Need to Decorate Your Home? One Babson Alum Says to Think Inside the Box
Recent alumna Isabella Soto-Rivera MBA’16 is a firm believer that if you live in a space you love, it can transform your mood, and life, for the better. She also knows how hard it can be to get just the right look and feel, all while staying on budget. With this in mind, Isabella created Dkora Box—an online store that sells curated boxes filled with styled home goods, delivered straight to your door.
The Founder
My name is Isabella Soto-Rivera. I’m originally from Venezuela, but have lived in more than six different cities around the world. I just graduated from Babson’s two-year MBA program, and recently completed the college’s Summer Venture Program—a ten-week intensive accelerator on campus.
I love home décor. It’s a passion of mine that has grown every time I’ve had to move. I now consider myself an avid finder of affordable design pieces, tester of home essentials, and simplifier of décor. I’m also great at making sure I don’t break the bank.
Dkora Box
Dkora Box wants to help bring simplicity to a common situation we all face at one point in our lives: setting up and decorating a home. Today’s fast paced life, and the excessive amount of product offerings in the market, make the process overwhelming, time consuming, and unnecessarily complicated.
With Dkora Box, anyone can style their bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, entire home, and/or rental property, in a matter of minutes.
‘Dkora’ comes from a play in spelling from the word “Decora “in Spanish, which implies the action to decorate. Instead of having to sort through different stores, websites, and products to come up with the right look, customers are delivered one simple box that has all the products they need to style their space.
Dkora Box creates a new sector in the market for busy customers who don’t want to spend time shopping around, maybe don’t have a discerning eye for décor, or have difficulty selecting home goods and imagining what they would look like in their space.
We also offer a unique box for “The Rental Host,” which we created in response to the booming sharing economy trend. It is a quick way for anyone to upgrade their space for rental purposes and/or to have a second set of home goods ready to switch out for when new renters are set to arrive. Our curated styles and aesthetically-pleasing decor will also help to improve click through rates and ratings of the different property listings on platforms such as Airbnb, VRBO, HomeAway, and more.
Babson – a Home of its Own
Babson was where this dream of mine became a reality.
Dkora Box wouldn’t have been possible without all of Babson’s many resources and diverse set of networks. From the entrepreneurship culture and all of the professors I engaged with, to the many different programs in which I actively participated in, including the Women Innovating Now (WIN) Lab and the Summer Venture Program. Every step of the way was supported and encouraged by this amazing community.
Looking Ahead
Our goal is to make interior design concepts accessible to anyone. We want to place Dkora Boxes in every home in the U.S., and change the space and lives of many, little by little. We are also looking into expanding our product offerings to include seasonal boxes, which would include special touches of décor in celebration of different holidays throughout the year.
