“Often, as a little girl, I would cut pieces of material and try to make myself pants or dresses on my Mom's sewing machine,” said Dawn Pottier-Roy, daughter of Gerald and Audrey Pottier in Belleville.
Pottier-Roy started a company called lulujo baby last year. A self-taught seamstress, working from the basement of her Fredericton, New Brunswick home while raising two small children, she built a baby brand in less than a year and half.
“It has been an amazing experience,” she said.
Although she possesses a life-long love of design and textiles, she knew she was first a businesswoman and followed a business career as a project manager for Bell Aliant.
But, at 33, and home with her newborn daughter, an idea came to her after she received several compliments on the baby carrier she had made for her daughter.
She approached a few stores, which agreed to carry them. New products were added and these also sold. After stores began re-ordering, she knew she was on to something.
This January she began manufacturing some of her products in Ningbo, China through an equality and fair trade company and also launched lulujo nationally in Toronto.
She now employs two people in Fredericton along with two contract employees and has three sales people in Canada.
Pottier-Roy is in negotiations with a distributor in New York, Oregon and California to launch in these territories. Translation on packaging was completed recently for distribution throughout Quebec this summer.
Lulujo products are sold locally at the Gift Loft in City Drug Store.
“This journey has not been easy, especially with two small children,” she said.
“Coming from a project manager role with a telecommunications company to building a baby brand…it's just very different and there are so many facets to lulujo - designing, sewing, manufacturing, accounting, importing, exporting, federal regulations, packaging, branding...the list goes on,” she said.
“I had no idea what was ahead of me when I one day decided to make a ring sling and sell it. What I did know though was that once I decided to do it, there was no turning back and if anyone was going to make this work, it was going to be me.”
Growing up in Belleville, Pottier-Roy says she always knew that it didn't matter that she was from a small town, or small rural community.
“I could do whatever I wanted to as long as I believed in myself,” she said.
Lulujo’s website is located at:
www.lulujo.com
