The real reason we started Mustard
I’m going to let you in on a little secret…
Me:
I moved to Australia 7 years ago with my son and husband who had been raving about how great his hometown Newcastle was for years. Our relationship didn’t last long after the move but my love for Newcastle and Australia grew and grew. So, I found myself single and a long way from home with a curly haired 3 year old and no money.
Being a mother and working is, let’s be honest, bloody hard at the best of times. The hours of the jobs I was offered didn’t fit with the childcare I had available, with no family on hand for free babysitting it was extra tricky so somewhere between a crappy day job and being Mum, I accidentally started a business called House of Bec.
I say accidentally because I really had no idea what I was doing or where I wanted to take it, I just knew I wanted to create things and that a 9-5 wasn’t an option at that point so being my own boss seemed like a good solution. Almost five years later I had created, in my own small way, a self sustaining, growing brand.
Jess:
Meanwhile Jess dived right from a fashion buying course into an associate buyers role at BHS in London working in a small team in the wedding department. She then moved on to an exciting role at Pep & Co, being the 10th employee in a brand new business gave her a lot of valuable experience in watching a brand grow and evolve in a fast paced industry. Then she made the move to Primark working in the bra department and it was soon after she started her new job that the plan was hatched...
Us:
For all those years we had lived apart and only seen each other once, possibly twice a year. We are close, no oceans between us will ever change that but as our lives got busier, as we both settled down (she bought a home and I got a husband!) and maybe even grew up a little, we found it harder and harder to make the time for each other we wanted.
For years we had talked about starting a company together, we actually really wanted to sell bras made for big cups/small backs (the struggle is real gals!) but the idea never went any further than talking. It was after my son Ellis was born that the conversation became top of the list. We wanted to spend time together but neither of us had plans to move hemispheres anytime soon so going into business together meant we would NEED to talk all the time and HAVE to hop of flights around the world to work together. We not only saw it as an opportunity to change our working lives which were no longer really what each of us wanted to be doing but also to change our home lives. To bring us closer, to allow us to be flexible and never have to ask anyone for ‘holiday leave’ again.
So our little secret... you may think Mustard is a story about lockers and in many ways that might be true. But the real truth is, it’s just an elaborate plan between two sisters who won’t let the size of the planet come between them. To share in each others daily lives and to be able to call work ‘fun’. Together.
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