as individuals, as a society, or by the government, to help overcome those obstacles?

Teresa: There is a non-profit called Step Up here in LA that does amazing work with young girls and helping them see their greatest potential. The more we can teach the young generation that there are women doing things they want to do, the more they will be empowered to be who they want to be.

This might be intuitive to you as a woman founder but I think it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you share a few reasons why more women should become founders?

Teresa: As women, you can relate to other women. For what we do in particular, we can relate to how women want to look and feel when they put something on, and we take this into consideration with every design we put out there. We are quick to make decisions in our fittings based off the natural curves of a woman’s body and what we can to do to accentuate all shapes and sizes.

We also feel women are very nurturing, and that can help us when we are in the design stages of your business. Nurturing your product from inception and designing it and seeing it through requires patience and tenacity. Something I feel women truly possess.

What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a founder? Can you explain what you mean?

Christina: That it’s easy and success comes fast. We have worked and will continue to work endlessly to carry out our passion for design. We just turned 15 this year and although many deemed us a brand that rose with the social media age, we came in when ecommerce was untrusted unless you had a big name to go along with it.

Is everyone cut out to be a founder? In your opinion, which specific traits increase the likelihood that a person will be a successful founder and what type of person should perhaps seek a “regular job” as an employee? Can you explain what you mean?

Christina: Absolutely! I say that because there are no limits to being who you want to be besides the limits you put on yourself. I will say that being an entrepreneur does require a large amount of dedication, sacrifice, and grit. I got asked the other day if I would do what I do for free and I laughed to myself saying, yes! I did that for 5 years when we first started! Everything we made got reinvested into the business and we operate the same way today.

Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. Based on your opinion and experience, what are the “Five Things You Need to Thrive and Succeed as a Woman Founder?” (Please share a story or example for each.)

1. Have confidence. There were so many nights I was up in the wee hours of the night in tears asking myself if this business can sustain itself. We were doing the same thing over and over just with different collections, and still sewing and finishing all of our garments ourselves. I knew in my gut I wouldn’t be fulfilled in life unless I gave this all I got, and although we have a long way to go, look at us now!
2. Willingness to pivot & embrace social trends. As soon as we thought we had a handle on our marketing direction, another 5 marketing/social platforms or apps got birthed, and we are already behind the trend. In the past we have been resistant towards other social platforms just because of the sheer volume of content creation these platforms require but we quickly shifted those thoughts and are grateful these platforms exist! A free tool to influence, get word out there, and show the world who you are in one click of a button is powerful in and of itself! Stay ahead of the curve.
3. Do work you truly care about. If you are primarily fueled by immediate return, the road and challenges ahead will likely compromise the design, product, or service itself.
4. Invest in a great team. Find good people, hire for character and values you want to also invest in. Whether it’s you and another person or 100 others — No one succeeds in business alone and those who try will lose to a great team every time.
5. Be customer driven in everything you do. Treat every customer as your first. We always say the customer is the reason why we get to do what we love, in turn they need to be treated with gratitude and graciousness.

How have you used your success to make the world a better place?

Christina: Making an impact on the world starts at your own home. It boggles our mind that our team has grown to 70. To be able to provide a place to come to and be yourself, be creative, and be collaborative makes us so proud. Our team plays such a big motivation factor for us simply because their well-being and need to provide for their own families is something we take so seriously. It really is an honor to share our growth and journey with those that come here and help us live out our wildest dreams.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

Both: Our absolute goal, and this is the first time our parents are ever hearing this, is to open up a school for children in our parents’ hometown. Where they grew up in the countryside of South Vietnam, education and extracurricular activity are far and few between. To be able to give back to their hometown would be the greatest honor of our lives and something we strive to do in the near future.

We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.

Both: Jennifer Lopez is not only the biggest name on the planet, but she still manages to remain so kind. Her strength and vision are so clear that she somehow has this effortless ability to impact strangers in such an intimate way — we all feel like we are her friend.

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.