Cherry Essentials, an international online retail store that offers a wide range of women’s luxury products, including lingerie, fashion, accessories, shoes, fragrances, home decor, and more, made its remarkable success through the versatility, focus, and passion of founder Ta-me Cherry. Making waves in affordable luxury e-commerce, Ta-me’s nonconformity comes as the express result of the winding road she took to get here, from childhood to career.
From an early age, she knew the broad strokes of her dream to become a successful entrepreneur but the details remained fuzzy for a long time afterwards. As the youngest of ten children in a military family, Ta-me’s childhood was never stuck in one place. She moved around a lot, and amid a large, rambunctious, yet loving household, she quickly learned the value of multitasking and adaptability.
Then, as an ambitious young woman equipped with a Business degree, she started climbing the corporate ladder to earn the experience she needed from the best people in the industry. At this point, she had worked as a licensed mortgage broker, insurance saleswoman, a banker for one of the largest financial institutions in the USA, and of course, in retail marketing. Outside of her burgeoning career in finance and marketing, Ta-me has also had formal experience in acting and modeling and has shared her versatile wealth of knowledge as a published author.
All the experiences she endeavored to excel at and all the different industries she’s peeked inside have constituted the eventual success of Cherry Essentials. While she knew that a lifelong job in any of these sectors would not satiate her larger-than-life desires, Ta-me also knew that exploring far and wide what the world had to offer would bring her to the final destination—even if she didn’t know where that was. “I knew that I didn’t want the traditional 9 to 5 desk job. I knew that my financial career wasn’t my final stop. But, it was somewhere I could learn,” she recalls.
With her different areas of expertise in commercial insurance, mortgages, real estate, retail sales, and more, Ta-me Cherry turned around and took the knowledge she had collected to build Cherry Essentials from the ground up. That’s precisely what Ta-me advises her fellow women entrepreneurs: time. Although it takes effort and success does not come instantly, Ta-me reassures aspiring entrepreneurs, “We can all learn. Just think of the possibilities of what you can create if you’re patient enough.”
But not even Ta-me could control every outcome. For instance, she had to attempt to become a mortgage underwriter thrice before finally excelling. And, her siblings were an essential ingredient throughout this journey. “Even through my failures, I was able to take comfort in my support system. They have always encouraged me to practice resilience, patience, and focus. My siblings taught me perseverance: that the goal exists, and if I keep trying, I’m going to get there.”
This road Ta-me took, the one not often taken, had made her truly ready for success when she founded Cherry Essentials. It started as a social media lingerie shop and soon introduced its everyday luxury to the world’s largest online retailer. Cherry Essentials became a top seller within 6 months of this expansion. Now, the company displays a still-growing range of over 10,000 products, from fashion to home decor to tasteful evening dresses and matching jewelry.
The company’s promise to make self-care and luxury accessible to every woman’s everyday life stands out as a unique mission in the e-commerce sector. Its singularity stems from its founder’s lifelong trait of nonconformity. As Ta-me says, “I make my own rules.”
Ta-me attributes the roaring success of her company to the laser-like focus she maintained toward her goal. In a male-dominated space like entrepreneurship, Ta-me has always known that it is impossible to make it unless she simply gets to it, with confidence. She gained what she could from her advisors, whatever gender they may be, learning business acumen and the value of networking from the (mostly) men and women that made up her peers. Ta-me notes, “I don’t separate the two. I treat a business as a business.”
Many of Cherry Essentials’ customers have one burning question to ask Ta-me: how does one make it in e-commerce? With a life that taught her focus, resilience, and patience through its many ups and downs, Ta-me’s Cherry Essentials has become her pride and joy. Along with Fly Trend King, another luxury retail store she’s recently opened, Ta-me nurtures the growth of her businesses, in part, to set an example for other aspiring women entrepreneurs.
She concludes, “If there’s one piece of advice I can share, it is to keep making mistakes. Success is difficult, it takes time. Even when things get rocky, whether it’s your failure or something that life has thrown at you, all that matters is how you handle it. It is not about how you fall, it’s about how you get back up.”
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Name: Ta-me Cherry
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