Business: Modish Living
Based: Hove
Website: www.modishliving.co.uk
Modish Living is a family-run online boutique specialising in reclaimed wood furniture. Furniture is either handcrafted locally in our workshops or imported from overseas.
Office-based work, such as marketing and sales, is carried out by the Modish Living team. When we initially setting up the business in April 2013, everything was run from the kitchen table. The table would be covered in magazines and paperwork and we would constantly have a computer switched on.
Ten months in, the kitchen table had to be taken back for home use, allowing us to separate work and home life. We moved into some local office space. However, we quickly found that an office needed to be much more than just spacious. It also needed to be creative and earthy to support our enthusiastic and creative vision of growth.
What we did next was move back home. In our back garden we had an old thin wooden structure that was in need of some TLC. We decided to convert it into a functional bright and insulated office. Now our head office is run out of the summerhouse, which is surrounded by trees and birds and borders onto a waterfall. It’s an idyllic place to work, calming and energising, and the team love it. We now find ideas flow much more easily, visions are clearer and the growth of the business is going from strength to strength.
Hellen Barlow is co-founder of Modish Living.
