As a former bridesmaid who's been through the headache that is planning a bachelorette
party, I'll be the first to admit I'd spend a small fortune to shrug the responsibility
and have someone else take care of everything from the accommodations to the
entertainment and the designated rides in between.
That's where Mallory Strange comes in.
How are you feeling this morning?
Feeling good. And it looks like I'm not alone.
What I'm really selling is convenience here.
Mallory started Bach Babes in October of 2020 and thanks to a viral TikTok has already hit
$100,000 in revenue, grown her team and landed partnerships across Nashville.
Every single week something crazy happens, something crazy good happens of just like
our growth is so exponential.
In early 2020, Mallory Strange was splitting her time between a 9-5 social media job and
cheering for the Atlanta Falcons.
But the NFL was on pause due to the pandemic and her job let her work remotely.
So she decided to move to Nashville.
When I got here, there was a pandemic going on, so I didn't have a ton of friends.
So I was always looking for something on the side.
I had a friend come into town who had her sister's bachelorette party that weekend, and
she was like, "Can I please just mail you all the decor?
Can you just help me set it up like you're very good at this stuff?
I'd love your help." I'm like, "Yeah, absolutely.
I would love to help."
Mallory's friend said she would've hired someone to help with the planning, but she
had trouble finding the right person, which put the idea in her head.
I was like, hm, that makes me think.
Maybe I should look into doing something like that.
And I realized there really wasn't anything like that in Nashville.
So kind of Bach Babes started from there.
Although Mallory had plenty of passion for event planning, as well as marketing
experience, she had no idea how to start an actual business.
So I always thought that business owners were they came for money like they saw their
parents having a business or like they were really close to someone who was like a
mentor who owned a business, just never really thought of myself as like a business
owner.
It kind of just came down to like having the passion for party planning.
Having that passion can really take you from just like doing it as a side hustle or even
just doing it as a hobby to a side hustle to a business.
Bach Babes initially had trouble finding clients.
But Mallory's marketing background told her the best way to gain visibility is to keep
making and posting content.
Truly, overnight, it just skyrocketed and went to like three hundred or four hundred
thousand views overnight.
After going viral, Mallory had hundreds of inquiries and quickly had to figure out her
packages and pricing.
I thought maybe every single party, I'll just feel it out, figure out exactly what they
want, and then I'll give them a custom price.
And so my first few parties, that's exactly what I did.
They reached out to me and they were like, we want our party to be awesome.
And I was like, "OK, what is awesome mean to you?
Tell me what you want, I'll make it happen." And that's kind of what my motto was, was
like, I'll make it happen.
I quoted them a price that now, if I had quoted them, would have been three to four
times higher than what it was then.
Mallory says her biggest challenge was being confident enough in herself to increase her
prices.
My lowest price at the time, I would do an entire party for $150.
Now, I mean, I think my lowest price right now is $400 for something small.
I ended up spending a ton of money just to make it look as good as it was.
Bach Babes parties start at $400 and go over $2,000 for a full VIP fairy godmother
treatment.
I'm offering a luxury service, but I'm also not stealing people's money for something
that they obviously can do for themselves.
But it's the convenience factor of we're able to do it for you.
Mallory is extremely well positioned to take advantage post pandemic.
According to the Nashville Convention and Visitors Corp., there were around 16.1
million visitors in 2019.
Plus, she's working with some of the most popular bars, restaurants and hotels in
Nashville, as well as national brands like David's Bridal.
We've had celebrities reach out.
We had to upgrade our storage unit to a larger storage unit.
I mean, it's just like every single week something crazy happens, something crazy good
happens of just like our growth is so exponential.
Since starting in October of 2020, Bach Babes has brought in over $100,000 in revenue and
her highest month so far, March, brought in over $19,000.
But Mallory's been putting the money back into Bach Babes and has only recently started
paying herself.
The revenues coming in, but one of the hardest things as a business owner is knowing
what to pay yourself. Obviously, you know how much work you're putting in, but you see
your business thriving and I don't want to take money away from that.
As of June 2021, Mallory's now able to pay herself enough to match your previous salary
of around $70,000 per year.
Especially now that I've hit like the $100,000 mark, it's like, well, you must be
doing awesome. You must be killing it.
I'm like, the business is killing it.
And I'm kind of just the driver of the ship.
Mallory currently has over 185 parties booked and gets new inquiries every day.
She's hired interns and added three part-time decorators to her team.
And she's being booked beyond just bachelorette parties.
It started as bachelorette parties.
And as I continued growing, people would reach out and say, "Hey, will you do a twenty
first birthday party?" Yeah, I would love that.
"Will you do a bachelor party?"
And Mallory hopes to add more cities beyond Nashville.
I really would love to expand Bach Babes to other cities.
I mean, there are so many other bachelorette destinations in the country.
So I hope to start partnering with people in these cities who I feel comfortable taking on
the Bach Babes name and kind of going elsewhere with it
Bach Babes is doing so well, she left her social media job and won't be returning to
the Atlanta Falcons cheerleading squad this year.
The best part is definitely just seeing this thing that was in my brain for a little bit
flourish. People dream of their wedding and their bachelorette since they're like a
little girl, like that's something that you've always thought and you get it once in
a lifetime. So we're getting to make these groups' experience just blowing it out of the
water and making it everything of their dreams.
I get to meet a lot of these groups and they are so thankful their faces just light up
when they see what we've made and what we've done for them.