Esti Choi: Fashion Entrepreneur
Pay attention, Austin: Esti Choi’s online store and accompanying Austin boutique, BuyDefinition, boast a collection a collection of garments and designers chosen with impeccable taste that could stand proudly next to those of her contemporaries in international cities like New York, Paris, London, Rome, or Seoul. However, BuyDefinition has selected our own backyard as the location for its headquarters, and ships a carefully cultivated selection of fashion to customers around the world.
Choi herself could fit seamlessly into any chic, sophisticated crowd, wherever it may be. At the same time, she sooths and lilts like a true Texan, giving her a demeanor that is both approachable and relatable for fashion heavyweights and novices alike. Her highly adaptable nature may be credited to the fact that Choi grew up around the world in places like South Korea and Israel, finally landing in Dallas for her high school years.
A 2007 graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, Choi says that her story started like many others. She majored in English and Government and, upon graduation, she was headed for law school. That is, until she suddenly and drastically decided to alter her route.
“After I graduated I decided that I really needed to take a step for myself and do something besides what I felt like I was supposed to do,” Choi reveals. And so, she landed an internship in New York City with Williamson, a fashion PR, showroom, and consulting agency.
It was through her work in Williamson’s showroom that Choi realized her aspirations within the fashion industry. A self-proclaimed “avid online shopper,” she suddenly found herself closer to the designers she often made international calls in order to obtain. With this new exposure and experience, she started to hatch her plan to launch an online high-fashion portal.
Upon completion of her Williamson internship in November 2007, she began registering her fledgling company as BuyDefinition and quickly realized that opening a store in New York would be a long shot, due to the high cost of living and lack of available space.
“Some things I had to give and take. If I wanted to do this, I had to move back home,” she says, without a shred of regret. By February of 2008, Choi was back in Austin, partnered with businessman Kean Wang, and filling website orders from her Texas apartment.
The biggest obstacle for Choi was convincing top contemporary designers to allow her to carry their collections in her online store. It was difficult promoting her brand without a traditional storefront or a proven track record. However, the contacts Choi made at Williamson proved invaluable when her first big break came from friend and internationally renowned designer Abigail Lorick, who offered her inaugural collection to Choi’s BuyDefinition.
To make BuyDefinition stand out against the other online conglomerates, Choi strives to choose brands that are not already mass-marketed to other retailers. Some lines Choi carries can only be found in one, maybe two, other stores in the country. Throughout the year she visits trade shows around the country and meticulously packs her days full of appointments with designers from around the world.
“It helps being around creative people. Hearing designers speak about their collections… it just gives me goose-bumps sometimes,” she says of her time spent with her suppliers.
BuyDefinition expanded into a brick and mortar store on South Congress in early 2008. Although it’s gained foot traffic among Austinites, the company still does 95% of its business via online sales. Wang and Choi often find themselves addressing packages to Japan, Australia, Russia, and Korea; Choi muses that “imagining them opening it over there is kind of exciting.”
Choi recognizes that everyone has their own style: “That’s a thing I like about the people here… everyone has their own opinion, and they’ll continue to wear what they’ll believe in, and I think that’s really important in having style.”
Outside of cultivating, maintaining, and growing BuyDefinition, Choi engages herself in other creative projects, such as styling photoshoots, creating feature content for BuyDefinition’s website, or hosting events and trunk shows in the store. In the future, she dreams of working on designer collaborations and, although her expectations for herself have grown with BuyDefinition’s success, she is acutely aware of wanting simply “to do well at what [she has] right now.”
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How come there is no website link to her shop?
hey lisa.. link added. thanks!
[...] since then I’ve seen Esti Choi, the adorable and discerning owner of Buy Definition, style the V Cut Bra in several outfits, and [...]