Diana Harbour loves the art of fashion, from being a faithful viewer of the TV show Project Runway when she was in high school to working in clothing boutiques when she was in college to now being an online retailer of affordable fashions.
When Diana and her husband Josh visited Athens, Georgia, Diana saw Baxter Street lined with charming, upscale small businesses and envisioned her own shop among them. It only took two weeks for the vision to become reality. Diana and Josh signed a lease for a tiny retail space, sold their house, quit their jobs and moved to Athens. The Red Dress Boutique was such a success that Diana ventured into selling fashions for young women and teens online with the added features of suggesting items to make up a whole outfit and being able to interact with Diana about what fashions should be included in the collection.
In its fourth year, the website made $7.5 million dollars, but it was no longer able to handle the traffic, and building a website with the requisite infrastructure was a prohibitively expensive proposition. Diana and Josh both enjoyed watching Shark Tank, so they applied and were selected. They asked for a $600,000 investment and received $1.2 million because Mark and Robert teamed up.
Where Is the Red Dress Boutique Now?
Robert decided not to proceed with the deal. Mark put his own team on fixing the problems with the website, more drastically needed than ever due to $1 million in sales in the six days following the airing of the episode. Later, Diana disagreed with Mark’s advice about the website. Whether due to that or not, Diana bought Mark out in 2019 for an undisclosed amount and now is sole owner of the company.
Diana now designs her own clothing line and a home décor line and has developed a Red Dress Boutique App. The boutique is a presence on every social media platform: Twitter, Instagram, SnapChat and Facebook, engaging a massive following that allows Red Dress to continue its amazing growth.
