Our Success Story – How Darianna® Bridal & Tuxedo Started

The sign for our bridal shop in Warrington PA

Listen to this blog as a podcast:

On January 7, 2013, Darianna® Bridal & Tuxedo opened its doors in Warrington Pennsylvania as a stand-alone boutique store and is proud to serve the Philadelphia region.  But how did it all start with our family-founded and owned bridal and tuxedo store?  Well let proud business owners, Franco Salerno and Wendy Ianieri-Salerno tell you their story.

Franco Salerno and Wendy Ianieri-Salerno
Franco & Wendy Salerno

We are Wendy and Franco Salerno and we founded Darianna® Bridal & Tuxedo.  We have two daughters, Daria and Deanna.  Daria is the oldest daughter and when she was in high school, she was being invited to several proms.  Searching for a prom gown at the time was not easy or fun.  Why?   Because there was no store in the Central Bucks County area that offered prom gowns.

In a moment of frustration in traffic, driving all over the Philadelphia region to find a prom gown for Daria, Wendy, asked “has no one ever thought of opening a prom store in the Central Bucks County area?”  At that moment, the light bulb went on!  The problem is, prom is seasonal, so what do you do with the store the other six months of the year?

At that moment, it was decided that Darianna® Bridal & Tuxedo will offer prom gowns, wedding dresses, mother of the bride and groom dresses and wedding accessories.

Darianna®: What’s in a Name?

So where did the name Darianna® come from?  This one you may have have already figured out!  Think our own children!

Daria + Deanna = Darianna®

There were a few ideas on the table about what to name the store.  One of them was Wendy’s Bridal, after owner Wendy.  However, Wendy decided she did not want to compete with a fast food restaurant chain.  

The other option was to name it after Wendy’s dear grandmother, Lena.  All of these ideas quickly faded when we decided to combine our daughters’ names: Daria + Deanna and make the name Darianna®!

Perfect, the name was settled upon and the company initially started as Darianna® Bridal!

Where Do We Open the Store?

In August of 2012, Wendy and Franco searched for a commercial space for the store.  That proved to be a little more challenging than anticipated.  Turns out, we had no bridal, prom, formal wear or retail experience.  

Some landlords were concerned about this lack of experience and would not entertain any discussions, others like Valley Square Shopping Center in Warrington, PA said that they preferred national and regional chains as tenants.  Back to square one.

After viewing several properties, we settled on a very nice space near the Fine Wines and Spirits store near the Wegmans in Warrington.  We submitted an application to rent the property for 5 years, were accepted and then began negotiating the rent.  The day after Labor Day in 2012, we were notified by the landlord that the owner would not agree with our last and final offer for rent.  Coincidentally, 12 years later, that same storefront has never been rented and continues to be vacant to this day.

Our first store at Christmas 2014

We then stumbled upon a property that was being converted to a commercial property from a residential property.  The property was on PA-611, Easton Road and had large display windows facing route 611, perfect for all of our mannequins, wedding dresses, mother of the bride and groom dresses and prom dresses.  It had fine hardwood floors and just the right amount of space.  

Within a week we had a signed lease, our contractors lined up and an architectural plan to add our finishing touches.

Returning From An Overseas Wedding

On a return flight from an overseas wedding, we took an airline drink napkin and wrote out an abbreviated business plan and vision.  That napkin was the basis of launching Darianna® Bridal & Tuxedo.

Research and Analysis

While we were getting ready to build the store, we began documenting the research we were doing on the business.  The most helpful thing we did was search online reviews of bridal and prom stores nationally to see what the main pain points existed for customers.  We learned three major complaints in online reviews:

1) stores and inventory tended to be dirty

2) store employees can be unkind, pushy and aggressive

3) store employees are not always truthful with customers

So what did we do with this information?  We created a written document codifying our culture and method of making sure our customers do not experience these pain points with us.  

We immediately hired local cleaners to professionally clean the store once a week, from top to bottom.  We also had the staff vacuum and mop the store and clean our mirrors at the end of each shift.  We had the cleanest store in the Philadelphia region and we still do to this day!  

We also hired employees based on personality and kindness.  No experience was required.  We can teach you how to sell dresses, but we can’t teach you to be nice!  This was one of our best moves because to this day, we hire this way and have the kindest staff in the industry.  

In addition, we created a fair compensation plan that did not include commissions.  We know that making employees rely on commissions as part of their compensation will make them pushy sales associates.  We were right.  Customers told us, immediately, how pleasant it was to shop with us!  We are still known as a pleasant and fun place to shop.

Finally, we tell customers the truth whether they like it or not.  Since we were not from this industry, one of the biggest lies we read online from online reviews and other stores is that brides were told that if they didn’t order their dress “today”, they wouldn’t get their dress on time for the wedding.  This is even if they were not getting married for another 9 – 12 months!  Clearly, yet another high sales pressure tactic.  We tell brides that they had plenty of time to make a decision.  

Truth: It only takes new wedding dresses 3 – 4 months to come in to our store after they are ordered.

These three items that we learned from online reviews allowed us to run our business, as we like to say, based on what you learned in kindergarten: clean up after yourself, be nice, and tell the truth!

One of our first, unexpected online reviews from a bride who didn’t even ultimately find her wedding dress with us said that you should shop at Darianna® Bridal because we “were honest and not like the other stores.”  We were touched, and even a little surprised, that that would be a competitive differentiator that needed to be stated in an online review.  We’ll take it!

Building the Store

Our next step was to build our store.

Our contractors built all of the finishing touches that we needed to serve our customers: built in clothes racks, dressing rooms, a front desk with a beautiful granite countertop.  The construction went very smoothly because our contractors were experienced carpenters who could build anything.  They didn’t need to buy much other than wood, drywall, nails and paint.  Anything we needed for the store, they built from scratch.  It was quite amazing to watch everything transform.

Darianna® Bridal Needs a Sign

We of course needed a store sign.  We hired a local couple who specialized in hand made wooden signs.  They built us a beautiful sign with silver inlay and a beautiful pink heart.  Everything was painted with beautiful lacquered paint.  It was classy, beautiful and easy to see from the road.  

Our original sign

They even installed it for us and we had our contractors add spotlights on the sign to illuminate it at night.

Good To Go!

In early January 2013, the township gave us the permits to open our store and on January 7th, 2013, we opened our doors.

Up until that time, we were storing dresses that we ordered from designers at our house, and other family members’ houses. There were a lot of dresses to store!  We had to be ready to open on day one.  With several trips from the houses, we filled our store and the racks with beautiful dresses for opening day.

New Store Opening!

Local Help

Since our oldest daughter was in high school at the time, we hired her and several other local high school girls to work at the store.  It turned out to be an amazing decision!  They loved the job and were the envy of every female high school student in the area.  That helped get our name out there quickly.

Prom Team

The young high school employees helped us fill the store with dresses before opening day.  We also held training sessions with them to help provide an excellent level of customer service.

Hiccups Along the Way

As with life and business, there were several setbacks leading up the opening day.  The first, of course was convincing a landlord to rent space to us despite having no experience in the industry.  We were turned down by several landlords due to our lack of industry experience.

Secondly, bridal designers have an industry that geographically protects its retail customers or bridal stores.  As an example, if a bridal store carries a designer like Essense of Australia and another bridal shop is located too close to that store, the designer will not allow the second bridal store to carry that same line.  Having the correct, sellable lines from wedding dress designers is vital to a bridal shop’s survival.

We had learned that a very popular bridal gown line was no longer being carried by a store about three miles from our new store.  Wendy contacted the designer representative and expressed interest in their bridal gowns and prom dresses.  They were all too happy to work with us.

We put together a substantial order for wedding dresses and prom gowns from this designer.  We submitted the order to them and waited for our dresses.  This was a big score for us to secure a very sellable and popular line when we first opened.

After not hearing back from the designer representative for a few months, we called them.  We learned that the designer representative physically took our order and showed it to our competitor 3 miles away.  The designer told the competitor that a new store opening soon close to them submitted a substantial order.  The competitor then decided to reorder the line, thus locking us out of these wedding and prom dresses.

That incident stung very much and taught us our first very hard lesson in the bridal business.  We never revisited a potential order with that designer again and have learned to work with designer representatives who are trustworthy and honest.

Monday, January 7, 2013 – Opening Day

Opening day finally arrives.  Talk about being nervous!

We open our doors at noon and waited.  Since the high school girls, who were our employees, were in school at the time, we the owners were the only ones in the store at the beginning of the day.

On day one, we had our first wedding dress appointment.  Wendy realized that she had never done a bridal appointment before.  She saw the bride and mom approaching our front door and panicked a bit!

The first bride was welcomed to Darianna® Bridal & Tuxedo and within the first 90 minutes of our day, she said yes to her dress!  What a thrill!  Here is a bride who is hugging Wendy out of joy and excitement.  Ninety minutes prior, neither knew each other. Now they are like family. (Note: this bride’s sister came into our new store a few years later and said Yes, too!)

By 3 PM of the first day, the prom employees started arriving after school.  And so did the prom customers!  There was a lot of fun energy. We were shocked how word started getting around about the opening of our store!

Prom dresses started selling like crazy.  Wendy and Franco realized that they immediately had a real business.  

Thank Goodness for Social Media

At the time of opening, Facebook was still developing its advertising strategies.  Anything Darianna® Bridal & Tuxedo posted on Facebook, was immediately circulated and shown to the community.  Call this a stroke of luck, but sometimes timing of things is vital.  The way social media was set up at the time, businesses did not have to do much more than post and it seemed like the entire community would see your post.

Watch the Show

Our prom employees would model prom dresses in our display windows and waive to the stopped traffic!  

Dancing in the windows

The drivers and passengers of the cars were enjoying the show and we were feeling fortunate that word was getting out so easily.  The live show certainly helped.

Next Steps

Before opening our store, we attempted to reach out with a long standing tuxedo rental shop to see if we could refer business to each other.  After all, the original name of our store was Darianna® Bridal, not Darianna® Bridal & Tuxedo.

After several attempts to connect, we were not getting a response from that nearby shop.  At a lunch with a designer representative, the person asked us why we didn’t offer tuxedo and suit rentals.  We specifically remember her saying “it’s easy”.

Since we received no response from the other store that we wanted to collaborate with, we immediately started offering tuxedo and suit rentals.  It was a big hit!  What better than to sell the bride her wedding dress and then offer her groom, groomsmen, fathers and ring bearer suit and tuxedo rentals?  We were already offering bridesmaid dresses and mother of the bride and groom dresses.  We were a full service one-stop-shop.

Six Months Later

Within six months of opening the store, we were overrun with customers and out of space in our original store.  We were shocked and elated by the immediate success.  The local community was very supportive of us. We also won our very first Best of Bucks Bridal Shop award!

We soon joined the Central Bucks Chamber of Commerce and later joined the Lower Bucks Chamber of Commerce and Eastern Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce.  These organizations were supportive and helpful in getting the word out about our business and helping us find local vendors to help us run our business.  It was a win-win for everyone and allowed us to make many personal connections.

To this day, we are active members of these Chambers, have been on the board of the Central Bucks Chamber of Commerce and are currently a board member of the Lower Bucks Chamber of Commerce.

Our Big Move

We knew we needed more space for our business.  But where do we look?  News gets around fast because one of the property managers from Valley Square shopping center paid us a visit and asked if we would consider moving to there property.  That was odd to us because two years earlier, they told us they preferred a national or regional chain.  We continued looking for larger space, in our spare time!  We were open 7 days a week so spare time didn’t really exist.

Wendy then noticed that a new shopping center was being built north of County Line Rd and South of Street Rd (still in Warrington, PA).  We called the phone number on the real estate sign.  At the time, the property was a construction site.  The person on the phone told us that they would be at the property the following Wednesday and asked if we would meet them there.

Wednesday arrived and we were waiting nervously for who was to arrive.  We met the owner of US Realty and his associate.  They introduced themselves and said that a 3,150 square-foot store was available.  That amount of space, on a state highway in Warrington Bucks County sounded expensive and intimidating.

They showed us the space, although only partially constructed and quite unfinished. The potential looked amazing but could we afford it?  Did we need that much space?

We had arrived early at the construction site.  We were dressed formally because we were going straight to our store to open at noon that day.

The owner of the real estate company and developer was an older gentleman.  His associate told us that they noticed that we were on time and dressed formally.  They said they were not used to that with potential tenants.  Because we were on time and dressed formally (suit and tie for Franco and dress for Wendy), we believe the next opportunity was presented to us: the developer invited us to his office the following week to talk.  Wendy and I had no idea why.

Awkward, But Successful

We arrived at the developers offices in Ardmore, PA.  Franco went to the restroom before the meeting started.  The older gentleman sees Wendy, alone, and says in a disappointed voice, “Oh, Franco sent you?!”.  She politely replies, “No, he’s in the bathroom.”  

Once he heard that, he seemed a lot more receptive and invited Wendy into the conference room.  Franco joined shortly thereafter.  Not really great start to the conversation.

We sat with the developer and his younger associate.  As we listened to them speak it basically sounded like he was working out the details of the lease, as if he already decided to give us the space!  We were shocked and again, a little confused.  There was no credit check, no background check.  The developer asked us for our current revenue and the current store’s square footage and immediately saw that we had a viable business.

A Rebrand and New Beginning

In the next 12 months, we built a new and beautiful store at 241 Easton Rd, Warrington, PA 18976.  Of course there were lots of twist and turns with that procedure but we’ll leave that story for a different time.

We then registered our doing business as names with the state of Pennsylvania: Darianna® Bridal & Tuxedo and Darianna® Prom & Tuxedo.  For our new logo, we hired Brad Sanders from Top of the Line Design.  After about 10 or 15 different versions of the logo, Brad created a beautiful logo that is very well recognized.  A few years later, we trademarked our name so that we would not receive a cease and desist letter from any competing business.

In September 2015, we opened our new, beautiful large store, alongside national and regional chains and major franchise businesses.  We’ve come a long way as a family-founded, small business!

With a wonderful staff of 15 employees, an amazing online reputation and a loyal following of brides, grooms, mothers, fathers and prom-goers, we are proud to serve the entire Philadelphia region for all of your wedding, prom and formal attire needs.

Always Reinventing Ourselves

Since 2016, you’ve been able to reach the employees and owners via text messages.  It’s as simple as texting the store’s telephone number for questions, inquiries and to make an appointment.  In addition, the staff and owners are always reachable by telephone, WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook messenger, email and online contact forms.

We are known to be a store with a no-pressure shopping experience and having the kindest staff in the Philadelphia area.  We are an honest formal attire store that will provide you with accurate information.

Marissa, Saharrah, Daria, Sarah, Deanna, & Molly

Darianna® Bridal & Tuxedo is truly a family business.  Daria is the store manager and essentially runs the business operations.  Deanna works as a bridal consultant and prom specialist.  At the time of this writing, she is younger and is still in high school.

Every six months, we work at offering new services and making life easier for our customers.  We are always trying to add a new personal touch for our customers.

We have been featured on Apple News, have been chosen as a top 100 small and medium size business by the US Chamber of commerce and are now featured in Apple’s ad campaigns.

We are proud of our story, our history and our employees.  We have an immense amount of gratitude for the support of our customers and the community.  We are also grateful to be part of your special day memories.

Charitable Causes

Children’s causes have always been dear to Wendy and Franco’s hearts.  They are huge fans of supporting St. Jude’s and Angel Gowns. Daria is a wish grantor for the Make-A-Wish® Foundation.  She has also worked for the Walt Disney Company.  Darianna® Bridal & Tuxedo makes donations to many local schools’ choir and band programs each year, as well as sponsoring and donating to our local theaters.

Our Employees

If we were to say that we have a secret weapon in the Philadelphia area wedding and tuxedo competitive landscape, we would say hands down, it would be our staff.  They are amazing.  They are kind, capable, dedicated and resilient.  We would be nothing without them.

Darianna® Bridal & Tuxedo Founders

Wendy Salerno is co-owner and co-founder of Darianna® Bridal & Tuxedo. She is a life-long resident of Bucks County and is the visionary of the brand’s strategy.  She is involved with ensuring high quality, hand-picked dresses are part of the store’s selection.  Now with many years experience in helping brides say yes to their dresses, Wendy shares her vast wedding knowledge on the company’s informative and popular blog page.  The perfect combination of experience and credibility has kept customers all over the United States coming back to the Darianna® Bridal & Tuxedo’s wedding blogs.  From Darianna® Bridal & Tuxedo’s humble beginnings, Wendy was the face and main employee helping brides and mothers for the first few years of business, 7 days a week.  She instilled much energy into helping brides, mothers and prom-goers find their perfect dress. Now with a more mature and developed retail operation, Wendy spends most of her time guiding the business and developing new ideas and strategies.  While it’s challenging to have a perfect balance in life when you own a business, when Wendy is not working 7 days a week, she enjoys extensive international travel with her husband and daughters, is an active member of the food and wine organization, Chaine des Rotisseurs and assists in answering some of the 2,000 text messages Darianna® Bridal & Tuxedo receives every week.  She can be reached by text message – 215-491-8500 or email at wendy@dariannabridal.com

Franco Salerno is originally from Philadelphia but has lived and worked overseas for many years as a finance professional.  He is fluent in Italian.  As co-founder and co-owner of Darianna® Bridal & Tuxedo, Franco built a tuxedo business that rivals the big box stores. While still visible on occasion to the customers in the store, he mainly works with Wendy to help guide the vision of the business and help continue to grow the business.  He also uses his financial and business expertise to develop and implement procedures that help improve the lives of Darianna® Bridal & Tuxedo’s customers and employees.  He is a former board member of the Central Bucks Chamber of Commerce and current board member and former Treasurer of the Lower Bucks Chamber of Commerce and an active member of the Eastern Montgomery Chamber of Commerce.  He is also a contributor to Darianna® Bridal & Tuxedo’s blog page.  With over 12 years of experience meeting with and dressing grooms, groomsmen, fathers, ring bearers and prom-goers, he has a wealth of information on the etiquette of formal dress attire, creating a look that is appropriate and classy for many different kinds of events and has personally help dress over 50,000 men for their formal events.  Franco can be reach by text at 215-491-8500 or at franco@dariannabridal.com