How a North Carolina Mom Turned Lolly Wolly Doodle Into a $10M Clothing Empire
Brandi Temple's business started when her husband gifted her a sewing machine.
— -- Brandi Temple was a stay-at-home mother of four in Lexington, North Carolina, with a sewing machine that was collecting dust when she turned her talent into a $10 million clothing line.
"My husband bought it for me for Mother's Day and it was a joke because he said, 'Are you ever going to use it,'" Temple told ABC News of the sewing machine.
Temple dusted off the sewing machine and put it to use in 2008 when her two daughters began asking her for a specific type of clothes.
"My daughters were five years apart and they wanted to match," she said. "I couldn't find anything in the market."
Temple began making dresses not just for daughters but for others too. She began to sell the clothes and her clothing company, Lolly Wolly Doodle, was born.
The clothing line became a community, Temple says, through Lolly Wolly Doodle's Facebook page, where Temple posted photos of the clothes and encouraged customers to contribute their experiences.
"We didn't create a business. We created a community first," Temple said. "These moms talked together and they shared their stories and their pictures of their children wearing the Lolly Wolly Doodle clothes."
"Everything else just grew so organically and so natural that we weren't trying," she added. "It literally just happened."
Lolly Wolly Doodle's Facebook page now has over one million likes and the company today brings in over $10 million annually.
It is also one of the top employers in Temple's hometown of Lexington, where she moved the line into a local factory after it grew out of her own garage. In the process, Temple created jobs and careers for many in her small town.
"To know that I was blessed with the opportunity to give back and for people to be able to save their homes, it was just giving someone an opportunity to work and to earn it," Temple said. "It was pretty awesome."
The way Temple built the Lolly Wolly Doodle customer base on Facebook makes her part of a growing number of people turning to social media to embark on their dream.
"People who are interested in growing a big audience, I think, have to pay attention to the social element of social media," Rob Fishman, co-founder of Niche,an online professional network for social media creators, told ABC News. "It's about engaging other people in the community but also having a bi-directional conversation with your fans and followers."
Temple says she has three tips for using social media to help your company grow:
1. Know your customers and adapt your social media plan to what they are already doing.
2. Be true to your brand.
3. Do not be afraid to experiment and keep trying new things.
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