Today marks one month at Mixed! I’m writing this from my bed at 12:42am after having spent my day packing and shipping a new batch of orders, planning my next fabric run, designing Mixed’s upcoming summer line and squeezing in a bath before getting started on dinner. In the last 4 weeks, Mixed has had the honor of serving 99 customers (who’s gonna be #100?👀), shipping 218 products around the world, welcoming over 2.7k visitors to its website and earning over 2.5k in sales.
Mixed wasn’t exactly something I spent a long time planning before its launch. In fact, I didn’t plan on this at all. Prior to COVID19, I was traveling around Europe, picking up client work here and there. My plan was to travel until mid May, return to NYC and start sending my resume out for a full-time design job. But then the European travel ban happened and I had to get on the next flight out of France without time to think about what I’d do next. I was actually interviewing with Time magazine at the time, but they put a pause on hiring, so that was the end of that.
The idea of producing my patterns on textiles had crossed my mind a few times during my travels. Now that I was settled in one place, I had the opportunity to finally try it out. I produced my Early Bird pattern on cotton linen and loved the feeling of touching my designs in real life. But then I realized that I needed to learn how to sew. Lol. My boyfriend, Will, was actually the person who taught me, and I sewed my first hand towel, which looked like shit, but hey, it was my first try. I kept practicing and got a hang of it and decided I wanted to keep producing textiles and maybe sell a few pieces here and there.
Still no thought of Mixed at all.
Then, one day on a walk, just for the hell of it, I asked Will what kind of name would match my design aesthetic. “Mixed,” he said, without skipping a beat. His immediate response resonated, so that night, I ran it by my sister who also loved it, and boom, Mixed was born. No fuss, no surveying, no asking friends what they thought. That was on April 12th.
I took the next 9 days to create a logo, website, graphics etc, not spending too much time on every single detail like most designers are known to do. Why? Because I knew that the brand would grow and evolve as it developed and that I would tweak it along the way. I didn’t worry about making it perfect because I had no idea what that looked like — I wasn’t making Mixed for myself, I was making it for all of you. Don’t get me wrong, I liked what I had put together, but I knew Mixed would take shape over time. Besides, the brand wasn’t just about how Mixed looked, but more importantly, how it acted. And in order to interact with the world, it had to, well, exist!
On April 19th I launched Mixed and here we are one month later. In that time, I’ve learned soooooo much: how to ship, how to sew, how to design packaging, how to explain the difference between satin and sateen, how to make friends with postal workers who help you cut your shipping cost in half and give you giant Ikea bags to transport your packages — just to name a few. I’ve made many changes since day one, but I couldn’t have known to make any of them if I hadn’t launched. My point is, get your MVP out there. Put out the video, showcase the painting, publish the writing, order the fabric swatches. Whatever your thing is, just do it. Don’t aim for perfection in round one, you’ll have no idea what that looks like anyways. Instead, focus on the process. If you equate success with the ability to adapt and grow over time, then there is no failure.
Thanks for all your support in Chapter 1 of Mixed — I can’t wait to see the brand grow together.