How a Toronto entrepreneur turned her Instagram page into a six-figure business
At the height of the pandemic, Toronto entrepreneur Ashlyn Lem Garcia took a leap of faith and turned her passion for interior design into a flourishing online furniture shop.
What began as an Instagram page dedicated to sharing her love for unique pieces of furniture has now evolved into a six-figure business known as 365.
Garcia's journey into the world of vintage furniture started unexpectedly. "I started this account because I got laid off from my previous job," she recalled during an interview with blogTO.
As the world shifted and people sought new ways to spend their time during lockdown, Garcia found herself embracing a side business that quickly grew into something more significant.
"I always had a love for interior design, but I never took it into my own hands," Garcia shared.
As she embarked on her new venture, she experimented by starting with selling smaller items like glass squares, ashtrays, and lamps. However, it wasn't until she stumbled upon her first stone table that her true passion was ignited.
"I decided, you know what? I'm going to niche down and only do marbles and stones. And that was a really big turning point because that's basically all that I do now," said Garcia.
Since then, she's focused on honing her skills by delving deep into research about the properties of different stones and how to properly care for them.
Now her company is one of the few that knows how to restore vintage pieces from the 70s and 80s.
"So I'm pretty sure we're the only store in Toronto that fully professionally restores everything and does it properly," Garcia shared with pride.
Since establishing 365, Garcia has built quite an impressive roster of clients, both locally (Canadian Olympian Penny Oleksiak is one of her clients) and internationally, with some buyers in Beverly Hills whose names she can't disclose.
Her clientele also stretches to businesses, with brands like Aritzia purchasing some of her tables for their stores, making 365 the go-to spot in Toronto for people looking for stone tables to furnish their homes or offices.
But things haven't always been smooth sailing for Garcia and her business. For the past eight months, she's been struggling with Instagram shadowbanning her posts.
"I realized I wasn't able to just use so many functions on my page," Garcia shared. "Anything that I tried to do would not be approved and the biggest thing that I care about is advertising, and any marketing I attempted to do would get taken down."
Any time she reported the issue to Meta, instead of investigating her case thoroughly, they would simply close it. The only explanation they gave Garcia was that her work was being reported by users as "inappropriate" for the platform.
After months of back and forth with Meta representatives, they finally looked into Garcia's case and decided to lift all the restrictions on her account this past week.
Despite the issue finally being dealt with, Garcia is now considering setting up a second backup account to avoid a similar situation in the future.
Garcia's pieces range in price from $1,200 to upwards of $3,000, depending on the type of stone and amount of restoration it requires.
365's studio, which used to be a factory, is located in the Distillery District and is currently appointment only, since that's also where all the restoration takes place.
Beyond the challenges that come with a budding business, Garcia emphasizes that 365 isn't just about selling furniture.
"The pieces here are very much like an investment," Garcia says. "It's just more so about investing in a piece that's going to last easily 100 years, so you can pass it on to another generation if you wanted to."
As 365 continues to thrive, Garcia's journey from an unexpected start to a six-figure business is yet another reminder of how much talent lives within Toronto.
Fareen Karim
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