Stepping into Avara’s Dallas headquarters is like walking into a Barbie dream house converted into an office.
With pink walls, floral decorations and a goldendoodle with its own throne, it’s an office Emily Wickard dreamed of when she launched her business at her Highland Park kitchen table.
Wickard, 48, a mom looking to escape the inflexible and exhausting corporate finance world, launched her Avara clothing boutique in 2018. Before that, her company was going through restructuring and she was offered a buyout or a position change.
“I found myself really tired at the end of the day and I would see that I would have no ability to attend their school events,” Wickard said about her two children.
Wickard took the buyout, but instead of going back to finance; she wanted to find a job that allowed her to spend time with her then-toddler children, AJ and Ava. She had watched fellow Highland Park moms start their own boutiques and turned to Google for guidance, searching for “How to start your own boutique.”
“I remember hitting the button on the first post and, to say I was terrified, was an understatement,” Wickard said. “Within minutes, people are messaging me saying ‘I want a medium.’ ”
Avara focuses on women’s clothing and accessories, with prices ranging from $70 to $100. Wickard describes Avara as fun and accessible, a brand for all ages.
“[Avara has] colorful statement-worthy pieces,” Wickard said. “It’s for women who want to get noticed for their fashion. They are not looking to be cool girl chic — they’re looking to be fun and feminine.”
Tracy Walder, who teaches criminal justice at Texas Christian University, found Avara in its early stages on a Highland Park neighborhood Facebook group. Walder was first attracted to Avara’s bold and feminine pieces and continued to shop there because of Wickard.
“It was like shopping with a friend,” Walder said. “[Emily] is very relatable, very open; she’ll tell you ‘no, I don’t think that looks good on you’ or ‘this looks great on you.’”
When Walder visited Wickard’s homemade boutique, she felt comfortable shopping there. Walder got to know Avara’s two employees — Wickard and her first hire, Meagan Parry. Wickard said she and Parry transformed an upstairs bedroom into her office and another room downstairs into her personal boutique.
“It’s like a family, they know your name, they know where you live. You come in for a return and they know what you bought,” Walder said. “I would much rather support someone local in my community than go to a big box store.”
Avara started with pop-ups at farmers’ markets and fitting rooms in Wickard’s bathrooms. Now, it boasts revenue of around $20 million to $25 million and 70-plus workers.
“I have the best team, you know, our team of women that we put together is so invested,” Wickard said. “If they’re going to come to work every day, we’re going to do something that matters and that has an impact on people’s lives.”
Walder said Avara tries to remain accessible even as it has grown as an e-commerce site and opened a brick-and-mortar store in Dallas. Avara recently ranked as the No. 1 e-commerce retailer on this year’s Inc. 5000 list, with a three-year revenue growth rate of just under 1,100%.
“[Making the list] really tells us that what we’re doing is something special here,” Wickard said.
Another thing that’s stayed consistent is Wickard’s appearances in Avara’s promotions and social media posts. When her business was on Facebook, Wickard didn’t want to post stock images of the clothing she was selling. So without any modeling experience and thinking she was too short and old, she began modeling her own products.
“It’s very important to me that our customers know that I would wear and love all the clothes that I sell,” Wickard said. “So a lot of moms will say, ‘Can I wear that?’ and I say, ‘You bet you could wear that.’”
Wickard creates TikToks and Instagram reels not only displaying Avara products but also humorous videos about life as a working mom. Across its platforms, Avara has amassed over 100,000 followers and its most popular videos have gotten around 100,000 views.
“To me it was providing them with a little more information than you get just reading a description on the website,” Wickard said. “For me, it’s not just about selling clothing, it’s making women feel good about themselves.”
This kind of personalization of the brand spawned the term “Avaraistas,” a name given to the boutique’s customers. Wickard said a community identity creates loyal customers like Walder.
“[Being an Avaraista] means that I support small women-owned local businesses, and that I feel feminine and confident,” Walder said.
Avara has also employed an influencer network of mostly 20 moms to promote the brand. Avara chooses its influencers based on style and content, such as Nashville-based Natasha Carol Stoneking. Stoneking recently worked with Avara to design and curate a fall line together.
“In a crowded space of influencers, a lot of them are neutral and more of that simple aesthetic that we just really aren’t,” marketing director Anna Salazar said. “We like to be a little bit more standout-ish.”
Although most of Avara’s products come from outside vendors, Avara has started to incorporate its own custom designs. One of Avara’s most recent lines, Game Day Collections, includes exclusive pieces for universities like Southern Methodist, Louisiana State and Texas A&M universities.
“We now know what our customers like, and I think it’s taken us time to really understand what matters,” Wickard said. “We do a lot of feedback loops with our customers.”
With a focus on customer service, Wickard said another priority was designing a warehouse for the most efficiency. The Dallas headquarters includes an open office space in the front with a majority women team. In the back is the warehouse, which takes care of all orders and has partnered with the Notre Dame School of Dallas to give students work experience.
“It’s just so good to have us all together,” Wickard said. “A lot of people have their corporate offices in one place, and then they’ve got their warehouse somewhere else. But I like being one big happy family.”
Although Avara has grown in size, its roots are still in the Park Cities and Wickard gets to spend more time involved in her kids’ lives and schools.
“My daughter’s fourth-grade teacher said their favorite place to shop was Avara,” Wickard said. “And my kids come here, and they walk around the warehouse. They have perspective on, ‘Well, I remember when the inventory was in AJ’s bathtub and now wow, it’s really big.’ ”
Wickard had always planned to go back into finance after leaving. However, after inviting moms into her home and igniting their love for fashion again, she decided to continue building her own business.
“I feel that I can be an example for my kids,” Wickard said. “I worked in a corporate environment for 20 years, then I stepped back and said, ‘What did I really love to do?’ ”
