CompleteIssueSLOLifeDecJan18LR

Sounds like a pretty awesome day. Yes, so, I thought, “Well, that was
fun. I’ll go online and get a sticker subscription,” because, again, my
kids love stickers and I love stickers, too. So, I went online and nothing
like that existed. I couldn’t believe it because it just seemed so obvious.
It was probably six months later that I was in Mexico with some
friends and family. I was sitting around the pool with one of my close
friends from New York and it was the first moment I’d had to myself
in forever. We were just kind of chatting about the future and what I
wanted to do, and how I was kind of bored with the design work that
I was doing and I wanted to do something bigger. And she said, “Well,
what are your ideas?” And I have lots of ideas; I’m never short on ideas.
So, I pitched this idea of a subscription sticker club to my friend, who
was also a mom, and she said, “Well, that sounds amazing. I would
definitely buy them for my kids.” Then, we sort of sketched out some
back of the envelope costs and figures and I said, “This would be a pretty
straightforward thing to start small and just see how it went.” After that
conversation, I just couldn’t get it out of my mind.
What did you do about it? So, that night I went back and mentioned
it to Nathan, who I affectionately refer to as the “idea crusher” because
he’s used to hearing my many ideas, but he’s a realist and a great balance.
Anyway, I told him about the conversation and he said, “You know, it’s
actually a pretty good idea.” Which, coming from him, is a really huge
deal. And then I remember going to bed that night and just being so
excited that I couldn’t fall asleep. I got up and pretty much stayed up
all night sketching and researching. From that minute forward, for the
next six months, I researched the idea every free minute I had right
up until I went to bed, oftentimes early in the morning. I set it up—a
sticker subscription business—to grow slowly so that I could handle it
on my own. I was a stay-at-home mom, so that was something that was
important to me.
Okay, so what were the next steps? Of course, as life goes, Nathan was
transferred back to London right about that time and so the family took
a little detour. We officially launched the business—Pipsticks—while we
were there. This was September 2014. Around the same time we had a
little surprise, a brilliant surprise, and six months later our fourth child,
Indiana, was born. So, I worked like crazy to market the business and get
the word out via mom blogs and that kind of thing. Reception was great,
people loved it, and it kind of sold itself in terms of being a really new, fun
product. As soon as it landed in someone’s mailbox and their kids found
it, they just went bananas. And since I had designed it as a mom, one of
the key factors for me was that everything about it was child-friendly. So,
kids could pick it out of the mailbox, open it up, do all of the stickers, and
all the little activities that come with them themselves because I wanted it
to not only be like the best thing ever for kids, but a little bit of a break for
the parents.
Ah, yes… Then I realized that there was this whole world of adult sticker
lovers, and I wanted to design a pack for them, too. Because I thought
they’re going to love these stickers, which I can’t put in the kids’ pack. So,
about six months after we launched, we added the Pro Pack. So, we had a
kid’s sticker club and a pro sticker club, which is for sticker-loving adults.
There is like a whole cult movement of people, primarily women, who
use paper agendas and decorate them with stickers. So, if you are going
to meet somebody for coffee, for example, you put a coffee sticker in your >>
46 | SLO LIFE MAGAZINE | DEC/JAN 2018