INTRODUCING MY LATEST LOVE PROJECT: ONLINE BOUTIQUE MAISON DE FEMMES.
It started as a search for an agency name, and ended with an online jewellery, candle and t-shirt store. Read about how an online shop made me a better person.
This year has been a fantastic year for me personally, and I’ll explain how and why in a future blog post. One of the biggest changes for me has been working solely for myself, and that’s essentially how my online jewellery, candle and t-shirt store Maison de Femmes began.
I was searching for an agency name that really reflected my business and who I am as a person. Branding is a big part of what I do professionally, and it’s actually quite easy and very rewarding doing it for other people. But doing it for myself sucks. I’m my own worst client: overly critical and always too close to the Monet to see the pond.
My agency, which I’ve now named 1988, works predominantly with other female freelancers. I have a killer designer named Chloe living in London, and a fantastic developer, Reibi, juggling that new mum life with her sweet beb in Nepal. So I thought the name Maison de Femmes worked pretty well.
I ran it past a couple of people, but responses were mixed. My girlfriends loved it. A designer I’m mates with loathed it. Others were ambivalent.
It was a really good learning curve for me personally. I really hated that instead of choosing a name that I loved and just running with it, I was letting others’ opinions dictate my business.
I put the agency name to one side, but thought, “You know what? Fuck it. Maison de Femmes is a good name. It’d be a good t-shirt company.”
After the success I’d found with the Parkinson’s charity bags, I wanted to do something that I could actually make a living from, and printed tees seemed like a great start.
And it’s made me a lot more confident in making my own decisions. When I finally did select a name for the agency, I didn’t ask for anyone’s approval. I just registered the domain name and moved on with my life, confident in the choice that I’d made.
So I registered the domain name back in July, and started designing a few tees. I’ve always wanted my own jewellery business and started looking into the difficulty of branding candles.
I asked Chloe to design my logo and set to work on designing and developing the website myself. I started ordering jewellery samples and designing the packaging for candles I’d sourced from an Australian small private label business.
My first ‘real’ job out of university in 2013 was as an Assistant Buyer. It was the reason I moved to Melbourne. As shit as a job it was—I lasted 9 months, primarily because my boss was a cunt—I found the small things I’d learned proved useful in selecting and pricing my ranges.
It’s these moments that you realise nothing you do in life is a waste, even if changing industries after a year seems like it at the time. Life is an accumulation of experiences we draw on, even when they’re rubbish.
Just before we went to Spain in September, I’d chosen my final jewellery range and placed orders for stock. By the time we came home, almost everything had arrived and two weeks later I launched the website.
It’d taken three months in total from plucking the idea out of oblivion into a living, breathing online store.
It’s these moments that you realise nothing you do in life is a waste, even if changing industries after a year seems like it at the time. Life is an accumulation of experiences we draw on, even when they’re rubbish.
But those three months were life changing for me. In hindsight, I’ve grown exponentially as a person from this experience. I’m better at CSS. I’m more comfortable reaching out to other businesses and influencers to collaborate. I’ve realised that other women really do want to support other women – both my existing network and new friends I’ve made along the way.
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And it’s made me a lot more confident in making my own decisions. When I finally did select a name for the agency, I didn’t ask for anyone’s approval. I just registered the domain name and moved on with my life, confident in the choice that I’d made.
I’ve poured a lot of love into this business. It was the first thing I thought about when I woke up and the last before I fell asleep. And now that it’s here in the world, I’m excited to watch it grow.
If you’d like to see what all the fuss is about, you can check it out here:
MAISON DE FEMMES
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