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Two minutes with Kirby Allison
Kirby Allison, 24, never dreamed that a tailoring class at the University of Texas at Austin could be so fulfilling. "It's strange how life takes you places you never expect," said the recent graduate who holds a finance and economics degree, While he never expected to be designing custom hangers for men's an women's clothing, The Hanger Project, based in Uptown, is exceeding his wildest dreams. It all started with hearing complaints about how hard it is to find functional - and nice looking - hanger for men's suits. He asked, "Why not?," kept his day job and slowly grew production. A positive review en The Wall Street Journal and a deal to provide a large men's clothing store in Guatemala with 17,000 hangers led him lo leave behind his corporate job and pursue his entrepreneurial venture full time. Allison was interviewed bye correspondent Karen Nielsen.
Q. What advice can you give other budding entrepreneurs?
A. People get so caught up in trying to create business plan, they use that hurdle as an excuse never to get started. I haven't had time to put a business plan together or even register my company, until recently. For me, it has been about going forward and crossing the bridges as I came to them.
Q. How did you know when to take the plunge?
A. There's no question I could have pursued this more aggressively in the first few months if I didn't have a full-time job. But there's something to be said about taking the time to test the water. If I quit my job and pursued it, then I would have had too much of my livelihood tied into the business. My first hanger order took 75 days to arrive from Asia. Now it just makes so much sense - there's no hesitation on my part that I can continue to grow this and make it meaningful.
Q. Does it help to have a background in finance?
A. I work well with computers and can manage the data very effectively - that, and the concept of leverage and working capital could have easily been overwhelming, if not for the background in finance.
NIELSEN is a Plano-based freelance writer.
