{My family's dog Coach in the Design Darling market basket}
Whether you're new here (welcome!) or you've been reading for years (thank you!), I'd like to take a moment today to celebrate a little milestone and thank you all for being a huge part of the past few years for me!
I started Design Darling in my sorority dorm room in November 2009. No one read it for at least six months, mostly because I was too embarrassed to tell even my family and friends that I was writing it. Eventually I wised up and started spreading the word, confiding in a few girlfriends and reaching out to bloggers all over the country. I had no inkling that blogging would become such a rewarding part of my life or that so many of those initial girl crushes would turn into genuine friendships.
By late 2010, I was accepting small sponsors on the blog and contributing to a digital magazine in my spare time (conducting interviews over the phone from the coffee shop on campus — I swear I still had friends). When I graduated in May 2011, I balanced blogging, freelance writing, and working in PR for a few months before deciding I was onto something good with Design Darling and didn't want to give that up working long hours toward someone else's dream. I was 22, living at home, and had relatively little to lose so I decided to make the leap to blogging full-time and began work on my own online boutique.
I'd spent a few summers working in retail on Nantucket and I'd been curating product picks for my blog readers for two years... But I really had no idea what I was getting myself into. I had my parents' blessing (and their unused dining room table), $1500 in savings, and maybe 20,000 readers. I could sense that there was a void for an online shop full of bright, happy, preppy accessories for the kinds of girls who were reading Design Darling. I wanted to make the items I was buying in local boutiques and from independent designers I'd met through blogging available to a larger online audience.
The months before I launched the boutique were some of the most exciting of my life so far. I was learning a dozen new things a day, from attending trade shows to building a website, negotiating drop ship agreements to photographing products as they arrived on my parents' doorstep. I made so many mistakes in those early months — amateur photos, products that cost me an arm and a leg to ship, vendors who didn't work out — but I'd never been so passionate about a project in my life. When the first sale rolled in at 8:05 the morning of March 1, 2012, I burst into tears at our kitchen counter — partially from exhaustion, certainly out of gratitude, and mostly because I still had no idea what I was doing.
I can't believe it's been two years since that day. I continue to learn so much from this business — and there's so much more I want to accomplish. I thank my lucky stars I get to run these two websites from a little studio in New York with a little dog named Rory and the support of my family and friends. I have the best readers and customers in the whole world, people who send thank you notes and words of encouragement on days when I'm sure I made a huge mistake getting myself into all of this. I've never cared more, worked harder, or been more excited about what's to come — and I have all of you to thank for that.
I can't wait to expand this business, to design my own products, to bring in interns and design assistants and all the people who will help me bring Design Darling to the next level. In the mean time, I'll keep chugging along — wearing my blogger, buyer, customer service, photographer, and social media hats — figuring it out and making mistakes as I go. I tear up thinking about how far this blog has come since my junior year of college and get goosebumps thinking about what both the blog and the boutique could become over the next four years. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for tuning in, chiming in, and sticking around. I can't wait to have you here for what's next.
To celebrate the second birthday of the boutique, please enter TURNINGTWO at checkout to save 20% on your entire purchase through Sunday night. Happy weekend!
