Isabella Soto is a digital media studies major at Florida International University, who has always been into owning a small business. At the age of 19, after various occasions of trying to start one, she saw the opportunity to launch her own swimwear line, and she didn’t think twice before doing so.
“A couple years ago, I used to buy old jeans at thrift stores and I’d cut them into shorts and sell them on Etsy [A small business website],” Soto said. “Then I started my own fashion blog, but it’s expensive to maintain so I didn’t do it as often,” she added.
It wasn’t until Soto launched KOKOAKINIS in December 2014, that she grasped on to the success of a fast-growing company.
“When you start off your business, you never think it’s going to do so well. I get e-mails from people in Hawaii or Sweden with questions about my swimwear. It’s kind of surreal,” Soto said.
She says a major part of her growth since it was launched, less than three months ago, has to do with her marketing and photography choices. Soto created the concept behind KOKOAKINIS, as a line that any girl of any size and body type could identify with and want to wear. The models she uses for her swimwear are girls of all shapes and body types.
She emphasized the fact that her customers should identify with the organic beauty of her models. Soto accomplishes this by doing minimal editing to her images and focusing on the bikinis’ style complementing the model’s body.
“The first collection was all over the place. I didn’t have a theme. I was just picking what I really liked and thought would look good,” Soto said.
Soto began her business with the help and lead of her mother, Paula Lopez, who she describes as her backbone in the process. Lopez came up with the name ”KOKOAKINIS,” from what Soto said sounded “catchy” and they decided to keep it.
Her mother, a Colombian native who has been living in the United States for 15 years, studied fashion at the Miami International University of Art & Design. At a young age, Soto would watch her mother work on fashion pieces for school projects. She recalls going to one of her mother’s fashion shows when Lopez was still enrolled in the fashion school.
“My mother is living vicariously through me [with KOKOAKINIS],” Soto said. “She has always wanted to own a business of her own.”
After graduating, Lopez began designing a sportswear line. She hired a seamstress in Barranquilla, Colombia to make the clothes for the business. The sportswear line was discontinued after a short time.
Soto, being curious about owning a business, thought that bikinis were a good way to go, especially in Miami.
“People are always going to want to buy bikinis,” Soto said.
She then asked her mother for the seamstress’ contact in Barranquilla and in November 2014, she began sketching the designs for the swimsuits that would make up KOKOAKINI’S first collection.
With her mother’s guidance, she learned where to buy fabrics, how to select colors, prints and designs.
“It’s been a learning process along the way,” Soto said. “But when I wake up every morning the only thing I want to focus on is my swimwear line.”
The second collection, “Spring 115,” will launch in early March of this year. It will include three different sections divided by color themes: one with only black pieces, another with earthy, more subtle tones and the third will have versatile brighter tones keeping KOKOAKINIS true to Miami’s liveliness and beaches.
