Emma & Poppy’s ‘House of Trendella’ is a joint fashion venture by the 2 graduating Birmingham Uni Students, They want to design a collection of high fashion pieces with a high street twist at affordable prices for this seasons collection, which is where their potential winnings would be spent.
Outline your business and entrepreneurial skills, including your relative achievements to date in running a business:
Since a very young age Emma and Poppy both wanted to run their own business. As a child Poppy watched both her parents run successful businesses in 2 very different fields. She started work for her farther in 2009 and soaked up all the knowledge she could from accounts to managerial skills. Poppy has taken short college courses in Business and Administration, Accounts and Health and Safety ready for when she could set up her own company. After 3 years managing her Father’s company, alongside her sales savvy brother, she left to follow her passion for Fashion at Hybrid in Henley. This is were she met Emma who had always had a flare for writing and Graphic Design. Emma received a 2:1 in English from University of Birmingham in 2012 and started working at Hybrid shortly after graduating. Their opposing skills worked very well together and increased brand awareness and sales at Hybrid very quickly using social media, website banners and marketing newsletters – all low cost/no cost avenues. In regards to their own business, House of Trendella, the achievements so far are numerous. There is no better way to learn than to be thrown in at the deep end and that is exactly what they have done. Hopefully, HoT can continue to grow and become internationally recognised and these achievements. The dream is to inspire young women everywhere to follow their dreams and succeed in whatever area they choose.
Why do you have the ability to be an inspiring role model? Provide examples to illustrate:
Role model noun a person whose behaviour, example, or success is or can be emulated by others* Before we met, the only fashion experience we had was getting dressed in the morning. Neither of us studied fashion at university or had any qualifications in the field. We arrived at Hybrid and hit the ground running- we just knew what girls liked and loathed. Our daily duties involved creating trend reports, analysing bestsellers, planning photoshoots and running the website as a two man team. As style obsessed, naturally curious individuals, we absorbed everything we learnt and dreamt about paving our own way in the industry. One afternoon, we decided to stop following and take the lead. So, on 17th November 2013, House of Trendella was born! In today’s world, people project ideals of how we should live and what we should become. We believe we have the ability to be inspiring role models as we want the House of Trendella ethos to reflect how young women should embrace their quirks and work with them – just like we do. Our mission is to promote this philosophy via our website and our social media channels. We also want to reflect the atmosphere in our office – a whirlwind of energy and excitement for fashion, freedom and frivolity. We have different strengths and weaknesses however we have learnt to celebrate these in order to build on our joint vision. We genuinely believe we can do anything and hope to promote this confidence among our fan base. We have also used limited resources and finance to build a business in a highly lucrative yet competitive industry in just under 6 months and have already expanded our team (2x staff members, 1x office pet). Our ideas are taking us from strength to strength – HoT followers are engaging and orders are flowing however, our ultimate goal is to gain knowledge, not just success.
What is your business / idea and what would you use the £5,000 towards if you were to win
if we were to win this prestigious award, we would invest the money in promoting the story of our brand and creating our own range (to be released as a SS15 Collection). We want to design a collection of high fashion pieces with a high street twist at affordable prices. We would also like to keep it in the family as Emma’s sister will soon graduate from London College of Fashion. Our website is a platform for young women to showcase their talents from music to design to make up and hair and we currently invite local artists to our office to perform as part of our #farmyardsession video diaries (our office is on a farm with chickens and ducks!). Winning would mean the world to us as £5,000 could really take our company to the next level that otherwise would take us years to accomplish. We do not wish to take any shortcuts but we would forever be grateful for this incredible push in the right direction. Just to be recognised and nominated for this is humbling to us. We are hard working, ambitious perfectionists and we hope this comes across when people visit our site. We hope we can light the entrepreneurial fire within young women like us and inspire people as Poppy’s parents have inspired her. Thank you.
