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LINDON — For most people, holding down a job and going to school is more than enough. But for Noel Lopez, leaving the office is only the beginning of his day.
Lopez works at a company called Boostability, which helps small businesses find ways to market themselves online. His dual monitors are filled with graphs and charts for the businesses he works with, showing how well their posts are doing on sites like Facebook and Twitter. For him, it's more than just a job — it's an opportunity to learn.
But it’s when Lopez leaves his day job to go run his own company — a business born from his LDS mission in Uruguay — that his real day begins.
"When I got back, I realized everyone that I had been there with had bought a tie there," he said. "Everyone had the same tie, and it just had the little soccer team icon on the center of the tie."
While most would simply find a way to purchase the same tie, Lopez's mind saw an opportunity. Instead of buying a tie, he'd design his own — and thus began The Town+Co, a business centered around tapping into a market made up of people just like him.
Lopez, a digital marketing major at Utah Valley University, knew it wouldn't make a lot of sense to limit himself to just one design, which is why he's currently selling ties representing 22 different countries.
"Brazil is a very popular one," Lopez said, while pointing to a green tie with a small image of the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro. "We've sold hundreds of Argentina ties. Peru, everyone really likes the little llama icon that we have on there."
The business started small, but later expanded, thanks to an investment from one of his uncles. Lopez designs the ties himself, before sending them off to a factory to be made.
It's easy to see Lopez has an eye for detail, and a determination to expand his business in any way possible.
"One of the very first things I said when we started the company was, 'We're gonna be in Deseret Book,'" he said.
His fellow college students didn't believe him.
"I feel like they were all just kind of like, 'Yeah, whatever.'"
But Lopez proved them wrong.
"We just supplied them recently, and they're already out of stock," he said, pointing to his "Argentina" tie, currently listed as one of the top sellers on DeseretBook.com.
He's since expanded into state ties, featuring icons like the Statue of Liberty, the Space Needle, and Delicate Arch. Lopez even landed a deal to sell them in airport stores in New York, Seattle, and Atlanta.
But the deal he takes the most pride in is one that's a bit closer to home.
"One of the things we've been focusing on is the licensing for the university neckties," he said. “We're looking to keep expanding and get more universities in the next month."
For Lopez, finding ways to help his business grow is a constant learning process, which is part of why he took the job at Boostability — he uses what he learns at his "day job" to promote his business online.
"Instagram is always our first go-to platform for that," he said. "I think one of the best investments we could have made was probably buying a DSLR camera."
Reinvestment is a constant theme for Lopez when he talks about the future. He said nearly every cent his tie business brings in goes right back out, and he finds every way he can to keep his costs low, which is part of why his tiny office isn't in a skyscraper, but in the spare bedroom of his Provo apartment.
To him, success isn't just about raking in the money, but in finding ways to keep that success going.
