We talked it through. Came up with buzz words. And then out of nowhere, BAM!, she said the most poignant and beautiful thing about our product that I was literally moved to tears. Her ability to put to words what I’ve been unconsciously doing for months, moved me on so many levels. So the remainder of this post is my lame attempt to rephrase her description. I am not a wordsmith like her. But I do think it’s important to put this all into writing.
To recap where we’ve been and where we currently are:
As many of you know our brand has undergone a MAJOR change in the last year. Up until the pandemic, we made baby bibs and appliquéd baby onesies. I was starting to feel burned out, but I never had intentions of changing the product in anyway. Then, like so many of you, my world got turned upside down. Boutiques were forced to close temporarily for quarantine. Festivals (where we make the majority of our income) all cancelled. Our baby items are very much impulse buys. I had not done my due diligence prior to this to get online sales. Scrambling to do so in a pandemic was a challenge. Sales were pretty non existent. That was depressing. My world was very dark at that moment. I spent endless nights awake in panic over how long our money would last. In a few months I knew we wouldn’t be able to afford our home or food.
The pandemic tooketh away and the pandemic gaveth
Honestly what held us over until the holidays was making and selling face masks. I repeatedly say that over and over again in my blog posts because it’s the honest to goodness truth. We owe that saving grace to a dear friend that pushed us to sell them. And while I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that those masks kept us going, things were still so dark. Truthfully in many ways, the darkness lingers even now. While some of that is due to the fact that we’re still struggling to make ends meet, much of it is just wading through the trauma of it all.
One of the ways I deal with my trauma is escapism. I have a very active fantasy world that I go to mentally when I need a break from reality. I’ve needed a lot of reality breaks of late. Aside from my fantasy world, some of the other ways I escape is through music and video (television and movies). Getting lost in a song and entranced by a tv series is like chicken soup for my soul.
Eureka!
And that’s it! That’s what the little nest is now! It’s nostalgic, it’s escapism, it’s humor (those are my buzz words, BTW). So how did we answer the question? This is how:
“Our products, though packaged in a practical format, reflect an escapism that emotionally transports both us and the customer out of the current darkness we are all living in to a place where we can collectively remember happiness and joy.”
No matter what I’m creating, I’m an artist. I don’t mean that in a snooty “I’m an artist, you should think highly of my shit” kind of way. I mean, “I’m an artist; I struggle with communicating with words; I communicate through creation” kind of way. And I have been subconsciously communicating for months through these cards. I’ve been saying, “I’m in a dark place, these things take me to a happier time. Do they take you there too?” And y’all have been resoundingly answering “YES!”
These cards let us share a happy place together
A very beautiful thing about the cards is that I get to think of things that make me happy. I share them with you. Some of them make you happy. You buy them to give to someone you care for so that they too can be happy. And that is just so fucking beautiful and moving to me, y’all. We are currently all living through a collective trauma, a dark time in our history. Yet, for a brief moment, through a card that brought up a memory, we can also collectively be transported to a happy place. THAT is connection! THAT IS MY BRAND!
’til next time,
~jen
Recent Comments