Dar be dar in Farsi slang means “lost and all over the place”—that surely sounded like me. I didn’t have any direction and navigated through the rough terrain alone. I had embarked on a country-to-country journey to find an investor, partners, sponsors, and ultimately to figure out how to succeed in the fashion industry. I had knocked on any door that I could for answers, to get where I wanted to be. So I decided on the spot, still sitting at my desk at the Startup, to call my new baby Dar Be Dar, which also means “door-to-door.” How fitting! And just like that—the Dar Be Dar swimwear line was born!
I immediately went online and registered Dar Be Dar as an LLC. In a record thirty-minutes’ time, I had a name, a registered company, and the type of product I would produce. Now all I needed was money, a website, designs, and actual products. Sounds easy enough, right? I was fired up.
Martin Luther King Jr. said, “You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” You will never be able to know how stable that first step is, but you have to have faith. Even though there is a chance you may fall off that step, there is also a chance that you could sprint up the entire staircase. So you just have to get out there and step up onto that one daunting stair!
The Startup was beginning to work to my benefit. My colleagues and I spent the majority of our time creating corporate identities for our clients’ companies, so I learned from all the business models we worked on for them. I had easy access to web designers, business plans, marketing strategies, and many other resources. But what I needed most of all was money, and a lot of it.
One Saturday morning, I drove past a man dancing erratically at a popular intersection. His oversized headphones must have been blasting loud, bumping tunes. Give me whatever he was having! His energy level was off the charts. He twirled a large neon-yellow sign that read “We Buy Gold.” I had seen him many times before but never thought twice about stopping by the pawnshop—until that day. Desperation is a ridiculously powerful force.
In Iran, gifting gold coins is a well-known tradition. They aren’t used as currency, but as an investment. People usually wait until the price of gold skyrockets to trade them in for cash. They come in different sizes and have different values, depending on their weight, style, and age. At every stage of my life, my friends and family had gifted them to me. Some of my one-of-a-kind coins dated back to before the 1979 Revolution.
My gold coins and jewelry were going to jump-start my new empire. I turned my car around toward home and put the pedal to the metal. I sifted through my most expensive Iranian jewelry and gold coins to find the perfect ones to exchange for cash. But I wanted to research and familiarize myself with each step I needed to take, so I checked the value of gold before going in to negotiate my terms. I walked into the store and spotted the scrawny, bald, older man who kept his thick glasses so low on his nose that I worried they were about to fall off. Gold wasn’t the only thing the store sold; from jewelry, antiques, and electronics to useless knickknacks, it was packed with goods waiting for jubilant new owners. I walked straight toward the old man’s vintage register.
I asked whether they bought gold, and he responded in a very deep Iranian accent, “Vat else vould ve be doing here, my lady?” I took the little bag out of my purse and showed him each item I wished to sell. It didn’t take him very long to figure out that I was also Iranian. His eyes sparkled as he curiously asked why I wanted to sell them.
“I need the money for an urgent matter,” I responded, like a paranoid felon in an action thriller.
Our negotiations started out congenially, but slowly escalated. We argued, joked, and fought. It didn’t help that we were both Iranian—negotiating was in our blood. I knew he felt my urgency, but I wouldn’t give in without a fight. We went back and forth in the boxing ring, which prompted spectators to gather around us to watch.
I needed to bring out the big guns—I could feel him slowly starting to budge, especially after I explained how much the items meant to me. Then all of a sudden, he said, “My lady, I can’t do this.” I took a seat in the chair next to the register, exasperated. After a few moments, he started tapping away on his calculator again. Then he signaled for me to approach the counter and gave me one final price, which I accepted. The price he gave me was relatively close to what I had expected from my research, and secretly I was over the moon. A small victory is still a victory. After the exchange, we shook hands, and he said, “Khoda negahdar” (“May God care for you”). My Persian charm had worked.
With my crisp $3,600 in hand, I went straight to the bank to open a new business account with my new tax ID number. I was hopeful that this investment was a step in the right direction, and the corners of my mouth lifted into a smile. I had been waiting to put my creative energy back into motion. All that was left to do was create an entire collection, and I would have my very own swimwear line. Like magic!
Sometimes having something to prove to others (and yourself) can be your biggest motivator. I was going to prove to my parents that I could be successful despite not becoming a lawyer, and show everyone else that I was worth more than two failed businesses. What happened with my boutique wasn’t because I lacked the ability to be a successful businesswoman, but because of bad timing and getting involved with the wrong partner. I couldn’t allow life’s pitfalls to stand in my way.
That evening I eagerly sketched on the carpeted floor of my tiny room while my roommates, Mariana and Lina, got ready for a night on the town.
“Babe, are you not coming out with us?” Mariana asked, walking into the room all dolled up. She looked at my drawings suspiciously. “What are you doing?”
“I’m sketching bikinis for my new swimwear line,” I told her, nervously searching her eyes for a reaction.
She gazed back at me with a you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me look.
“Did you already forget what you went through just a few months ago with your boutique? Why would you want to start another business?” Mariana had watched me go through the entire process of opening and losing the boutique, and she’d seen me deal with every single emotion possible, from excitement and anger to sadness and devastation. So she was shocked that I was in the emotional, mental, and financial position to even consider another business venture. But that was exactly what I was ready to do.
I spent the entire weekend sketching swimwear and brainstorming styles I wanted in my first collection, and at 6:30 a.m. on Monday morning, I was standing in line to get on the four-hour bus ride to New York’s Garment District.
My first stop was Mood Designer Fabrics, known by many for its recurring role on the hit reality show Project Runway. This enormously famous fabric store measures forty-thousand square feet and offers endless amounts of material—from silk to cotton to chiffon—that is made around the globe. I walked into Mood Designer Fabrics with Tim Gunn’s “make it work” mentality.
In the past, I’d had a habit of getting overly excited and forgetting to focus on the details, like signing a contract before spending an entire year building a business with someone. True to my character, from the moment I entered Mood, the store spun around me like a carousel of fancy dresses. Snap out of it, I thought, and I forced myself to hone in on what I’d come to buy, while keeping my eye on the prize—becoming a well-known and respected fashion designer. I needed to let the fabric rolls inspire my ideas and build a firm foundation from the inception of my company, so that my empire wouldn’t crumble in the future.
But as determined as I was, and as hard as I searched, Mood Designer Fabrics didn’t have a suitable selection of materials for swimwear. I walked away from the colorful fabric bolts discouraged, wishing that a fashion wizard would whisper in my ear what my next move should be. I didn’t even have a plan B, because I had believed that Mood Designer Fabrics could change my “mood” and be the answer to all my supply problems.
While the barred metal doors of the elevator closed, an older male elevator operator in a costume-like suit asked, “Ma’am, which floor?” I was so upset that I didn’t even realize he was talking to me. He finally got my attention when he raised his voice a few notches, “MA’AM?”
“Lobby please,” I replied. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you the first time.”
“You didn’t find what you were looking for?” Was it that obvious?
“No. I own a swimwear line, and I’m looking for very specific, high-end swimwear fabrics,” I answered dejectedly. “The selection here is not something I can work with.” He suggested that I check out Spandex House. Oh my God, I thought to myself as I stepped off at the lobby, there is a Spandex House?
A block away, on Thirty-Eighth Street, stood the fabled Spandex House. It’s the headquarters for all things spandex and Lycra, brimming with designers searching for fabrics for activewear, swimwear, ballet, and dance clothing. When I walked in through the doors, I thought I had finally arrived to the magical, fairyland forest of stretchy fabrics. Inside, I found heaps of colorful materials, but much to my dismay, I wasn’t able to find anything that fit my vision. Strike two!
The key to thriving in a dog-eat-dog world is the ability to roll with the punches. This was one of those times! If I wanted to leave New York with anything to show for the trip, I would need to change my original designs, and I would have to choose the fabrics right then and there, since the minimum orders were extremely high, and I didn’t have enough money to travel back and forth.
I asked a salesperson for a pen and paper and sketched an entirely new twelve-piece collection using six different fabrics. After purchasing them, I headed to another store on the same street to buy chains, clasps, and other accessories to add to the bikinis.
That evening I finalized my designs on the twenty-dollar bus ride back to DC. I felt like I was going backward, departing the most cosmopolitan place on earth where dreams are made to return to a city where two of my dreams had already bitten the dust. Through the bus windows, I faithfully stared at the sparkly stars winking at me and felt a thrill of anticipation run through me as I sketched my swimwear on the bumpy roads. Great ideas don’t just come to you when you’re behind a desk during business hours. Sometimes the most vivid concepts appear amidst the most random circumstances.
The next step was to create the prototypes myself. So what if I had never made swimwear before? The program in Florence provided me with a solid enough foundation to create patterns. How hard could it be? I was a disheveled mess from traveling eight hours to and from New York in a twenty-four-hour period, and from lack of sleep from the weekend, but I didn’t waste any time when I got home. In my frenzy, not only did I ruin the fabrics, but I also created horribly fitted swimwear that I would never be caught dead in. The fabrics themselves were difficult to work with, and each itty-bitty piece must be perfectly tailored to a woman’s body.
There will always be some obstacles where no matter how hard you try to tackle them on your own, you won’t be able to. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. When a friend of mine put me in touch with a New York-based company called Magic Samples, I immediately got back on the bus to visit the factory. It was known for design development and production. This was the real deal.
The sample house was located in an old building in the Garment District. No one looked up from the organized chaos around them when I walked in. Patterns, fabrics, and samples were scattered around the left side, and a small factorylike space with twelve sewing machines was on the right side. About eight hardworking women worked furiously behind the machines while they chatted away in their native tongue. I immediately spotted Mik, the company head, and his wife. He gave me a little wave, and his wife nodded her head in my direction, then they both carried on with their work. I was praying that this man could be my saving grace.
When he invited me to his office, he got comfortable behind his desk while I tried to find a place to sit. I spotted a chair stacked with fabric swatches and papers. I didn’t want to move anything, so I placed myself on the edge—I was scared to sit on something important—but he smiled and said, “Get up!” He cleared the chair so that my entire butt could fit, then he kindly shuffled some papers around to make space on the desk for my things.
Over the next hour, I barely managed to explain my vision, sketches, and quantities I could afford because eager youngsters from massive fashion houses constantly interrupted us. They were frantically looking around for their samples or dropping off sketches for new garments. Mik kept the door open throughout the entire meeting, which was meant as an open-door policy for the interns to get what they needed. I admired his supportive attitude, and the interns’ enthusiasm reminded me of myself. I could see just how much effort and care they were putting into their missions, and how much faith they had in Mik.
After my pitch, he looked at me as if my request were outrageous. Thankfully, I was getting used to rejection. He said, not unkindly, that the quantity I wanted to produce wasn’t worth his time. I guess my offer amounted to peanuts in his eyes. He was used to producing quantities in hundreds and thousands, and I only wanted to manufacture about a dozen of each style. I begged him to reconsider. I was a dreamer, and if I wasn’t going to believe in my own dream, there was no way I could persuade anyone else to. “Believe in yourself,” said author and humanitarian Cynthia Kersey, “and there will come a day when others will have no choice but to believe with you.”
By the end of our meeting, Mik decided to believe in me, and two weeks later, I went back to New York to pick up my new collection. The crammed bus, frequent bumps and jerks, and the girl vomiting next to me didn’t matter. I couldn’t wait to finally see my prototypes come to a tangible fruition.
Except that when I arrived, they hadn’t yet. The seamstresses were scurrying around like little mice as I sat in the pattern room. I stared at the cutout patterns hung all over the walls, daydreaming about the day I would have my own pattern room. After a few hours, Mik and his wife finally presented me with my 108 bikinis—nine samples of twelve different styles. I wish that I could say I was pleased, but I was far from it. The bikinis were just as bad as the ones I had made myself a few weeks before.
I attempted to explain that they were not up to par with my expectations or industry standards, for that matter. The sizes were off, the strings were either too short or too long, and they didn’t sit well on the body because the sewing was poorly executed. But Mik had no interest in hearing my complaints, so I unwillingly took the pieces and returned to DC crushed. What other option did I have? I had depleted my funds, and this is what I would have to sell.
The entire journey back to DC, I worried about how potential clients would perceive my brand. The key ingredient to a successful fashion line is high-quality products. I had to find a way to sell these suits so that I could use the money and create better quality products the next time around. I’d have to swallow my pride and make people feel like they had to own one of these suits. Being resourceful means tactfully doing what you can with what you have.
I searched for a model (and by “model” I mean a good-looking friend who was willing to wear my bathing suits and have her picture posted on my website) and a photographer who would work for free. Then I created a simple marketing plan, which I quickly implemented. I would sell these bikinis no matter what.
That was the beginning of Dar Be Dar. I still had a long journey ahead of me, but I kept my vision like a jewel that would remind me of my final destination. Don’t ever forget the reason why you started. Remember, even if the road to that dazzling prize at the finish line is bumpy, it’s also full of lessons that only experience can teach you.
All the experiences, challenges, up and downs, and people that you meet along the way will open up many more doors than you could ever imagine. Enjoy the ride and gain as much as you can from it. You will develop an epic set of skills that will set you apart from others. Besides, if someone were to hand you your true desire without your having to work or fight for it, it would never mean as much to you as it does when you hustle for it.