Today we’d like to introduce you to Aitza Castillo.
Hi Aitza, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Our journey started in 2018 with my husband’s idea to host concerts for the Latino community in Memphis. My husband Juan is from Venezuela, I’m from Puerto Rico and we both enjoy music. We realized there were not a lot of music events that catered to the Latino community. Four years ago, we noticed more Latinos were moving to Memphis due to the situation in their country.
Juan has an entrepreneur mindset so he decided to open our own event production company, called JJ Productions, LLC @jjproductionsllc. I supported his idea and we decided to venture into the event/production business. He started contacting famous artists from Venezuela like Nacho, Chino, Ronald Borjas, Nelson Arrieta, and from Colombia, Jean Carlos Centena among others and we were able to get on their tours.
Since I have a Marketing background working for FedEx, I took over promotions, and ticket sales and he was focusing on booking artists. We both worked together to make this huge production event a reality. Because we didn’t have our own venue, we were renting out venues here in Memphis such as Minglewood hall among others.
Renting those venues was costly and impacted our bottom line so we decided to build our own venue, D’LUXE Venue, and open for business in November of 2019.
When we designed our venue, my husband, of course, was more focused on concerts and I mentioned to him that we have to design it in a way where we can rent it out for weddings, birthday parties, etc. so that we can book it throughout the year when we didn’t have events.
I started studying the wedding industry and started reaching out to other vendors to partner with them and promote our business. I also built our website as well as started the social media presence.
Four months later after opening our venue and starting to build our brand presence, COVID hit in March of 2020 and we had to postpone all our events and weddings. I’ll be honest with you it was a scary situation, especially because of the COVID 19 regulations on venues. Thank God, we were able to survive that unprecedented year.
In 2021, we started getting more leads and hosting parties and now here we are.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
Starting a small business is not easy but it is rewarding. As you know, we have to wear many hats from building the business case, financing, marketing, operations, growing your business, etc. Is never a smooth road. This is our family business so both my husband and I partner on this.
It was challenging at the beginning when we started since this was new territory for us. There was a lot of coordination needed between my husband and me to build our venue in literally two months since we had a concert in November of 2019. It was stressful but fun at the same time. So the opening part was stressful.
However, I would say the biggest challenge was when COVID hit. We didn’t know what was going to happen and we lost sales that year so it was concerning. Because we were a new business, we didn’t get much help from the Government and we had to deal with it. Thankfully, 2021 was a great year for us and we started seeing more growth.
As you know, we’re big fans of D’Luxe Venue LLC. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
We are an event venue that specializes in hosting weddings, birthday celebrations like Quinceañeras, wedding vowel renewals, private parties as well as corporate parties. We offer a beautiful blank slate space for clients to design the way they want at affordable prices.
Our clients can rent the space with or without decorations. We offer decor packages to provide a stress-free experience but we also give our clients the flexibility to bring their own cater, decorations, etc. We’re well known for the quality of our service.
We always aim for providing our clients with a memorable experience when celebrating their events. My husband and I always engage with our clients and make sure they have everything they need.
Do you have any advice for those just starting out?
I would say to make sure you do your research and study all the regulations and government laws about opening a business in your location. We learned a lot after we started our journey.
We did this with our business but would highly recommend this for anyone thinking about opening their own – make sure you do market research, understand your competitive landscape, identify your target market, before pursuing your ideas, etc.
This is critical to building your business case and strategy.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.dluxevenue.com
- Instagram: @dluxevenue
- Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/dluxevenuememphis
