When the whole world shut down last year, 23-year-old Lily Vasey used her time in quarantine to her advantage. She started “Denim Designs by LV,” an LLC, in April of 2020. Since then, she has been hand-painting denim jackets, each with its own unique and custom design.
“It all started with my love for the Pittsburgh Steelers and wanting to wear my own apparel to the games,” Lily said.
In Dec. of 2019, she made a jacket for herself and posted a picture wearing it on Instagram. One of the Steelers players came across the post and asked her to make a jacket for his mom. After doing so, she reached out to a different Steelers player’s girlfriend and offered to make her one as well. Her business started as a hobby—she wasn’t making any profit. In fact, she was losing money.
She made more jackets and tried posting them on her personal Instagram account. She immediately received positive feedback. But it wasn’t until she started a new business account on Instagram that her business started picking up. Lily has her own Etsy page, but the majority of her business takes place through her Instagram.
“Instagram makes it easy for a customer to reach out to me directly and have a conversation about what they are looking to have painted onto a jacket,” Lily said.
Communicating directly with each customer allows Lily to share ideas back and forth so that she can come up with a mock design of the product she is going to produce. She always makes sure the customer is satisfied with the design before she gets started. Additionally, she shares pictures of the jackets before shipping them out to make sure the customer is 100 percent satisfied.
Custom jacket prices range, but they typically start around $150. This price includes the jacket, design and shipping. The more detailed the design is, the more the jacket will cost. The price may seem high, but that is because it typically takes around eight hours to complete the process.
Although in the beginning, her target consumers were NFL wives, girlfriends and fans, since then, she has expanded to different types of designs such as pets, college and wedding designs.
“It never gets boring,” Lily said, “Because there is always something different a person wants.”
Lily is most inspired by her father, Scott Vasey. Lily explained, “He is the most hard-working person I have ever met. I am not sure how he raised my two siblings and me as a single parent, while also having a very demanding full-time job. I am a lot of things because of my dad. I’d like to think that my siblings and I became the independent and self-motivated people we are because of him.”
Looking back, there is nothing big that Lily regrets because she believes everything happens for a reason. She has made some mistakes, but they have all led her to where she is today. Lily noted, “People are so afraid of failure when in reality, it should be welcomed. You don’t learn from success or doing things the easy way. You learn from going outside of your comfort zone.”
However, she wishes she started working on herself earlier. She spent a lot of time and energy wrapped up in unhealthy relationships that set her back in life. It wasn’t until two years ago that she finally started feeling like her own person.
“I think personal growth is an ongoing process and effort that can lead you to become the best version of yourself,” Lily stated. “It was in that growth that I was finally able to put my energy into things I enjoy, like exploring my artistic side by making these jackets and also getting to connect with different people on a daily basis—and that makes me happy!”
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