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W W W. M A I N E B I Z . B I Z 17 M AY 1 3 , 2 0 2 4 F O C U S S M A L L B U S I N E S S R adiant in a long red cotton dress with a match- ing head wrap, Apphia Kamanda Mpay is a walking advertisement for her home-based fashion business. It took her a mere 90 minutes to make the dress, which she designed and embellished with a white lace collar. e Congolese native, who recently became a U.S. citizen, runs Apphia Mode & Style out of her Westbrook home. But she spends most of her time teaching fellow immigrants how to sew at Common reads of Maine, a nonprofit school where she herself trained in 2015 and now helps run as co-executive direc- tor. Mpay's side hustle is helping clients "dress to impress," in bespoke garb that makes a statement like the outfit she has on today. "In my country, people just love dressing up," the 40-year-old says in a classroom on the third floor of Westbrook's Dana Warp Mill equipped with industrial sewing machines and multilingual vocabulary lists. "It's a culture we call Sapologie," which embraces respect and tolerance and mixes harmony with aesthetics. To learn the ways of American business culture, Mpay enrolled in a free program at CEI Women's Business Center South in Portland for aspiring and early-stage entrepreneurs who identify as Black, Brown, Indigenous or other diverse racial and ethnic back- grounds. While she started making clothes for clients shortly after immigrating to the United States in 2011, she could only start charging for services as a business after getting her work authorization in 2015. Fast forward to today, and she's among 20 gradu- ates of the BIPOC Women's Business Navigator led by Hong Kong native Grace Mo-Phillips, a long- time business mentor to women from ethnically and socially underserved groups. She hopes to lead a third cohort this fall. "ey always come up with ideas, but they often don't know where to start," says Mo-Phillips, an entre- preneur herself exporting frozen seafood to Asia and Europe. "We wanted to create a space where women of color feel comfortable talking through their ideas." While the majority of graduates are foreign-born, non-native English speakers, participants include racially diverse women born in the United States. Weekly, in-person sessions are conducted in English, combining practical training with peer discus- sions and games like business-lingo Pictionary to break the ice. Long term, the goal is to help the women break barriers to supporting themselves financially as entre- preneurs — starting out as one-person operations. C O N T I N U E D O N F O L L OW I N G PA G E » SALES@WAREBUTLER.COM WB Industrial will supply products to earthwork and concrete jobs, roads/ bridges/construction jobs, grow businesses, storage units, livestock farms, health centers and commercial buildings of all types, infrastructure projects such as sand-salt sheds and municipal buildings, etc. WAREBUTLER.COM CONTACT US for your non-residential and commercial construction needs statewide in Maine. Put our statewide buying power and experienced sales team to work for you! Fabric / Pipe / Culverts / Styrofoam insulation / Construction lumber Sheet goods / Millwork / Metal roofing and siding products PRODUCTS OFFERED: AND MORE! In my country, people just love dressing up. — Apphia Kamanda Mpay fashion designer

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