Mums of Twins Make the Ultimate Covid Pivot and it's a VIBE
If you’d asked us 12 months ago if we’d all be here now, we would have laughed. Like that kind of hysterical, tickle-me-Elmo, almost pee your pants kind of laugh.
Meet Anthea – Anth, Emma – Em and Julia – Jules. Each as crazy as the other but all bringing something really unique and special to the Happy Collective table.
So, you may be thinking, how did this all come about? (And if you’re not, we are going to tell you anyway!)
Firstly, if you’re reading this at some point in the future. It’s 2020 and we’re living through a pandemic. What three crazy women would think about launching a new business during COVID? Amidst a series of extremely restrictive stay-at-home orders meaning we could only see each via Zoom?
We did.
Secondly, we are all mums of twins. Lucky us! Seven kids between us, 4 x five-year-old’s, 2 x one-year-old’s and throw in a nine-month-old baby for good measure.
A recipe for disaster? Well, apparently not.
Despite these potential obstacles, we’ve never been happier.
“In those first few weeks, can you imagine going to bed at night and just spinning with excitement? Almost looking forward to waking up in the morning!” - Jules
This feeling was felt by all the founders. The giddy joy of anticipating what the next six months would bring. And for the most part, an enjoyable distraction from the day-to-day isolation!
The job we have created for ourselves doesn’t even feel like work, we enjoy spreading happiness to other women as much as we do to ourselves! We are now lucky enough to be in charge of our own future. And for us, three independent women, it couldn’t have fallen into place at a better time.
The concept was created over a vino (or 3) and a vibrant lunch chat during the brief gap between Melbourne’s two lockdowns that ended up with us selling vibes.
Two of us (Em & Anth) had been offered the chance to distribute and sell Smile Makers in Australia. And while not quite fitting into the current business offering (Osmosis), we knew there was an opportunity here too good to refuse. Fast forward a month or two, and Happy Collective was created, a destination for women with curated and consciously sourced products. This platform would become the Australian home to the Smile Maker vibrator range. A place for women to come and find products and information to boost their inner happiness.
Initially, we thought this would just be a part-time job, however, we soon discovered happiness was much needed in Melbourne, and not only was it not part-time, we had to bring on a gorgeous staff member, Serena. What a blessing and shining star she is. We are actually quite lucky to have launched during Melbourne’s extreme lockdown, as we didn’t have any social distractions and were free to get down to business. Happy Collective essentially is a collective of all things happy, and we can tell there are a lot of women out there who are in need of a pick me up!
Each of us brings a unique perspective to Happy Collective. We all work well together because we all have different strengths and weaknesses! We love everything at Happy Collective; we love the content creation and we love finding out more about products and how they can bring happiness to women. We didn’t want to just create an “online shop” we wanted to create a platform for women to learn about all things self-care, from skin care to vibrators! Our podcast Happy Vibes has also brought has so much joy and we hope those of you who have tuned in have loved it too. We’re pretty stoked to have clocked 150 downloads. You’ve got to start somewhere, right?
We dream for Happy Collective to grow in the future, to keep supporting local businesses and keep sourcing beautiful products! We are here to make women happy.
We want to spread the happy and so you know, it all starts with you. Finding out what makes you happy is the perfect start.
The Happy Collective Founders x