Today’s episode is the 2nd part of the conversation with Mary Marland, Founder and CEO of Wild Doves. Mary is a former investment banker turned fashion entrepreneur who started her children’s wear brand after her first child was born. In the first part of our conversation, among many other things, we talked about conscious living, the full cycle of sustainability that any fashion business owners should address, and about the tactics introduced in the 19th century by the garment manufacturing sector to push for more consumption. Now, if you want to know more about Mary’s entrepreneurial journey, this episode is definitely for you. In this part of our conversation, Mary will share with us the main difficulties she faced when she first launched her brand and why her beautiful plan fell apart, what she learned from transitioning from working in a big corporation to starting her own business in fashion, her innovation in making sizing more efficient in infants and children’s, and also, we will talk about technologies, how small businesses in fashion still use the same technologies that were already used a 100 years ago and how technologies could evolve to better serve small fashion startups. This is the second part of a fun and insightful conversation with Mary Marland.
02:00 How Mary transitioned from being an Investment Banker to become a Fashion Business Owner
06:00 Why Mary’s business plan did not work out and the difficulties of finding the right manufacturers
09:00 “technology is a lot of our future” [in the fashion manufacturing sector]
12:00 Things that Mary had to “unlearn” when she left her corporate to pursue her new career and new skills she has developed
19:00 Mary is launching of the Adjustable collection with a smart innovation to address waste generated by infant’s wear
23:00 The importance of finding the right manufacturing partners
26:00 An adjustable bodysuit with facts and figures in the time capsule for future generations to realize to understand how we got here, where we are right now.
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NUGGETS:
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To connect with Mary Marland and to find out more about WILD DOVES https://wilddoves.com/
Email to the Podcast Host (Leekei Tang) podcast (at) themindfulfounder.com
Websites mentioned: SPOONFLOWER and MAKER’S ROW
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Host: Leekei Tang
Contact: hello (at) betterbusinessfounder.com
Music credits: Mister Sunny Face by Wayne Jones / Blue Skies by Silent Partner / Happy Ukulele by Scott Holmes