A Conversation with: Tiffany Williams

Tiffany at her Business soft launch event

Tiffany Williams is an active member in the Union Capital community. Just this summer, she lead a workshop for Union Capital members titled “From Garbage to Grandeur”, where she taught our members how to reduce waste while renewing their space creatively and sustainably. With these same morals, she is launching her new company, “Grandeur Finds by Tiffany", a pre-loved boutique bringing “style, sustainability, and savings”. She had her launch event for her company in her hometown of Roxbury, Massachusetts. I attended the event to have a conversation about why she started this business, what the mission for it is, and how Union Capital has helped her with this new adventure. Enjoy!

Tiffany: My name is Tiffany Williams and I am from Roxbury. I’ve been living in Roxbury for more than 30 years. I found out about Union Capital, which is so funny, from a Union Capital member who I finished a cohort with through Common square in DC. So when I did the cohort, we were finished, and she sent me an email like, “Hey Tiffany, Union Capitals having this thing, and I think you would be really good for it.” 

And I was like, “Ugh, I don't ever want to do that!”.

Finn: Great Tiffany. So, give me a little background on the business and your mission with it, when you got the idea, and that kind of stuff.

Tiffany: So, I feel like I’ve always been like this. Like, let’s recycle, you know? 

Like, there’s certain things that I become aware about, and then I., like, go crazy about it. And, like, recycling was one of those things until, I got a paper in the mail and it said that you’re not able to throw clothes in the trash, because of a textile bin.

And so it’s like, well, what is textiles? And I realize that textiles is clothes, it’s electronics, it’s furniture. Like, all of the things that people naturally just throw away, right?

So then it was like, okay, how could I become a little bit more aware and conscious about it? So that’s when I thought about it.

I like to go thrifting. I go to the thrift store in every city I go to. And so I was like, hey, like so many people donate to the goodwill, to the savers, and they don’t really know too much about the goodwills and the savers. An example, it’s a 30 million dollar industry here in Massachusetts. But worldwide, it’s a 300 billion dollar industry.

So when it comes to the CEOs and the presidents of those companies, they take 70% of the profit. SO people are giving you free items, but then they’re now making 70% of the profit, and then you would think the other 30% goes back to, you know, the community and everything, but it doesn’t. So only 15% goes back to the community.

And don’t ask me where the other 15% goes, because it’ll tell you, “Hey, we’re not sure.” But then again, I felt like, well, how could I ,being a black woman right? How could I also be one of those people that could just make more black people aware?”

Cause we have like this stigma on secondhand things, you know, as we call it hand me downs, right? But we can go to the thrift store, the quality of clothing is so much better than it is now, because we shop fast fashion, right? The shiens, the zaras, the H&Ms, and like, those types of places, people don’t think about as fast fashion, because I don’t think they know about fast fashion.

So learning more about fast fashion has brought me back to hey, like, I like to thrift. So how do I make people more aware, more conscious? And I’m doing that by having people donate items to where I could then host pop up shops.

So then I could host workshops to where people could bring items from their house and then we could redesign them. We could reupholster them. So that would be my way in now giving back to the community, right?

And even having these pop-us shops where I could now invite others from the community, and it can go back to them, rather than me, you know, just being one of those CEOs, Yes.

Finn: 100%. And I think you’re so right about the stigma with thrift stores and second hand clothing because I feel like people almost like, think of thrift stores and like secondhand clothing as almost gross when Shien and Zara and all that, it’s all so in. Like everybody loves it. 

Tiffany: And I think it’s ironic because it’s like, it’s a good thing when it comes to the price that you’re spending. But then when it comes to like all the chemicals that they’re putting in the material, in the fabrics that are so synthetic that now it’s getting in your bloodstream, right?

But then it’s all about what we’re getting. And so we’re getting the cute clothes out of fast fashion, but then you don’t know the other price you’re paying for the cheap price. And I think that that’s another conversation to have, right? 

But just starting with having more people become comfortable, with being able to have pre loved items, to share items, to swap items, you know, like things like that rather than just saying, “i don’t want that no more. I’m gonna throw it away, and then I’m gonna buy something else.”

Finn: 100% . So then I want to touch a little bit about the workshop you did for Union Capital. If you could just give, like, background and how it went.

Tiffany: Oh, my god, the Union Capital workshop was so much fun! I was able to go to Home Depot, get different contact paper, spray paints and everything, and literally have people bring other items that they had at home that they considered trash and turning grandeur. So we were able to literally redesign those pieces so that they can now repurpose them.

Finn: Wait, that’s so much fun because that’s like your businesses mission now. 

Tiffany: Mission, that’s the mission. And there you go. That’s the goal. And os again, it’s like me being able to host those (the workshop), I can now host these (the opening event), right? 

I’m now able to get the money, to buy the material versus Union Capital giving me the money, to sponsor, you know what I mean? 

Finn: Yeah. Yeah. And did doing that workshop in, like, any way, motivate you to start the business? Is there any connection between that?

Tiffany: So I had previously always just wanted to repurpose something, right? And I started at home. Like I started at home with vases that I got from Facebook Marketplace. So I was like, hmm, let me try it out. I don’t want to now promote something that I don’t really know nothing about myself, or I can’t really do, right? So I tried it, worked out perfectly. Like completely changed the look of everything that I had in the little section that I was doing over. But Union Capital gave me that confidence to be able to now host a workshop and not feel like I don’t know what I’m doing. 

You know, they gave me the platform to now be like, I have experience.