Hidden Gems: Meet Marina Shlomov of NIMA GIFTS

Today we’d like to introduce you to Marina Shlomov.

Hi Marina, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
Absolutely. Here is the complete, unified version with the 400-invitation story incorporated naturally, while keeping the official NIMA positioning and the emotional mother-daughter thread.

Every gift box has a story. Let’s create yours.

NIMA began with a simple belief: the most meaningful gifts aren’t just given—they’re felt.

But the story of NIMA actually began in 2019, before we ever knew there would be a NIMA.

My daughter Nicole was getting married, and we were planning a fairly large wedding—about 400 guests. Like any mother of the bride, I was completely immersed in every detail.

We had already ordered and purchased all 400 wedding invitations.

And when they arrived, I looked at them and thought, I hate them.

Not exactly the ideal reaction after buying 400 invitations.

So we threw them all away.

That probably tells you a little bit about me as a designer. If something doesn’t feel right—especially for a moment that important—I have a very hard time saying, Well, it’s good enough.

I went into my studio and redesigned the invitations myself.

But, of course, it didn’t stop with the invitations.

Once I started, I began looking at everything differently—the paper pieces, the presentation, and all of those little details guests would see and touch. I redesigned and produced everything myself in my studio.

Looking back, that was really the beginning of NIMA.

I just didn’t know it yet.

Design has always been at the heart of my life. I spent years as a creative director, leading branding and design work for major companies in Atlanta. Later, I helped design homes while managing our growing family construction and rental business—shaping spaces where life happens.

Whether I was creating a brand, designing a home, painting in my studio, or working on Nicole’s wedding, the common thread was always the same:

I wanted things to feel intentional.

After the wedding, that creative energy stayed with me.

When life slowed down, I returned to my studio and to what I loved most—painting, designing, experimenting, and creating simply for the joy of it.

Slowly, those ideas began turning into personalized keepsakes and thoughtfully designed gift boxes.

And somewhere along the way, I realized there was something missing in gifting.

There were plenty of gifts you could buy.

But I wanted to create gifts that made the person opening them feel something.

Because a bridesmaid proposal isn’t just a collection of pretty things in a box. It represents a friendship and the question, Will you stand beside me on one of the most important days of my life?

A gift for the mother of the bride isn’t simply a thank-you gift. Sometimes what you are really trying to say is, Thank you for being my mother. Thank you for everything that brought us to this moment.

A flower girl gift can become one of the first memories a little girl keeps from being part of a wedding.

Behind every gift, there is a person, a relationship, a moment—and a story.

That became the foundation of NIMA.

Today, NIMA is a modern gifting studio creating artfully composed, personalized gifts and keepsakes for weddings, celebrations, and life’s most meaningful moments.

Every NIMA gift still begins at the design table.

I create the packaging concepts, paper details, personalization, and visual elements, thinking about how everything will work together before the box is ever assembled. Every detail has a purpose. Nothing is there simply to fill a box.

My alcohol ink paintings remain a personal form of expression—art made from the heart—while design is how I connect with others, creating gifts meant to be shared, celebrated, and remembered.

And somewhere along the way, the story came full circle.

The daughter whose wedding helped start all of this became my partner.

Today, Nicole and I create NIMA together. We work side by side, and she brings her own perspective, ideas, and thoughtful touch to everything we do.

Even our name tells our story.

NI from Nicole.

MA from Marina.

NIMA.

It represents not only our names, but the mother-daughter relationship, collaboration, and friendship at the center of the company.

And I think that is one of the reasons NIMA has remained so personal to us.

We aren’t interested in creating something simply because it can be sold.

We want to understand the moment.

Who is receiving this?

What does this person mean to you?

What are you trying to say to them?

And then we ask ourselves:

How can we make them feel that before they’ve even finished opening the box?

Because the most meaningful gifts aren’t just given.

They’re felt.

Nothing mass produced. Nothing generic.

Just gifts, artfully composed.

Because the moments that matter most deserve something just as meaningful.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Absolutely not—and I’m not sure any worthwhile business ever has a completely smooth road.

There have been plenty of mistakes along the way, although I prefer to call them lessons learned.

We’ve ordered products and been surprised by the quality—sometimes wonderfully surprised, and other times… well, that became a lesson learned very quickly.

We’ve overbought inventory because we were convinced something was going to be the next big thing. We’ve underbought inventory on products we never expected to take off and then found ourselves scrambling to keep up.

And we’ve definitely miscalculated what brides actually want.

I have to take responsibility for some of those. As a designer, I can fall in love with something and think, this is beautiful. It’s classic. It will never go out of style.

And sometimes, apparently, it absolutely will.

You learn very quickly that designing something you love and designing something your customer wants to buy are not always the same thing. Learning to listen to our customers while still maintaining the NIMA aesthetic has been a very important part of our growth.

But some of our biggest challenges had nothing to do with design.

When we started selling online, we had no clue what we were doing.

We knew how to create beautiful products. We didn’t know how to sell them online.

Creating a product listing? No idea.

What photographs should we take? How many? What should the first image look like?

SEO? I had never even heard of it.

Keywords, search algorithms, conversion rates—we suddenly found ourselves learning an entirely new language.

So I started learning.

I took classes in online marketing and spent countless hours trying to understand how e-commerce works, particularly Etsy. One of the people I’m eternally grateful to is Starla Moore, who teaches entrepreneurs about Etsy marketing and how the platform actually works. Her willingness to share her knowledge helped us understand a world we knew absolutely nothing about when we started.

And we’re still learning.

That may actually be one of the biggest lessons of building NIMA: you never really reach the point where you can say, okay, now I know everything.

Customers change. Trends change. Platforms change. Marketing changes. What worked yesterday may not work tomorrow.

You make a decision. Sometimes you get it right. Sometimes you get it very wrong. You learn from it, adjust, and keep going.

So no, it definitely hasn’t been a smooth road.

But I wouldn’t change that part of the story, because many of the things we know how to do well today came from the things we didn’t know how to do at all when we started.

We’ve been impressed with NIMA GIFTS, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
NIMA Gifts is a modern gifting studio specializing in artfully composed, personalized gift boxes and keepsakes for weddings, celebrations, and life’s most meaningful moments.

We are best known for our wedding gifting collections—from bridesmaid and maid of honor proposals to flower girl and ring bearer gifts, engagement gifts, and meaningful gifts for the mothers of the bride and groom. We also create personalized gifts for birthdays, graduations, and other important milestones.

What sets NIMA apart is that we approach gifting from a design perspective first.

We don’t simply gather products and put them into a box. Every collection begins at the design table. We think about the person receiving it, the occasion being celebrated, the colors, packaging, personalization, and most importantly, the emotion behind the gift. Every element is considered as part of the complete experience, from the first look at the box to the message inside.

Personalization is also an important part of what we do. Names, colors, messages, and individual details transform a beautiful gift into something that feels as though it could only have been created for that particular person.

I think what I’m most proud of is that, as NIMA has grown, we have maintained that very personal approach. Nicole and I still work side by side creating our collections, and our gifts are produced in our Atlanta studio rather than being treated as mass-produced merchandise.

We also listen closely to our customers. Some of our best ideas have come from understanding what they are really trying to say through a gift—not simply what they are trying to buy.

At the heart of NIMA is a very simple belief:

The most meaningful gifts aren’t just given—they’re felt.

That is what we want someone to experience when they open a NIMA box. We want them to know that someone thought about them, chose something specifically for them, and wanted to make an important moment feel even more meaningful.

Nothing mass produced. Nothing generic.

Just gifts, artfully composed.

Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
Something people who discover me through NIMA might be surprised to learn is that NIMA is far from my first experience in business.

Before NIMA, my family and I built and operated five different businesses. Over the years, we successfully sold four of them and retained one, in addition to NIMA.

So while people often meet the creative side of me first—the designer, the artist, the person obsessing over the exact placement of a ribbon or whether two shades of pink work together—there is a very strong businesswoman on the other side of that design table.

I actually think those two sides of me are what make NIMA work.

I can spend hours thinking about how a gift should look and, more importantly, how it should make someone feel. But I also understand that creativity has to live inside a sustainable business. There are margins, inventory, operations, marketing, customer service, deadlines, and a thousand decisions happening behind every beautiful photograph.

Perhaps the surprising part is that after years of building businesses, NIMA is the one that has allowed me to bring those two sides of myself together.

It gives me the challenge of entrepreneurship that I’ve always enjoyed, but this time I get to build something deeply creative and personal alongside my daughter.

And I’m still not sure which side wins on any given day—the artist or the businesswoman.

Usually, they negotiate.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://NIMAGifts.com
• Instagram: @nimagiftsga
• Facebook: @nimagiftsga
• Other: Tik Tok: @nimagiftsga

Image Credits
All photographs were taken by Marina Shlomov