The Boss of You

One of the things that has kept Lau­ren and I go through the book dreaming/writing/promotion process is the amaz­ing, smart and savvy busi­ness gals we get to meet and learn about. It was, after all, the seem­ingly end­less world wicked smart busi­ness women who inspired us to
first write The Boss of You.

I’ve always wanted to use this space to pro­file and fea­ture women owned busi­nesses — it was so hard for us to nar­row down our choices for women to include in the book — but a lack of time has frankly always stood in my way, until a few weeks ago when I came across this post “We Are Small” at Moop’s blog. Read­ing it, I had one of those magic sit­ting in front of your com­puter alone feel­ing like you’re con­nect­ing with your kin moments and decided it was time to make the time to start pro­fil­ing other women owned small busi­nesses again. Before I jump into a lit­tle Q&A with Wendy from Moop a brief snip­pet from Wendy’s We Are Small post, so you can see just exactly what I mean when I say this is a com­pany that doesn’t just get, but lov­ingly embraces the small, sus­tain­able busi­ness model.

Many of you have been will­ing to invest in us. You have bought our bags, writ­ten about our busi­ness, men­tioned us to your friends, fea­tured us in your mags and blogs — and we think that is awe­some. Your sup­port has made it pos­si­ble for our busi­ness to expand in ways that pro­vide work for a few other peo­ple. We all work hard. We like what we do and we do it well. Every­day, I make lunch for the peo­ple that work with me. We cook a pot of rice, chop up a veg­etable, toss it with some Braggs and recharge for a half hour in the mid­dle of the day. It is the part of the day we all look for­ward to. Not just because of the nour­ish­ment, but because it is a ful­fill­ing part of the day. Because we are small, we can do things like this. I hope we can always do things like this.

Ok, now on to the Q&A with Moop Bag’s Wendy Downs, and you can look for­ward to more pro­files to come soon.

If you don’t know Wendy and Moop bags, then pre­pare to fall in love with gor­geous lines, qual­ity fab­rics and design that embod­ies prac­ti­cal sim­plic­ity. Wendy started mak­ing Moop bags just over two years ago as a kind of a per­sonal exper­i­ment, not sure where it would take her and soon found her­self quit­ing her day job, even­tu­ally hir­ing staff and slowly but surely expand­ing and grow­ing her busi­ness. All of Moop’s bags are hand­made to order and like Wendy’s approach to busi­ness are focused on the craft, qual­ity and atten­tion to the details that mat­ter. I’ve per­son­ally had my eye on an organic mid­night blue Mar­ket Bag for a while now as it looks like it may just be the per­fect, do every­thing, carry it all bag to fit into my world.

Q: Wendy, your story, from what I’ve observed from afar, has been a pretty suc­cess­ful one. You’ve grown your busi­ness fairly quickly and seem (at least from the out­side) to be doing really well. How do you define suc­cess as the owner/creative spirit behind Moop? Is it about growth? Is it about increas­ing your earn­ings (a worth­while mea­sure of suc­cess). Or, does suc­cess look like some­thing else to you?

A: First, thanks! We have been work­ing so hard, it is nice to hear when that does not go unno­ticed. Defin­ing success…for us, it is a healthy com­bi­na­tion of all of those things. We want to grow our busi­ness so it can con­tinue to sus­tain us as well as a close knit group of employ­ees. We think pro­vid­ing jobs is a huge part of sus­tain­abil­ity. This has been a con­tin­u­ing influ­ence on how we grow. And, yes, of course we want to make a liv­ing for our­selves while doing so.…that is half the rea­son you go into busi­ness for yourself.

Q: What do you most enjoy about run­ning your own business?

A: Every­day brings a new approach to what you do. We are still young (just 2 years old) so there is a lot of growth and learn­ing yet to hap­pen. Whether it is sourc­ing new mate­ri­als, test­ing out new equip­ment, train­ing a new employee, design­ing a new bag, pho­tograph­ing prod­ucts, edit­ing the web­site, answer­ing emails, bal­anc­ing the books, mod­el­ing, sewing, iron­ing, paper­clip­ping, sta­pling, etc.…it all has to be done and I have to make the deci­sions on how and when it gets done (though, I am becom­ing bet­ter at del­e­gat­ing rather than micro-managing..an impor­tant skill I have learned).

I’ve worked many jobs, work­ing for other peo­ple and never real­ized until I hap­pened upon my own busi­ness how sat­is­fy­ing it would be to make some­thing of your own rather than mak­ing some­one else’s “some­thing”. It might also be guided by a drive to do things I am inter­ested in. I was a sin­gle par­ent for 6 years…this resulted in a lot of “cre­ative” jobs…not in the sense of mak­ing things..more in the sense of work­ing a few hours a week at sev­eral dif­fer­ent jobs, some of which were done in non-traditional ways, some were done from home, many were done on evenings and week­ends while bal­anc­ing full time school and fam­ily sched­ules. Unknow­ingly and in hind­sight, I see how all of this helped shape my entre­pre­neur­ial drive.

Q: I love the fact that you’re really hon­est and open about the busi­ness through your blog — speak­ing hon­estly about busi­ness like in your “Small is the New Big” post, shar­ing some frus­tra­tion and show­ing pho­tos of your stu­dio. Did you make a con­scious deci­sion to put your­self out there and not hide behind your brand? Or did things just evolve that way?

A: I started a blog a few months after I started Moop (and before I knew exactly what Moop was going to be). But, I didn’t really know what to say on the blog! It seemed only nat­ural that it would become a chron­i­cle of our evo­lu­tion as a busi­ness and a stu­dio. I started Moop right out of grad school, so my work­ing meth­ods were com­ing from a stu­dio cul­ture and lots of open con­ver­staion. This is an impor­tant part of how we do things. We make every­thing in the studio…it is as much a part of each bag as the mate­ri­als and labor involved in pro­duc­ing each bag. The stu­dio, while ever chang­ing, will always be an impor­tant ele­ment in Moop and I’ve found the blog to be a great place to talk about all of that process…

Q: What is one (or are some) of the more chal­leng­ing aspects of self-employment for you?

A: Taxes. I learned a lot of expen­sive mis­takes this year. If you’re going into busi­ness for your­self, con­sult an accoun­tant and set your busi­ness up prop­erly from the begin­ning. It will make all the dif­fer­ence in the world.

Q: What inspires you to keep going as an entrepreneur?

A: Start­ing a busi­ness is a learn­ing process — every day presents a new chal­lenge. I really didn’t know any­thing about run­ning a busi­ness before begin­ning Moop. Not know­ing another way, I’ve allowed things to evolve organ­i­cally and respon­sively, like I would any­thing else. Real­iz­ing a cre­ative model can be effec­tive might be what I love most. I think this also helps me to be a bet­ter entrepreneur.

Q: What sup­port net­works do you turn to as an entrepreneur?

A: My hus­band is a huge sup­port. Every moment we have out­side of the stu­dio he endures me talk­ing about the business…he is great and I am lucky. I also have a valu­able net­work of fel­low entre­pre­neurs, thinkers, talk­ers and mak­ers who I turn to when I have ques­tions. The owner of that place, the founder of this thing, the projects of these peo­ple... There is a lot of sup­port in find­ing and work­ing with like-minded people…

Q: Is there any excit­ing news or are there new things hap­pen­ing at Moop you’d like peo­ple to know about?

A: We are relo­cat­ing to Pitts­burgh and we couldn’t be happier!

Note: Since I did this Q&A with Wendy she recently posted another super on-point post at the Moop blog about sales and the price of hand­made goods. It’s well worth a read. Thanks again Wendy!