Tracy DiNunzio is the type of founder I love to write about and if you’re not inspired by her story than you’re probably a little bit dead inside.
In September 2009 Tracy hung up her paint bushes and sold off the rest of her art inventoryto fund an idea she had about disrupting the Wedding industry. The problem was she had no money and relatively no experience building a web-based business. A year earlier she has started scouring the web for clues on how to launch a business. “I didn’t know how to anything more than sending an email,” Tracy said. “Thankfully we have Google.”
Glued to her computer she learned the ins and outs of SEO and created a plan built around a site that would leverage the search engines. She also learned enough code to work with a development team. She couldn’t find a technical co-founder so she outsourced the entire project to an LA based team that still works on it today. “Outsourcing isn’t for everyone, but it was more valuable to me to pay for it then to wait. I learned how to project manage. It kind of comes down to being willing to do really hard work. I was willing to spec out every single angle of the site.” The original site cost $18k to build, borrowing money from parents and maxing credit cards. “Paying with your last dollars is sheer terror,” Tracy recently told me.
RecycledBride bills itself as the largest wedding marketplace. It’s a place you can get barely used and significantly discounted wedding dresses, veils, bridesmaids gear, and shoes. Considering most brides have extra invitations and use things only once, it makes sense to sell them off instead of having them sit in a closet for 15-years. “In planning my own wedding I really saw a need that wasn’t being met. There were other sites already doing it, but because I was so focused on SEO, Social Media, and PR we jumped ahead.” Everyone who has ever been married also knows how stressful and expensive the financial portion is. This helps solve that pain point.
Tracy started working on RB in September 2009 and had little traction after 6-months. Because it didn’t take off she started running low on funds, and rented out the two bedrooms in her apartment on AirBnB while she slept on the couch. Hardcore. “If you’re diligent in booking 20-25 nights a month, you can make so much more money than a roommate. I lived in a Beach apartment and I didn’t want to give it up.” She also leased out her storage unit downstairs which previously held her paintings to a developer who traded the 9x17 space for code. Even more hardcore.
After one year RecycledBride started generating revenue. After 18-months it was profitable. Now 2.5 years later Tracy has spent a total of $75k into the entire business and the site gets about 350k uniques each month. She describes the growth as a ‘saw-tooth graph’ with dramatic seasonal trends. 30%-40% of all engagements happen between Thanksgiving and New Years so January to March are massive months for traffic. The first day after New Years in 2011 saw traffic double and it is up 35% this year.
RecycledBride took its first invest of $25k from Dany Levy (founder DailyCandy) in September 2011. They also received $50k as part of the current batch of startups at LaunchPad LA where 10-companies are given 3-months to refine and improve their product. Tracy is currently building an internal tech team to get RB to the next level. “I have a lifestyle business, but I have more of an appetite for risk and strong belief about the product. I know it can explode if I put money behind it. I have a profitable business that I’m putting on the line. My competition is making mistakes I made 2.5 years ago." She’s raising funding in the next few weeks.
