Let’s hear Gwyneth’s journey as the co-founder of Cream Couch and how she navigates through life.
Adele: Hi Gwyneth.
Gwyneth: Hi Adele, before Cream Couch, I originally was into business development marketing. I personally very enjoy doing a business or sales, managing kind of stuff, I also like critical thinking, problem solving. With this brand, why choose bags? It’s because I like minimal stuff or aesthetic stuff, I think for bags, if they are aesthetic, it will give people some form of confidence or for example a natural feeling, with this thought, I have a friend which is my partner now. She likes photography then we discussed about building a brand using what both of us really like because I like to design bags.
I like business stuff then she is in charge of making the products more beautiful in photos and both of us also always like aesthetic. We really like nude colour, we love a designer who designed a sofa so we named our brand Cream Couch, after getting the name, then we started to plan for the brand like how do we introduce it to our customer, letting them know that we are not commercialized.
Adele: I want to ask how long has it been for the brand and building a brand after pandemic, what unforgettable things you can share to everyone here?
Gwyneth: We actually created the brand during Covid so at that time we actually are quite worried, everyone was quitting during Covid, both of us thought that we were coming out during the pandemic, maybe we can overcome harder things in future so we continued our dream. Actually the first day when we launched, both of us were actually very worried because we thought will people buy our design? Will people like our design? The sales was quite good
Adele: Of course I also know that you have children, your experience of taking care your daughter like managing your business and children.
Gwyneth: To be honest, I have three children. When I haven’t gave birth, people always say being a mom is tough, if you didn’t personally experience it, you will never understand a mom with a child so after I gave birth, I only understood that a mom’s responsibility is really huge. Mom needs to balance things like if you are a working mom, you need to balance work and family because you need to take care your children your family and you need to take care your work, you will face a lot of tiring and wronged things. When you’re back home, you will put all these thoughts behind, you will still smile at them like nothing happened like you will have time to accompany them read, play games, full time moms are really tough because you need to face them for 24 hours without rest, those working moms need to take care of their child, I really admire them.
Adele: Being a mom of three, I’m only a mom of one, what advice can you share with working moms?
Gwyneth: A lot of people likes to share positive stuff or happy stuff but less people will share the toughness, I want to say if you really want to create a business, you want your own career and you have kids then you must choose a thing you really like because you can only persist in something you like, if you faced any problems in details or customers or some details in products because you like it so you will do whatever it takes to solve it and it’s not only for a day, it repeats every day so you think if you don’t like what you do, you are asked to repeat that stuff every day, it’s doomed. This is only a part of your life, your second step is how you sustain, sustaining is the hardest, you want it to be better not worse. People will get old, maybe you can’t handle too many things and there are increase in family members or some old or kids grown up. A lot of people think that creating a business is always positive but they never think creating to sustain, you need one two years? You need ten twenty years or what?
Adele: If you can go back to before this 24 hours, you can delete that 24 hours, what will you do?
Gwyneth: I think everything happens for a reason, no matter what you did wrong or anything is a learning process, because we are not perfect, no matter how best we are there will be some flaws that you can’t control, I will not delete any 24 hours because if everyone were to delete, whenever I did something wrong, I will not grow because I actually don’t know what mistakes I made, where I need to stand up, I will not know. If I have this privilege, I will not delete but I will want to go back to 30 years ago because this year I’m 41.
Adele: You don’t look like 41 wow.
Gwyneth: I was the happiest at that time because of my grandparents, I appreciate me at that time and the moments even having dinner chatting, watching tv because that support I got cannot be repeated or replaced.
Adele: Wow I want to shed tears because personally my grandma took care of me since young, my family background is not very good like my dad hit my mom and my dad had affairs so my grandma passed away at October 2015 and my company started July 2016 like I remembered after she left, God told me okay, the burden is gone because I quit my job because of my grandma. People will be there when times are good, when times are tough, people will be busy. Everyone couldn’t fetch her you know? Because my grandma didn’t have insurance and she’s constantly sick and need to go to government hospital and you know government is tough and I was like it’s okay I will fetch then I quit, I feel that when she left, I actually didn’t feel that heart broken so I had it easier at that time.
Gwyneth: I personally don’t really share my life online, family background is not that good when I was young so I really like old people. I appreciate when I’m with my family, if really can go back, I will change everything because I was more rebellious, when they left, I only began to think about my life. Do my best in everything I do.
Adele: What is the best advice that you can share to those who are listening to this podcast today?
Gwyneth: If you like to design your own thing, you need to have determination. Bags are those that you don’t need to design you can take from warehouse, when you’re outside seeing others wearing your design, the happiness is indescribable, every time it happened I will still feel very emotional. Because I’m very straightforward, I don’t know how to brand my words, I’m lucky to have some business friends where they share some advice like every entrepreneur will face the same problem which is staff, if you really face this, you need to think who is the best, use their energy and skills, time to help you solve problems and not increasing problems for you then you need to appreciate those staff, giving them good benefits so if you’re not so good at your communication maybe you can try like to learn, think about the 90s and 00s, how they communicate and try to talk from their perspective.
Adele: Thank you Gwyneth, if you like this podcast, remember to share and give Gwyneth and Cream Couch a follow. We will see you in the next one, bye.
Gwyneth: Thank you.
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