We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ahsh Murphy & Mika Bright a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Ahsh Murphy & Mika Bright, thanks for joining us today. So, naming is such a challenge. How did you come up with the name of your brand?

What’s in a name? EVERYTHING! When we first decided to start our business, most people don’t remember our first concept name was actually Be.eyekonic. It was very empowering to say out loud and it was a great spin off of the word “eye” referring and referencing eyewear. We thought it was perfect at first.

One day Co-Founder Ahsh Murphy and her sister Toya Murphy was talking and brainstorming how brands with just 4 letter words were very memorable and catchy. Toya said “what about “HYVE” but spelled with a “Y” instead of the traditional ‘I”. It was super catchy, and we loved the spelling. We knew we had a vision to create a quality brand with quality and luxury products so it only seemed right to follow the lead of other 4-5 letter word designer brands. We began to research the name and asked people in our circle their opinion and thoughts (of course we would have the final say) of the name in comparison to Be.eyekonic. After feedback and our own personal thoughts, we decided to go with HYVE.

We initially were going to go with the traditional “beehive” branding and logo images, but we decided we did not want to interfere with the Queen Bey “hive” so we left out the “hive” imaging and graphics. As we started to organically develop our mission and our purpose for our brand it was probably a few months later that it all came together, and we finally had a solid purpose, direction, and vision for our company. This was when we came up with the acronym for HYVE which actually stands for Helping Your Vision Evolve. How perfect is that acronym for our business?

This was when we realized that things happen and come to you organically so you will never have to force anything. This was probably the first time we realized that we actually had something special on our hands. Not just a hobby or an additional stream of income, but a business where we could actually make a difference and an impact in our community.

Our mission at HYVE is to empower women to evolve their vision (think big, believe in yourself, stay focused, keep your eyes on the prize) by offering products and services that ignite their confidence and inspire them to pursue their goals and dreams.

Our Core Values are to lead with excellence, passion and conviction in all we do. Act with uncompromising integrity by providing superior customer service and always providing a memorable experience to our customers and future employees.

When we are able to share our brand name and what it stands for, we always get a great organic reaction from our customers, especially when we are able to be in front of them. This always feels so good and so right to us, because we 1. know that we picked the right name 2. That our mission and purpose is important for our customers and for our community.

So you ask, What’s in a name? EVERYTHING.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

How did we get started?

The HYVE brand was started in 2018 on a rainy day. Ahsh Murphy was at work and a familiar thought that has crossed many or our minds before came to her– “there has to be more”. There has to be more to life than just working a 9 to 5 and not feeling passionate or empowered by our work. With clouds hanging over Ahsh’s head (co-founder) she literally thought no matter the weather outside you always have to keep your own piece of sunshine with you at all times and she immediately thought of sunglasses and called her friend Mika Bright (co-founder). These types of conversations were normal and typical between Ahsh & Mika. Conversations of dreams, aspirations, business ideas and how to become wealthy and travel the world was discussed often. Ahsh, pitched her idea to Mika, and Mika replied that sounds amazing, let me know if you need any help. Ahsh’s response was; help? No friend, we are doing this together and the rest is now history. Here we are promoting sunglasses, vision, and confidence.

What we are most proud of is that we are creating a brand that has become a lifestyle for similar women like us. Women who want more out of life; that wants inspiration and guidance on how to walk into their purpose. Sunglasses are our product but the mission of HYVE is so much more.

We all have heard the saying “when you look good, you feel good, and you can perform. We offer our customers fashion eyewear that is of great quality and affordability. Our eyewear is an accessory that enhances and compliments your look which also ignites your confidence. And let’s face it, confidence is key.

We love to provide an in-person experience any opportunity we get. We provide an environment of amazing genuine energy; we cheerlead and root our sisters on. We love to remind them that confidence is an inside job and it starts with them. We are here just to just enhance what they already have. If every given the opportunity, be sure to check us out in person at various marketplaces and pop-up shops in the Atlanta area (we do travel). We would love to get you in our HYVE mirror so you can see what we see! *wink

Our mission is to empower women to evolve their vision by offering products and services that ignite their confidence and inspire them to pursue their goals and dreams.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Trying to do everything yourself- is the sure way to take the long way to achieving your goals especially in business. We started HYVE back in 2018 our first couple of years, we insisted on doing things the hard way- our way. We both had limited exposure to entrepreneurship as it pertains to running and building a business. If we could go back and do anything different, we would probably seek out help, resources and would have hired a business coach. This certainly would have condensed time frames for growing and scaling our business. Let’s be honest, we don’t know what we don’t know. There was so much that we didn’t know, and so much that we still do not know currently. However, the difference now is, we have a better understanding and will not hesitate to reach out and ask for help. We have an amazing circle and network that we could have tapped into, but we didn’t want to feel like we were bothering people and honestly, we didn’t feel confident enough yet to have those conversations for fear of not knowing or being big enough or relevant enough for them to help us.

The sad truth is, many people will not support, help, or connect you unless they feel as though you have hit a certain level of status or the “what’s in it for me” people. We vowed to always do our best to help others any way we can, with whatever information or resources we have available to give. One of our motto’s is that it truly takes a village.

Another lesson that we are learning, is the power of networking and collaboration. Two introverted but friendly outgoing Pisces would much rather stay in their comfort zone at home not having to deal with outside world.

We now enjoy attending various events and conferences and meeting fellow entrepreneurs like us and just learning so much from them and being inspired and just seeing their growth makes us so happy and excited because we know that our time is coming and that we have something great here.

So, what we had to unlearn is comfort has no place while trying to build a business. Being inconsistent would keep you
on the outside looking in and wondering why you’re not winning. We have to get uncomfortable; we have to be consistent, and we have to tap into the power of networking and being intentional about growing our business.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

In 2020 the world literally stopped, and we not only had to deal with the confusion of the onset of the pandemic but we both were facing our own life challenges. Most people don’t know in March of 2020 Ahsh was diagnosed with breast cancer and Mika was going through a separation/ divorce from a 15-year marriage. Both situations unfortunate and mentally damaging. We literally had no movement in our business for months, largely due to the pandemic but also because we both were dealing with life and the unknown as most of us do daily. The strength and resilience of both co-founders during this time was to be applauded. The positive outlook, the faith in knowing that everything would work out is what kept us going. We could have easily given up and closed down our business, but we didn’t. We knew it was a testament, a time in our life that we would get through.

We honestly never even looked at that situation as a triumph in our business until we were doing a podcast one day and it was our very first time actually sharing to the world what we went through. It was at that time we realized wow, we never became victims, used excuses, we just took time to be human, process what was going on, and as things progressed and we both healed mentally and physically we slowly started to show back up in our business. One of the best things about having a partner is when one person can’t, the other can, so you both hold each other down at all times no matter what because you both have the same goal and objective of growing your business and becoming successful so you can spoil the people in your life that you love.

The moral of the story is you can lean and rest, but you can’t quit. #KEEPGOING

Contact Info:

• Website: www.hyve-life.com
• Instagram: hyve_hyve
• Facebook: hyve-life

Image Credits
Drea Nicole Photography (only the 1st-3 photos to credit)