I met my business partner, Quinn, while vending next to each other at Symbiosis in 2016. She was just hitting her one year mark in business with her company KritterKlips and I was running all festival sales of another clothing company at the time.
Like many friendships founded on vendor row, it all started with a simple trade. I got a couple pairs of ears and Quinn got a couple shirts. I fell in love with her cute, fun and easy little ears and about a week later I quickly became her first of many wholesalers, happily adding kritterklips into my booth. As the season progressed I realized that I was ready to bring my creativity and vision to the table and finally fulfill the dream of starting my own clothing company.
Quinn and I had regular phone conversations as friends and small business owners and she brought up the fact that as a single mom, she really needed help with outside sales and festivals, and I brought up the idea that since I was traveling all the time doing sales, I really needed an office to handle order fulfillment and systems. We began to realize that we had what each other needed! We joked about the idea every time we were stressed out throughout the year and eventually we both realized that it actually made the most sense. We spent the first part of 2018 combining our office, back end, inventory and staff and creating a parent company, Dreamland Studios.
With this set up we allow each other to thrive in our personal strengths and not worry about the big picture that most business owners have to tackle on their own. With my background in art and festival management and Quinn’s in clothing design and operations we feel stronger than ever in our ability to continue driving brands that connect to humans on a personal level while contributing to society on a larger scale.
We’re now over a year in business together as I write this and we have learned a LOT to say the least, but our ability to create and design together is only growing stronger. At the end of the day, we share the same vision. We both want to create a better world through art. We both believe in being a part of the greater good and using our talents to make out community and our world a better place. Together we handle creative decisions, choose non profits or causes to donate to and find out ways to be creative and caring at the same time. We’re just creating “Functional Art For A Dysfunctional World.”