Her Slice of Pink Heaven…Emphasis on Online: Shalonda “Pinky” Saunders & Sew Pinky Clothing Shop

Shalonda “Pinky” Saunders was planning a grand opening for her girls and women's clothing shop, Sew Pinky, on South Calhoun St. near downtown Fort Wayne. Pinky has run the business out of her apartment and online for several years now, crafting custom outfits for little girls she calls “princesses” and matching sets for their mothers and aunties. (Sign of the times, she’s now sewing custom-made face masks between orders.)
In 2019, Pinky graduated from Fort Wayne’s Build Institute program. Through Build, she got accepted into the Summit City Match program, which connects rising business owners with vacant storefronts on South Calhoun Street, infusing the area with new life and local character.

And when she stepped inside her cozy 350-square-foot storefront at 2320 S. Calhoun St., she just knew it was meant to be. “I was in here maybe for two minutes, and I knew this is it,” Pinky said. “I found my little slice of pink heaven.”

If you could step inside, you’d see bubble-gum-colored walls and a rack of candy-colored garments. The top rack is custom orders waiting to go out, Pinky explains, because while her new store is closed to the public for now with the COVID-19 shutdown, that doesn’t mean she’s not working.

“My process now is: Sew, sanitize, sew, sanitize,” she said. “What I’ll be doing is be making things here, and I’ll take private appointments until things clear up.” But while her walls and spirits are rosy pink, it doesn’t mean Pinky hasn’t had her fair share of doubts in this mess.

The other night, she was listening to the news on the radio as she sewed, and she drove home from the shop feeling discouraged.

She found herself wondering: What am I going to do? “Everyone gets to that place, where you’re like, ‘Am I making a mistake?’” she said. But as soon as she walked into her house, her phone rang, and when she answered, it was a new customer.

“She was like, ‘Are you open? Can I come in? I need something for my daughter?’” Pinky said.

“I told her, ‘We’re online, and I can help you.” That was all it took to raise her spirits. One order, one day, at the right time made all the difference.

“It just kind of let me know that this is what you’re supposed to be doing,” Pinky said.
Even before COVID-19, Pinky did about 80% of her sales online. So far, things haven’t been slowing down with the crisis, she said. So she’s still hopeful.

“Even though I get like every entrepreneur where you’re like, ‘Is this a mistake?’ I feel like something will always happen -- call it God, the Universe, whatever -- something will always happen to let you know that this is what you’re supposed to be doing,” she said.

Her nickname Pinky comes from the day Shalonda was born. “I was just pink,” she said. “And eventually, I turned brown,” she adds, laughing. Some of her friends don’t even know her as Shalonda.

Pinky’s family is originally from Chicago, but her mother and other siblings have since relocated to Fort Wayne. She moved here herself about 13 years ago, but she didn’t learn how to sew until 2011 when she found out her older sister was pregnant with a baby girl, and she decided to teach herself.

“I thought: This is my chance,” Pinky said. “I just wanted my niece and me to dress alike, so I really started sewing just for us.” Pinky bought a sewing machine the same day. Her first attempt, a dress, however, “was literally the worst thing you will ever see in your life,” she said. She always held onto it as a secret reminder to herself. And improve she did. By the time her niece, Yolanda, known as “Twinkie,” was born, Pinky was making colorful, frilly tutus galore, and when friends and neighbors saw them, they asked Pinky to make outfits for their little princesses, too.

When a steady stream of orders started, Pinky’s family convinced her to start charging, and the concept of Sew Pinky was born.

“I never really thought I was good enough to get paid at first,” Pinky said. “But having different people reaching out boosted my confidence, and it just grew from there.” She went from making tutus to dresses, skirts, and eventually matching sets for moms and girls.

She found her niche in creating custom-designs that people couldn’t find elsewhere; she tested all of her designs on Twinkie for approval. “We cater to the princess and what the princess wants,” Pinky said. “You can go to Walmart and get something, or you can go to a high-end shop, but as far as custom-made, there are no stores where you can find something this unique for a little girl in Fort Wayne and then something that will match the mom at the same time.”

Around 2014, Pinky started teaching sewing classes for little girls for FREE, using a curriculum she developed herself that takes them from a needle, a thread, and a sheet of paper to operating a sewing machine by themselves. The classes started in the craft room at Hobby Lobby, and when they outgrew that space, Pinky moved them to the Allen County Public Library downtown.

“I think it’s something important for the girls to have,” she said. “It’s more than sewing, too. We sit and talk. They bring up boys and things like that. It’s all just encouraging them to be their best self.”
Around that time, Pinky started hosting beauty/performance pageants with Sew Pinky, too, at the Allen County Public Library and got local businesses to donate prizes. She even had a panel of female role models in the Fort Wayne community act as her judges each year.

“I try to find women who the girls can see and think, ‘That can be me one day,’” she explained.
Her last pageant was on Mother’s Day in 2017, and it was a Mommy & Me pageant. But while the event was a success, Pinky ended up taking about two years off because her health was in poor condition. She was about 200 pounds heavier than she is today, and when she realized that she didn’t even want to make clothes for herself, she knew that she needed to get in shape.

“I figured, if I’m not healthy, I can’t run a healthy business,” she said. “I needed to get Pinky together if I wanted Sew Pinky to grow.”

After two years of hard work and weight loss surgery, she began to ease back into her business in 2019, right around when she found out about new classes Fort Wayne was offering for entrepreneurs called Build Institute Fort Wayne.

Published with permission from Input Fort Wayne. Article, originally published online at InputFortWayne.com, was abbreviated for length.