The road is not al­ways smooth for women en­tre­pre­neurs, but sur­round your­self with peo­ple who be­lieve in you, nev­er let any­one tell you that you can’t do it and God will di­rect your path to suc­cess.

That’s the ad­vice from Shoea­holics own­er dur­ing an in­ter­view with Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian on Thurs­day.

When asked how she start­ed her jour­ney of be­com­ing a busi­ness­woman, the moth­er of two ex­plained that since her school days, she would save every dol­lar, some­times walk­ing home in­stead of tak­ing a taxi, just buy­ing phones to bring back and sell to her friends.

Lat­er on, Aimable start­ed go­ing to the Unit­ed States to buy Bath & Body Works prod­ucts, per­fumes, and GNC sup­ple­ments to sell whole­sale to stores.

“I re­mem­ber my mom and I brav­ing the cold lug­ging around suit­cas­es and stay­ing at these cheap mo­tels to save mon­ey so I could spend as much as pos­si­ble on stock. I’d make a lit­tle cat­a­logue, hand it out, and per­son­al­ly net­work with store own­ers. I even wrote up my pro­pos­als to get my foot in the door for the more cor­po­rate busi­ness­es with a pur­chas­ing team and buy­ing pro­to­cols. I learned so much from that ex­pe­ri­ence and am grate­ful for the op­por­tu­ni­ty. Through that hus­tle, I met some amaz­ing peo­ple, many of whom are still my friends to­day,” she re­mem­bered.|

Asked how she got in­to the shoe busi­ness, Aimable said she al­ways had a strong love for shoes.

In 2009, she took a va­ca­tion from her per­ma­nent job as an as­sis­tant man­ag­er of busi­ness de­vel­op­ment at Sco­tia­bank, to help her sis­ter in Los An­ge­les open a bou­tique. She got lost in the Shoe Dis­trict.

“My ab­solute fetish is for shoes and I end­ed up spend­ing all my mon­ey on var­i­ous kinds of shoes that va­ca­tion.”

The 40-year-old said when she came back from Los An­ge­les, she opened a store called Shoe Fetish and af­ter a year it was re­brand­ed in­to Shoea­holics.

Her shoe busi­ness thrived and ex­pand­ed from her first store in 2010 in the Ari­ma Di­al Mall to a sec­ond store in Ch­agua­nas and then the oth­er branch­es through­out Trinidad.

Aimable not­ed that the big dream is to ex­pand in­to the Caribbean and even­tu­al­ly take the brand glob­al through on­line sales, but for now, she is fo­cus­ing on de­vel­op­ing her prod­uct line and mak­ing sure every piece that is ad­ver­tised rep­re­sents the women whose feet she wants to dress.

As to some of the chal­lenges she faced as a woman in busi­ness Aimable replied that every in­dus­try comes with its chal­lenges, but she be­lieves in turn­ing ob­sta­cles in­to op­por­tu­ni­ties.

“When I start­ed, fi­nan­cial strug­gles were the first ob­sta­cles, so I sharp­ened my busi­ness writ­ing skills and took my ideas to the Na­tion­al En­tre­pre­neur­ship De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (Ned­co). By the grace of God, they be­lieved in my dream, and I got my very first busi­ness loan.

“Of course, there were al­so times when peo­ple looked at me and couldn’t rec­on­cile that I was the one run­ning things. They had their ideas of what a “busi­ness­woman” should look like, and I didn’t fit the mould. But in­stead of tak­ing of­fense, I see those mo­ments as teach­able op­por­tu­ni­ties to chal­lenge stereo­types with­out hav­ing to say much. Women can do any­thing. I have a daugh­ter; I have nieces and I want them and—and every woman who cross­es my path—to un­der­stand that,” the busi­ness­woman de­tailed.

Asked how COVID-19 im­pact­ed her busi­ness, a teary-eyed Aimable shared that the dead­ly virus took her moth­er and that was the hard­est blow she had to deal with in her life.

“I was dev­as­tat­ed. She was my best friend, my rock, my safe space. Los­ing her sent me in­to a deep de­pres­sion, and for a while, I just couldn’t func­tion. Nat­u­ral­ly, that af­fect­ed the busi­ness, and I had to close a few branch­es. But be­yond per­son­al loss, the en­tire busi­ness land­scape changed. What worked be­fore COVID doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly work now, so every day is a learn­ing process. I’ve had to ad­just, piv­ot, and fig­ure out new ways to keep the busi­ness thriv­ing, one step at a time,” she ex­plained.

With the for­eign ex­change con­tin­u­ing to be a sore point for SMEs, Aimable said it has been rough and some­times it feels like busi­ness own­ers are caught in a catch-22.

“I do my best to com­mu­ni­cate with my fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, ex­plain the im­por­tance of ac­cess to forex, and find mid­dle ground with­in le­gal lim­its to make things work. But I re­al­ly hope some sol­id so­lu­tions come our way soon be­cause busi­ness­es are feel­ing it,” she dis­closed.

As to im­port­ing shoes, how did for­eign ex­change af­fect this, Aimable said most of her im­ports come from var­i­ous parts of the world, and the prob­lems of for­eign ex­change avail­abil­i­ty have made things trick­i­er.

How­ev­er, she said re­la­tion­ships are even more valu­able than mon­ey in busi­ness and if one builds strong net­works with peo­ple who un­der­stand the chal­lenges be­ing faced, they’ll be will­ing to work with the own­ers to get past the hur­dles and that’s been my biggest ad­van­tage.

Many busi­ness own­ers in the past few months have been com­plain­ing about the de­lays at the Port of Port of Spain de­lays due to protests and work to rule by work­ers. Aimable said she un­der­stood that port work­ers have their own strug­gles, and hopes man­age­ment and the unions can find com­mon ground so every­one can move for­ward.

“At the end of the day, every­body de­serves a de­cent stan­dard of liv­ing.

“For me, I try to get ahead of the game and bring in con­tain­ers as ear­ly as pos­si­ble. But let’s be re­al—it doesn’t al­ways work out that way. When de­lays hap­pen (and they hap­pen too of­ten), the key is to have a Plan B… and a cou­ple of sol­id bro­kers who un­der­stand the ur­gency of turn­ing around ship­ments quick­ly. Re­la­tion­ships and com­mu­ni­ca­tion are every­thing in this busi­ness,” the busi­ness­woman stat­ed.

As to how many women are em­ployed at her shoe busi­ness, Aimable said about 30 women are cur­rent­ly em­ployed.

“Some are young and just start­ing out, some are moth­ers try­ing to pro­vide for their fam­i­lies, and some are more sea­soned in life. I have some em­ploy­ees who have been with me from in­cep­tion go­ing on 15-plus years! So we have been through every­thing! I re­late to them all be­cause I’ve been in each of those stages my­self,” she added.