As a dancer in her 20s, Victoria Lyman Guimarães knew that she didn’t want a “normal” job. So, in 2007, when she had the chance to buy the dance store she had been working at for five years, she took it. Lyman Guimarães thought that buying a dance store would still allow her to dance because she could make her own schedule. Instead, her career as a small business owner took off, and she ended up establishing Allegro Dance Boutique retail stores in three locations—two in the Chicagoland area and one in Braga, Portugal.
Initially motivated by her love of dance rather than entrepreneurship, Lyman Guimarães kept up her presence within the Chicagoland dance community. It was at a local performance of The Nutcracker that she realized her philosophy was surprisingly unique. A father of one of the performers was excited she was there, having never seen the owners of his local dance store at a performance before. “I just thought, well, of course, I’m here; I’m a member of the community,” she says. “He said, ‘That’s so great. You’re an entrepreneur now.’ It hadn’t really occurred to me that I was an entrepreneur. I didn’t think about myself like that. That’s when I realized that he was right.”
From there, Lyman Guimarães dove into entrepreneurship. Along the way, she learned that it wasn’t enough for her to know how to fit pointe shoes; she had to create a business around fitting pointe shoes, among other things.
Opportunities to Expand
After two years, Lyman Guimarães’ Chicagoland store outgrew its space. She saw this as an opportunity not only to move to a bigger location but to also rebrand as Allegro Dance Boutique, to shed the original store’s unfavorable reputation. “It wasn’t enough to say, ‘Under new ownership,’ ” Lyman Guimarães explains. A few years after the move, she got a letter from someone who had read about Allegro and wanted to sell their store to her because they knew she would “take good care of it.”
Since Lyman Guimarães had already taken over and revitalized a business once before, she wasn’t particularly intimidated by doing it again. “When you have two stores, you don’t need two logos, and you don’t need to figure out your marketing twice,” she says.
In 2016, Lyman Guimarães’ personal life took an unexpected turn when she moved to Porto, Portugal, after meeting, falling in love with and marrying a Portuguese man. While moving to Portugal could have been detrimental to her brick-and-mortar locations, she had made a serendipitously wise move two years earlier when she pulled herself out of the stores’ daily operations to run the ecommerce site—something that she could do from anywhere. She has trusted staff that run operations at the two Chicagoland stores, and she still spends most afternoons on Zoom calls with them, discussing everything from inventory to marketing and design.
A few years later, another opportunity to expand presented itself when a dance mom approached Lyman Guimarães about opening a store in Braga together. She would be the face of the store because she spoke Portuguese, and Lyman Guimarães would provide the business strategy and marketing. And so a European partnership was born. Lyman Guimarães also maintains an ecommerce site solely for the European market.
The initial decision to step back from day-to-day operations is something that was necessary for Allegro to be successful, Lyman Guimarães says. “If you are the face of the business, then half of your customers are going to be disappointed half of the time if you’re not there,” she adds. “So you can’t be. You need to empower a team and enjoy having people that are doing what you do.” Allegro’s staff in the U.S. includes about 15 to 20 people across both locations.
“By Dancers, for Dancers”
One unique aspect of Allegro’s staff is that everyone is a current or former dancer, something Lyman Guimarães says is a big advantage. “When I was a dancer and I was shopping at a store as a 14-year-old, there was a lady there who was trying to help me. I realized she didn’t know anything about dance,” Lyman Guimarães recalls. “It’s frustrating as a customer to feel like you know way more about the product than the person who’s trying to sell you the product.”
Though product training and a monthlong “pointe-fitter training programme” is necessary for staff, Lyman Guimarães says, “there’s a base level of knowledge that comes when you’re a dancer that is hugely beneficial.”
Allegro’s “by dancers, for dancers” philosophy also benefits the staff, many of whom have to make their work schedules around auditions or performances. Some staff have left to work at different stores, but they ultimately return to Allegro because of its flexibility.
Supporting the Dance Community
Though Portugal is Lyman Guimarães’ home base, she makes multiple trips a year to the U.S., where she stays for an extended period. She makes the most of the time she has by doing the same thing that propelled her into entrepreneurship all those years ago: supporting the local dance community. “I go to as many performances as I can,” she says. “Not just for our local studios or customers, but also for our staff.” This support continues all year round in Lyman Guimarães’ absence.
She also offers financial support to studios and organizations within the dance community, from taking out ads in recital programs to monetary and in-kind product donations, because, she says, there’s so much in the dance world that needs support. “That’s the whole idea,” she says. “If we receive money from the dance community, let’s give the money back to the dance community.”
Erica Iacono is a writer living in New York City who often writes about marketing and small businesses.