Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to AnaBelle Ruiz . We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
AnaBelle, looking forward to learning from your journey. You’ve got an amazing story and before we dive into that, let’s start with an important building block. Where do you get your work ethic from?
Hands down, both my parents. They have worked tirelessly to make a better future for us and the generations to come after us in our family. Came to the United States with nothing but clothes and their kids to assure we had the opportunities they never had.
They did not Let language barrier dictate their move to the states, my dad was a blue collar worker , a mechanic and from there he continued to move up in the dealership he worked at eventually opening his own shop and becoming a business owner. My mother having the hardest job in the world, a stay at home mom taking care of 3 kids and still managing to be fully involved in all of our activities and school events. She’s my hero. Fast forward to now, work ethic and always having the mentality of “you can do anything” comes from their words of inspiration since we were kids. When we were little my sister and I wanted to make extra cash during summer, we didn’t have much money but my mom went to the store and got us a bag of those double stick popsicles to sell for $1 to all the neighborhood kids. We kept selling out and earned some extra cash to buy toys. My sister and I both have started small businesses as adults and it’s incredible to think that work ethic started at just 5 years old, I can never thank my parents enough for letting us explore our crazy ideas and never dimming our light.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
Never in a million years did I think about having a clothing line, it was not on my radar but I’ve always been into fashion and clothes. Once I had my son I started thinking wow kids clothes are actually terrible, and there’s not much other than cartoon characters and things full of animals. So during the pandemic I was out of work because I’m a full time hairstylist, and decided oh I’ll make Dom some “cool kid” shirts or a sweater. I pulled out my cricut I had never used and tie dyed a shirt and wrote “Los Angeles.” In OLD ENGLISH which is definitely my favorite font, that might be the fact that I was obsessed with the old school 90’s chola look.
One thing lead to another I posted Dom wearing in on Instagram and my parent friends were like hey where did you get Doms shirt!? It was then when I thought oh I’ll make some for Doms friends, not thinking it would evolve into what is now Dom|n|co. Then as I started gifting and making some the messages started from the adults “can you make me one?”
As soon as that started I started researching small business videos on YouTube, thinking of names, looking up how to get licensing in California and it snowballed from there. My focus was always kids, but now I would say kids fits took a backseat and adult items are where it’s at. I grew up watching sports I’m a huge fan of everything, baseball, football, soccer, if there’s a sport on my kids and I are watching. So I like making city crewnecks that have the sporty vibe. What started as a small idea has evolved into more , I want to grow it slowly but I have always kept in mind when I’m busy with my kids I put the breaks on the site. There’s times where I leave a “Be right back” note on the site and everyone knows that means I’m in full mama mode with kids activities or sports. They are always my top priority and I think my customers appreciate my transparency.
I definitely see me expanding my brand, exploring more items and incorporating my daughters name in there somewhere. I started the brand when I just had my son and that’s why the name is what it is, but with my now two year old Camila Rue, you might see some changes in the near future. Possibilities are endless and happy and have so much gratitude for where we’re at now in business and with our new family dynamic.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Research, I researched so much and nowadays there’s so much information out there and it comes in different forms, from google to YouTube to even tik toks of starting small businesses. That’s one thing that helped guide me and at the same time made me feel like I can do this. Be prepared and ok with Trial and error. For so many designs and actually making my ideas come to life, I ruined so many shirts and crewnecks trying to get the right tones for dyeing clothes. I wanted to make my own colors so I spent hours formulating to get the right tones. And the best area of knowledge has been, if you’re stuck and stressed over something not coming out right just step away go do something else or just go to bed and come back to it in the morning. I spent late nights stressed about items and once I realized a creatives minds has blocks it out things into perspective, like take a breaK and it will work out and it usually does.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
I mean the answer to this could be endless. But like I said before I’m a huge sports fan, huge Dodgers fan, would love to work with in the stadium. I’m hoping to be first Latina female to do a clothing collab with them that is featured at dodgers stadium. I’ll bring the neutral tones and classic designs through the doors.
Contact Info:
- Website: Domnco.com
- Instagram: @dom.n.co
