Martina Strazzer has all the attributes of a successful entrepreneur: young, with a delineated business model, a great deal of ambition, and a resilient work ethic.
At only 23 years old she has been inserted by Forbes Italia in the most influential “30 Under 30” category of 2023, with a net worth of more than 4 million euros, which have been generated by her jewelry online business “Amabile” and more than 1 million followers on TikTok.
Her journey started at the beginning of 2019 when Strazzer realized she did not have a true drive towards academic life, as she was eager to channel her creativity more concretely. Because of that, she decided to leave university and start working on a project that could merge her business-oriented side with her desire to have her own brand out in the world. With these aspirations in mind, 300 euros to build her brand on, and her own childhood bedroom as her office, Martina Strazzer gave life to her brand Amabile.
The process however was not as easy as it could look. Indeed, whilst working two part-time jobs to finance herself, the twenty-year-old had to figure out what her brand would sell and the logistics of it. Indeed, she did not have the funds for an inventory where she could store her products, as her office was her bedroom, nor the resources for expensive materials. Due to this, she came up with the idea of producing small-sized items that could easily be stored on her bedroom shelves. With this realization, she then started producing earrings and rings that she would customize and then take to her town’s goldsmith to produce. Once she had around five models, she decided that the best way to market them would be a platform that could ensure high visibility at low costs. The chosen media was then her own Instagram platform where she started posting the few models she had.
Although she started to see some requests for her products, the Covid 19 Pandemic hit and slowed the business down. However, Strazzer did not give up just yet and, seeing the notoriety TikTok was gaining as a platform, in May 2020, she decided to upload her business-related content over there. This marketing decision was later proved to be the right one, as people started asking where they could get the jewels she was displaying.
Amabile was then launched and ever since then, it has expanded. There are no physical stores yet, and the only channel of distribution is its online website. It currently employs 40 workers all under the age of 30, and the orders, during peak seasons, even reach 20 000 in a day.
The peculiarity of the business also stands in the meaning that the jewelry collections have. Indeed, Martina Strazzer is also an activist and advocate for mental health awareness, and, further, she divulges on her social media informative notions over some health conditions that impact her personally, such as pudendal neuropathy.
The way these important messages are conveyed is also through the collections presented by Amabile. In fact, amongst their most famous ones, there is one about body positivity and one about the importance of mental health, represented by specific pieces of jewelry that reference to such important topics.
A final consideration that is worth reflecting on is the one proposed by Martina Strazzer herself to Forbes over the entrepreneurial world: “Us women are used to hearing that something is not possible from when we are little. […] In this field, we are always 20 steps behind.”
The challenges that she personally had to face, as she mentioned in her interview, were multiple, however, her example is a grand reminder of what ambition can achieve. No one really believed in her at the beginning of the journey, nevertheless, only four years after that, she was one of the guest speakers of the OSA convention, where 1500 entrepreneurs from all over Italy came and highly valued Strazzer’s speech in which she explained how she got from 65000 euros in revenues in 2020 to a projection of 10 million euros by the end of 2023.
Martina Strazzer’s story constitutes a hopeful message that suggests how creative ideas, supported by a strong will and a resilient mind, can take you from your childhood bedroom to becoming a millionaire CEO within few years.
Comments