Thursday, March 29, 2007

Beautiful Brands networking event


It was the second MarmaLADYa networking event last night at Sketch. Entitled Beautiful Brands, the evening featured two friends -turned mums - turned business partners who run a boutique in Bath called Mee. Tamara Sturtz-Filby and Emma Mandell-Linn described their beautiful shop and website and their journey from fashion journalists to running their own brand.

Although both women were clearly nervous at addressing such a crowd, they each spoke and their love of their business was clear. Whilst Mee seems typical of many Lifestyle boutiques that I have seen in London (and even Exeter) they did manage to persuade me that their shop was a product of themselves and worth a visit. The emphasis of Mee is clearly on the luxurious and 'treat to self' mentality, something which I think is, in principal, a great idea. When I visited the website though, I found it slightly confusing and it didn't stand out enough to persuade me to but anything through them rather than other shops in London. I did find a nice pair of flip-flops reduced on the sale pages, but at £5 standard UK delivery, this would have almost doubled the price of delivery. I also found the cost of some of the products prohibitively high. Worth a look if one is in Bath though.

The evening itself was typical of MarmaLADYa events so far; beautiful venue, lovely drinks and delicious cupcakes, many readers, business owners and marmaLADYa team members all there to meet each other and find out more about each others' lives and jobs. Networking, but intimate and relaxed. I enjoyed talking to Fleur Britten, a writer and journalist whose work I have read for years. I also spoke to Toby Hunt of Pebble.it (more on that later I hope), Sally Ragbourne of Ox Eye Daisy (Marmaladya's website designer) and Nora Radecke from Christie's Auction House. Other guests and speakers included Nadia Finer from Theres More to Life Than Shoes, Gaby Neubert-Luckner from Luckners Online Auctioneers and the Golden Goose PR girls. All in all an enjoyable evening, and a gorgeous Mee themed goody bag to take home in the end.


Update: A few people have asked what was in the goody bag? Well, there was a trademark 'kiss me quick' red OPI lipstick, a Vuju vodka smoothie, a Theresmoretolifethanshoes.com notebook, a strand of beautiful MEE butterflies, a sample notecard and information about some of the other brands.
Photograph by Rebecca Portsmouth

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Tamara Sturtz-Filby and Emma Mandell-Linn- it appears you didn't make those names up, which is disappointing.

Anonymous said...

I was thinking the very same thing! The article did certainly appear to be a piss take to begin with, but then I felt a gradually increasing nausea in my belly when I came to the realisation that it is all true.........