Megan Healy and Amy Trelenberg are co-owners and founders of ShopMamie, an online clothing boutique that has some of the cutest clothes we’ve seen in a long time. (Stay tuned, we’ll be reviewing one of the pieces in the days ahead.) Best friends from childhood, these 25-year-olds have made a go of a clothing business even in one of the worst economic times our country has seen in years.

Megan took time to fill us in on how they got started, where the company is going and what they’d say to others looking to pursue a similar dream.

RelateMag: Can you tell us about how you got started?

Amy and I have been best friends since we were Freshman in High School. At age 14, we spent a lot of our free time shopping, styling ourselves, and tending to our wardrobes. We dreamed about opening a store when we get older. However, our dream got put on hold as we both went off to separate colleges, me to Virginia Tech to pursue a Business degree, and Amy to Penn State for Accounting. Amy and I reunited back in Wilmington after our graduations. Amy got an accounting job and I had a job in medical sales, however 2 years later, we left behind our safe but mundane full-time jobs, with a dream and a great idea to start Shopmamie.com. We worked months and months on our business plan and put together our nominal savings until we had enough funds to create a website and buy our first season of clothes. We threw a Shopmamie.com launch party on March 5, 2008. It was such a success…we sold out of most of our clothes that night. From there, we committed full time to making our Shopmamie.com dream come true.

RelateMag: Why start ShopMamie?
Amy and I saw a need in the market for a company that sells stylish but quality merchandise at affordable prices. You can choose from a lot of cheap and chic stores these days, but along with the store, comes the ‘digging’ through endless amounts of merchandise to find something cute. We wanted to eliminate that and be a place where women can go for stylish and affordable merchandise ‘minus the digging.’ We were truly inspired by looking fabulous on a budget.

RelateMag: How has the company grown over the years?

We now get about 5 times the orders and attend about 5 times the events that we did since our start in March of 2008. We also moved out of our rented townhouse which was exploding with clothes from just about every closet you can imagine to an actual office space on the 2nd floor of a beautiful historical old mansion where women can come and shop by appointment. We have also hired a part-time employee and an intern from the University of Delaware.

RelateMag: Where do your clients come from?

All of our clients have come from word-of-mouth. We are lucky to have such a large circle of friends and we have gotten some great PR such as blog, magazine, and newspaper features. We just recently launched an affiliate program which will help increase business across the country.

RelateMag: What has been the customer feedback?

We get such a great response from our customers. When people email or call us, an owner picks up the phone or responds. How many stores can say that? Our shipping is also extra fast because we don’t have that lag in handling time, so our ground shipping normally takes 2 days. In addition to being an online store, we also host and attend various shows (home shows, fashion shows, shows at colleges, ect.) and so we are able to get great face-to-face feedback from our customers. Our shows can sometimes get ‘out of hand’ because women love our clothes!

RelateMag: Looking forward where do you see the company in 5 years?

We would like our online portion of our company to grow substantially in the next 5 years. We are looking into designing our own merchandise and hopefully following through with that in the next 1-2 years. We have a lot of growing to do!

RelateMag: Do you work on the company full time or have other supplemental work to support yourself?

We both work full time at Shopmamie.com.

RelateMag: Where do you find your inspiration?

Our inspiration stems from a lot of different sources….outside scenery, seasons changing, movies, magazines, family, friends, and people in general. A lot of times, we are inspired by another person’s outfit, for example, we will say “I love how that girl made that summer dress look so ‘fall’ with the turtleneck underneath or if we go pumpkin picking during fall, we might be inspired by the deep orange and green colors and decide that we would like to see that in our fall line. If you look around you, anything and everything can be an inspiration.

RelateMag: Has your education helped you start this company?

Our education has helped us a lot. Amy was an accounting major, so she handles all of our business financials and accounting. This is essential for every business and without her, we couldn’t run our business successfully. I ended up majoring in merchandising management, so I knew more of the fashion side of things, such as navigating through Fashion Markets and how to fashion forecast, etc…

RelateMag: What has been the most challenging part?

The most challenging part of our business is the tremendous responsibility it entails. Your work follows you everywhere and when something fails, you cannot blame anyone but yourself.

RelateMag: The most rewarding?

The most rewarding part is seeing our clothes presented in a fashion show or being featured in an article, blog, or on TV. We feel so rewarded when a customer gives us a compliment or even something as simple as opening the door to work every morning and stepping into our office and realizing that we actually did it!

RelateMag: Do you sell in stores anywhere?

We buy from small manufacturers and designers, so we do not design and therefore, we can’t sell in stores. However, we hope to design one day!

RelateMag: How do you spread the word about the company and products?

We have spread the word about our company and products through our great network of friends and family. Facebook and twitter have helped us increase our network as well. We also spread through through great press such as blogs such as dailycandy.com and realsimple.com, NBC10 features such as ‘Digphilly’ and ‘The 10! Show’, and also area magazine publications such as DelawareToday and Spark Magazine.

RelateMag: Growing up were you a typical girly-girl playing dress-up and all that?

Amy and I were both girly-girls while growing up. I myself always played dress up and was definitely caught once or twice in my mom’s jewelry chest. However, we both loved sports and getting down and dirty too!

RelateMag: To aspiring fashion designers what piece of advice would you offer?

Trust and believe in your dream no matter how young. You have to love what you do or your never going to be successful. Always have successful people around you with good advice. My Dad, Jack Healy owns a successful Construction Company and Amy’s Dad is a retired engineer who traveled the world supervising plants. Although they are very different industries from the fashion industry, both our Dad’s provide amazing advice.

RelateMag: If you could dress any celebrity today who would that be?

We both love Rachel Bilson’s style, so I think she would be someone that we would love to dress. Sarah Jessica Parker would be so fun to dress as well because she will wear just about anything.

RelateMag: Any exciting plans for the company in the near future?

We have a lot of large-scaled trunk shows for college sororities coming up. We are also looking towards being featured on another TV program in November as well as some other press features.