Luna Love is exciting to introduce our first monthly #bosslady BomBom Morocco.
We caught up with Co Founder, Olivia Callaghan, yesterday (International Women's day btw!!) to discuss how she started her and her sisters business and her views on being a female boss.
Tell me a little bit about your brand and how it started...
BomBom started in the summer of 2016, officially, when my sister and myself were in Marrakech, which is somewhere we have been going since I was teeny tiny. It is somewhere we got together as a family, every year, with all my cousins and my grandparents and we've spent this time together so it is a very special place to us.
After seeing some of the straw hats my grandfather had made for the sunbed's in the house, with the name of the house embroidered into them, we decided we wanted to get some with our names on them. So he took us to the little workshop he had found and introduced us to the ladies who worked there, that really is the beginning of BomBom.
With fashion marketing becoming more and more competitive, how do you stay authentic?
I feel with us, in order to stay authentic, we have just done what we feel is right. I feel our Instagram page is really a true testament to our brand in the fact that it is colourful, it makes people feel happy, you look at it and you know what we are offering. I think being consistent is very very important when you are trying to market something.
In order to stand out I think you have to find your niche, find what works for you and what you enjoy doing. Go with it! Believe in yourselves, believe in the people you are surrounded by. If you fall then get back up again and keep going, that's what startup life is all about. At the end of the day you will be rewarded in ways that people who have a 9-5 job are not.
Why do you think it is important to be your own boss, especially being female?
My sister and I are both as new to this as the next start up, but being a girl boss is more difficult then it actually sounds. It's a lot of fun and it really is dependent on the day which one of us will take control on certain matters.
We are about helping and empowering women in our business, which means we have to make decisions with two interests in mind, their welfare and our bottom line, which can be a trade off. We don't just want to be a brand to put a product out there to the public in return for money, we want to make a difference and make sure that being a "girl boss" isn't just a western thing.
Can you explain the impact, if any, that social media has had on your business?
We only launched our website last July, so we were managing BomBom and all our orders with no website for over a year which meant that Instagram was the only way that we were connecting and bringing in new clients. Someone would see our bag's on Instagram and private message us via the app, we would then send them our email and then manually take down their orders.
In that sense Instagram was a huge huge help to us because it enabled us to showcase our products and put any designs out there and to see what people thought, also we 'met' people through Instagram; through photos, by communicating with them and through them placing orders.
Instagram was a big opportinty in getting the name of BomBom out there.
What advice can you offer women who want a career in the fashion industry?
The fashion industry is constantly changing, and new trends are coming and going so fast, so designing a new collection is actually extremely risky for a small start up like BomBom because it could be out before it's really in. It's really important that you have a product that you are totally passionate about and that you love and that you want to share, rather than giving people what you think they want just because it's "on trend".
I think that the term "on trend" or "fashionable" is something I tend not to use, I prefer something to be stylish or elegant because there is not end date to it, no sale by date, you can use it forever if you look after it and it's never going to not be cool!
Who is the most influential person to you and why?
It sounds weird because it's nothing related to fashion or to BomBom but I would say that my father has always said to us "you have to treat people the same way that you would like to be treated" and that really resonates with any aspect in life. It is something that will stick with me forever and something that my father has always taught me to always remember.
Myself and my sister are following in his footsteps by setting up our own brand but also not forgetting to have fun, life is short and you should live every day as if it were your last.
To shop BomBom's collection head to their website
And don't forget to check out their beautiful Instagram too!