Profile: ByEgreis
Meet the fashion powerhouse, mom and Kansas City native behind ByEgreis:
Photos courtesy of Egreis Gjergjani
Hey peeps, do I have a DOOZY for y’all! As your resident interior design, foodie and fashion/lifestyle contributor I am extremely excited about this article. We are highlighting a multi-faceted fashion juggernaut that hails right here from our amazing city of fountains. Also, in all honesty, I have been obsessed with her for two years.
Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce to you (drum roll, please)…Egreis Gjergjani! The majority will most likely know her as Egi, the owner and founder of the very successful ecommerce businesses By Egreis, Itty Bitty Toes and Ivy Greis. If by chance you still don’t know who I am referring to, well then she is @thestilettomeup on Instagram. YESSSS, that is her! Aside from being a savvy CEO in the fashion industry, she’s a dotting mother and wife.
Egi was born and raised in Albania and moved to the United States when she was in High School, and ended up in California to attend USC (brains and beauty). Egreis, first gained her following due to her large collection (still growing) of shoes while living in the City of Angels. A slew of women and some men started to follow her simply for her daily IG posts of her fabulous shoes, hence that is where the famous Instagram handle, The Stiletto Me Up, came into existence.
One day her fantastical stilettos crossed paths with a Kansas Citian and sparks flew. This gentleman became her husband and moved with her from the west coast to the midwest. They soon started a life and a family here in Kansas City in which she dedicated her entire time to her familjare (family in Albanian). Egi put aside her career in marketing to focus on her family. When her family started to grow with her second son, she decided to combine her love for fashion and her business mindset and started her first fashion company in her basement! That company was Itty Bitty Toes, a high end couture children’s line. She was inspired as a mother to create this luxury brand that carries beautiful pieces for children’s special occasions. The brand took off like wildfire and now has customers all over the world to include celebrities like Adriana Lima (my favorite), Cardi B, Kim Zolciak and many more.
After witnessing the success of Itty Bitty Toes, it was time for Egreis’s next project and that’s when By Egreis stilettoed into our lives. This brand is designed by women to celebrate women. Egi put her belief that fashion is all about being yourself and clothing is a self-expression that comes from within. Egi wanted the soul of her brand to draw strength, creativity, and inspiration from the qualities of a woman that make them strong, invincible and empowering figures in society.
SIDENOTE: I absolutely love this because as a client of her’s (yes, you all should know by now that I do wear women’s clothing at times) it does make me feel empowering.
By Egreis tuned three this year and has grown immensely from a team of five to now over 25 women and a few men (you hiring, girl)? The success of By Egreis can be drawn to Egreis’s unique business model of daily exclusive drops and a close community where the customers have a relationship with Egi and the brand itself and get to see into the everyday life of the company via social media. This structure also allows Egreis to adapt very quickly to whatever she feels like the brand needs at that moment. For example, during the 2020 Covid pandemic and lockdowns, she was able to pull all the dressier pieces and make a fast switch to all loungewear to accommodate everyone’s new quarantine lifestyle (which we all still use).
While many businesses suffered during this time, By Egreis was able to triple her sales in those first few months of lockdown. This meant growing her customer base and also giving her employees job security in a time when job security was scarce. Flash forward to Spring 2022 and this stilettoed maven has a 24,000 square foot building where her design team, content creation, customer service, and shipping all operate under one roof. She has done uber popular pop ups in New York and Los Angeles and plans to travel for more pop ups later this year. Geez, what can’t this woman do??? For now, her team is working on expanding into mens (fantastic news, even though I will still be shopping the women’s section as well). Apart from a men’s line, By Egreis is working on a high end shoe line, which she plans on launching in the next few months or next year. Well, there you have it, I just answered my own previous question!
I had the pleasure of officially meeting Egi at last seasons Kansas City Fashion week this past September. I mentioned earlier in this article that I have been following this beauty for about two years (via Instagram, of course, not physically because I am not a stalker!) so when I noticed she started following me about a year later, I literally fan-girled. I have only fan-girled over two IG accounts and Egi is one of them! Any who, back to that one evening back in September during KCFW. The stars seem to have been aligned and who sits directly across from me?? You guessed it, THE stilettoed one herself. She couldn’t have been sweeter! Speaking of KCFW, Egi showed some of her newest By Egreis collection at Kansas City Fashion on April 16th and closed the show with a bang!
I could totally see why she is so loved by her team, family and hundreds of thousands of followers. Her generosity, passion, creativity, leadership and confidence speak volumes. If I wasn’t playing for the other team, I would be giving Jeremy a run for his money. In closing, be sure to keep up with her personal IG @thestilettomeup and her brands @ittybittytoes @byegreis and @ivygreis because they are going to continue doing BIG things, way bigger than her stilettos!
