EDGEWATER, Colo. — Being a small business owner is merely a dream for many. It's how 'Tela Tequila' a boutique currently inside of the Edgewater Public Market started, simply a dream.
"It was kind of spontaneous, at least on my end, I was actually still in university," said Jackie Rodriguez, the co-owner of the boutique. "I went to school for fashion design and production, and I was I had originally started in New York City. It was my first year back, and I was actually studying in Fort Collins when I had already known my business partner for maybe about a year or two, and she kind of came to me with the idea of, like, do you want to start a business?"
Rodriguez told us during our live Denver7 | Your Voice broadcast last week that she and her business partner started moving right away, planning to open a brick-and-mortar location, but quickly having to shift gears.
▶️ We wanted to share more of her story, which you can watch in the video player below.
"Originally we were gonna open up the storefront, but it didn't work out," Rodriguez said. "We had already done a huge buying trip to magic Las Vegas. It's a huge trade show market, and we had all this inventory coming in when our lease didn't go through the space we wanted."
"So we were like, what do we do to start moving out all this inventory? And it was literally a thought in the morning, like, well, what if we do a mobile business, a fashion truck?" she added.
For years, Rodriguez and her business partner operated the boutique out of a truck. Working through requirements brought forward by the different jurisdictions where they would set up shop.
"That's the difficulty of having a mobile business," Rodriguez told Denver7's Veronica Acosta. "If you ask me, a mobile business is like 10 times harder, 10 times more work than being on still ground, like in a brick-and-mortar store, just because you have to get special permits per city, like licenses per city, everything per city."
"Even if you still have your permit to do pop-ups within that county, within that city, you can still get kicked out," she added. "It came with its struggles, but it was also fun."
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A couple of years into that journey, Rodriguez told Denver7 she and her business partner decided it was time to embark on something new and make the City of Edgewater their new home.
"When we found out about the Edgewater Public Market, opening, launching soon, we really looked into it, and it was kind of like the push we needed," Rodriguez said. "We took the leap. We would be among other small businesses. We would be among the first businesses in the building to really introduce this market. It just felt right at the time."
It's been almost six years since 'Tela Tequila' opened at the Edgewater Public Market, surviving and thriving through the pandemic.
"We lost a lot of our neighbors during that time, we're really thankful that we didn't have anything to compare to coming in, which I think was to our benefit, right?" Rodriguez said. "We weren't dependent on certain income or revenue, just because we were barely going to get open."
Though, what's kept Rodriguez and her business partner at the Edgewater Public Market is the community surrounding them and customers who keep coming back.
"I think it's rewarding to to still be standing here and to have actually grown our space," Rodriguez said. "We started in a tiny, like 300 square foot unit. We've expanded our unit three times since then."
"Returning faces we see, seeing people that have been shopping with us for over five years," Rodriguez added.
As for what's next for Rodriguez, her business partner, and the boutique, Rodriguez told Denver7 she has specific goals in mind.
"I think what's next for us is really building brand heritage hopefully expanding our doors beyond the market," she said.
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