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 marketing, sales and so on, is carried out by the Modish Living team.
While setting up the business in April 2013, everything was run from our home kitchen table. The table was covered in magazines, paperwork and constantly had a computer screen on it.
Ten months into the growth of the business, the kitchen table needed to be hijacked back for home use, allowing us to separate work and home life. We therefore moved into 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.
We decided to turn back home. In our back garden we had an old thin wooden structure that was in need of some TLC. We decided to convert this wooden structure 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 business is going from strength to strength.
Hellen Barlow is the co-founder of Modish Living
