Hi Everyone! Draya here.
I wanted to write a post explaining the origins of Thrive. Its all come together very fast! When McKenzie and I decided that we had to leave Bloom behind, I knew I wanted to keep working with women’s fashion.
In a nutshell, Thrive is the women’s portion of Bloom in Ithaca, taking flight and striking out on its own.
Some of my favorite experiences working at Bloom have been working with other women, both colleagues and customers. I have met and worked with so many awesome artisans who have helped motivate me to get back to my own craft of metalsmithed jewelry. After I left the Sterling Quest School, I have missed that incredible community of other women supporting me and pushing me to make more and better art.
My other favorite part about Bloom was helping women find ethically produced clothing that they could feel good about buying. When I help someone find an organic cotton dress made in the USA, we get four times the happy. Customer is happy, worker is happy, earth is happy, and I am happy! I believe that change starts with me, and you, and her! When we care about something, we have to support it, and I am dedicated to supporting American manufacturing and ethically driven companies.
Looking to a future beyond Bloom, I knew I wanted a business that would allow me to have direct interactions and sales with my customers, that would allow me to continue producing and selling my jewelry, and that would give me a sense of community and collaboration with fellow women artisans. From there, the concept of the Thrive Fashion Collective was born.
Thrive is a mission-driven boutique specializing in ethically produced women’s fashion and handmade accessories by American artists. Its a boutique without borders–eschewing the brick and mortar, we will be selling online, at markets and festivals, and through home parties and pop-up shops. Look for our handmade products at Festivals and the Triphammer Mall Farmer’s Market this summer. If you are interested in hosting a home party or pop-up shop where we can introduce you to our full line of American-made fashion, please contact us here.
In addition to a retail company, Thrive is also a service company–we help women artisans sell their work. As an artisan myself (and a single mom), I know how hard it is to have time to make jewelry at all, let alone also promote it through three social media sites, an etsy site, a blog, and an e-commerce site, not to mention apply for markets, festivals, insurance and business licenses. It occurred to me that if I knew five ladies all trying to do all of those things, why not all unite into a collective brand and watch our efforts multiply? Now we each only have to spend an hour a week on instagram, but our collective shop gets five hours of promotion! On Etsy, one artist’s rave review is a rave review for all of us, one artist’s sales figures boost us all up, and one artist’s customer looking to buy earrings also finds another artist’s scarf.
So who are these awesome ladies I’ve got on my team? Check out our site’s (work-in-profess) designer tab here. In addition, I’ve got my partners in crime McKenzie Jones-Rounds and Grace Ritter, without whose support everything would be much harder and probably half of my ideas wouldn’t occur to me at all. (The three of us also have another little project brewing so watch out for news of that soon!)
So if you haven’t yet, go to Thrive site now: http://www.ShopThriveNY.com and sign up for my mailing list. We promise to never sell your email, and to only send out sporadic news and coupons you will be happy to receive. Our mailing list numbers really help our ranking in a number of ways, so if you do nothing else to support our venture, please do that!
Also, if you care about social justice issues within the fashion and garment industries, as well as supporting local artisans, please consider following our social media pages (we have 6 twitter followers! I know we just started but I think we can do better than that!)
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ShopThriveNY
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ShopThriveNY
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/ShopThriveNY
And finally, if you are an artisan working in women’s fashion or accessories and you would like to find out how to join the Thrive Fashion Collective, click here. We are always looking for more talent!
Thank you for all your support!
XOXOXO, Draya
I wanted to write a post explaining the origins of Thrive. Its all come together very fast! When McKenzie and I decided that we had to leave Bloom behind, I knew I wanted to keep working with women’s fashion.
In a nutshell, Thrive is the women’s portion of Bloom in Ithaca, taking flight and striking out on its own.
Some of my favorite experiences working at Bloom have been working with other women, both colleagues and customers. I have met and worked with so many awesome artisans who have helped motivate me to get back to my own craft of metalsmithed jewelry. After I left the Sterling Quest School, I have missed that incredible community of other women supporting me and pushing me to make more and better art.
My other favorite part about Bloom was helping women find ethically produced clothing that they could feel good about buying. When I help someone find an organic cotton dress made in the USA, we get four times the happy. Customer is happy, worker is happy, earth is happy, and I am happy! I believe that change starts with me, and you, and her! When we care about something, we have to support it, and I am dedicated to supporting American manufacturing and ethically driven companies.
Looking to a future beyond Bloom, I knew I wanted a business that would allow me to have direct interactions and sales with my customers, that would allow me to continue producing and selling my jewelry, and that would give me a sense of community and collaboration with fellow women artisans. From there, the concept of the Thrive Fashion Collective was born.
Thrive is a mission-driven boutique specializing in ethically produced women’s fashion and handmade accessories by American artists. Its a boutique without borders–eschewing the brick and mortar, we will be selling online, at markets and festivals, and through home parties and pop-up shops. Look for our handmade products at Festivals and the Triphammer Mall Farmer’s Market this summer. If you are interested in hosting a home party or pop-up shop where we can introduce you to our full line of American-made fashion, please contact us here.
In addition to a retail company, Thrive is also a service company–we help women artisans sell their work. As an artisan myself (and a single mom), I know how hard it is to have time to make jewelry at all, let alone also promote it through three social media sites, an etsy site, a blog, and an e-commerce site, not to mention apply for markets, festivals, insurance and business licenses. It occurred to me that if I knew five ladies all trying to do all of those things, why not all unite into a collective brand and watch our efforts multiply? Now we each only have to spend an hour a week on instagram, but our collective shop gets five hours of promotion! On Etsy, one artist’s rave review is a rave review for all of us, one artist’s sales figures boost us all up, and one artist’s customer looking to buy earrings also finds another artist’s scarf.
So who are these awesome ladies I’ve got on my team? Check out our site’s (work-in-profess) designer tab here. In addition, I’ve got my partners in crime McKenzie Jones-Rounds and Grace Ritter, without whose support everything would be much harder and probably half of my ideas wouldn’t occur to me at all. (The three of us also have another little project brewing so watch out for news of that soon!)
So if you haven’t yet, go to Thrive site now: http://www.ShopThriveNY.com and sign up for my mailing list. We promise to never sell your email, and to only send out sporadic news and coupons you will be happy to receive. Our mailing list numbers really help our ranking in a number of ways, so if you do nothing else to support our venture, please do that!
Also, if you care about social justice issues within the fashion and garment industries, as well as supporting local artisans, please consider following our social media pages (we have 6 twitter followers! I know we just started but I think we can do better than that!)
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ShopThriveNY
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ShopThriveNY
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/ShopThriveNY
And finally, if you are an artisan working in women’s fashion or accessories and you would like to find out how to join the Thrive Fashion Collective, click here. We are always looking for more talent!
Thank you for all your support!
XOXOXO, Draya
