Fernanda and Vivien Böhme
Böhme LLC
Sandy
Fashion-forward sisters find success in retail despite the challenges of brick-and-mortar
The Utah SBA 2019 Small Business of the Year Award will be presented to Böhme LLC, a growing chain of 16 fashion boutiques, during the National Small Business Week Awards Ceremony on May 9 in Salt Lake City. This annual award recognizes the hard work, dedication and community investment that is required of America’s most successful small-business men and women. Böhme now joins 53 other small-business owners from across the country in Washington, D.C., for a ceremony and the announcement of the National Small Business Person of the Year.
Raised in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, Fernanda (owner/designer and Vivien (owner/CEO) Böhme moved with their parents to Utah when they were 8 and 9 years old, respectively. Vivien, a self-proclaimed “numbers queen,” was always interested in numbers and could make a financial spreadsheet at age 11, proving to her parents they could indeed afford a bicycle. Fernanda was and remains the creative one and built artistic displays as a child.
The sisters have found their niche by focusing on helping their customers as individuals find something that makes them feel great. “Every woman deserves to be thought of as the most beautiful person in that minute. If Böhme can be in that moment, we’ve done our job,” Vivien Böhme said in an utahbusiness.com article by Sarah Stokes dated March 18, 2018.
With the usual struggles of an immigrant family new to the U.S., work was inevitable from an early age. The sisters worked alongside their parents as janitors for 10 years and learned the value of hard work. Years later, that experience paid off when they opened a women’s fashion apparel business.
With no retail experience, no investor and a faltering economy, the odds weren’t in their favor when the sisters opened a women’s clothing boutique in a temporary mall location during the holidays of 2007, or when they opened their first permanent store in 2008. But with Vivien’s head for numbers and Fernanda’s eye for design, the women bootstrapped their way to entrepreneurship, funded only by a credit card at first.
Within a year, Böhme was first place in Fashion Place Mall sales per square foot. The next year, Fernanda and Vivien opened a second location — learned the basics of everything from flooring to fixtures — and remodeled it themselves, since they lacked the funds to hire a construction crew. From that point on, the sisters added multiple stores per year, landing on the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing companies in 2012.
Böhme now has 16 stores in five states through the Midwest, along with a thriving online presence. It ranked among The Salt Lake Tribune’s annual listing of top workplaces in 2015, 2017 and 2018. In Utah, there are eight Böhme stores from Logan to St. George, with a new location in Salt Lake City’s City Creek planned this year.
Böhme, as a brand, values creativity above all other business skills and breaks all the rules along the way. “Never underestimate the power of creativity — not only visually, but also when making business decisions,” said Fernanda Böhme.
“As a startup, we had to bootstrap our way through things and be creative with what we had. We only had a credit card to fund us, along with some faith,” Vivien said. “The thing we learned most over the years in business was to trust our gut feeling,”
While Böhme stores was able to attract customers through the so-called “retail apocalypse,” the company experienced challenges that threatened its future as it struggled to secure financing to give its stores necessary updating. The Böhmes were able to steer the company back to growth through careful rebuilding and extreme cash management efforts. Böhme returned to stability in 2015 and posted strong growth numbers in 2016, 2017 and 2018.
As part of their growth plan, they were able to apply for and secure a small-business loan guaranteed by the Small Business Administration (SBA) 7(a) Loan Guarantee Program. The program is one of the most popular offered by the agency and is the basic SBA loan program. A 7(a) loan guarantee is provided to lenders to make them more willing to lend money to small businesses.
Last year, Böhme experienced record profit and revenue growth, which is expected to continue through 2019 and beyond.
Böhme supports a variety of organizations, including the Ronald McDonald House and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, through their own volunteer efforts and by mobilizing their employees. The company currently has 225 employees — most are women.
Böhme in the community:
• Every Böhme employee, both part-time and full-time, earn three days of paid time off to volunteer. Böhme employees have donated thousands of hours doing volunteer work, which ranges from helping at the Humane Society of Utah to organizing a prom dance for inner- city teens.
• Böhme donates yearly to battered-women’s shelters.
• In addition to serving dinners to families staying in Salt Lake City’s Ronald McDonald House, the company has raised $23,000 for Ronald McDonald House over the past two years.
• Böhme donated clothing to Brazil, Africa and emergency disaster victims.
• Böhme partnered with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society to raise funds and awareness of blood cancer and cancer research, giving more than $21,000 in 2018 alone — the largest donation ever received by a first-year donor.