We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Bayberry L. Shah. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Bayberry below.

Bayberry, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

Harris Tweed Journey

While traveling in Scotland, I fell in love with the landscapes, people and Harris Tweed, which I already knew from my grandmother’s generation. She gave me her Harris Tweed suit and I still wear the jacket. Such a beautiful, durable fabric and the exact opposite of fast fashion. One thing I noticed was that the same suit jackets, bags and hats were made, wherever you go. I felt like there was an opportunity to use the fabric to make more contemporary designs. I’ve been designing clothes every time we visit my husband’s family in Pakistan for the past 20 years. I decided I wanted to take my clothes designing to the next level and make Harris Tweed my focus.

I had read about a fashion design course in one of my favorite Scottish towns, Stornoway in the Outer Hebrides. Could I really take off and do this? With all obstacles considered and cleared, I applied and made my plans to spend the fall term abroad. I was fortunate to be working in a remote position as a Digital Project Manager so also had to get the okay from my company. Fortunately, they had no objections as long as I kept to their standard work times.

It was really a dream come true to arrive in Stornoway and move into my student housing like a college student again. The schedule wouldn’t be easy. I had to be in class at 9am, enjoying a lovely walk through the Lewis Castle grounds. I finished class at 1pm, walked back and grabbed lunch before getting online at 1:45 to start my work day. I then had to work until 10pm at night. It was a challenge to turn off my creative thoughts and turn to managing backend code development, but I got through the days and felt grateful to do it.

This time was a joy from beginning to end and I expanded upon my love of Harris Tweed, which is only produced on the island. As I finished up my studies, I bought I stack of various colors of tweed and carried them to Pakistan since we were attending a family wedding over Christmas. The question was, could I have everything made in time and then where was I taking them? If I could get a Web site up in time, I’d need to ship the clothes from somewhere. Leave in Pakistan? Take to the US? There were so many daunting questions.

Over two months, I managed getting the clothes made with daily trips to the tailor and ordering custom embroidery. As items were completed, with my labels also custom made and applied, I borrowed a mannequin from a family member and set up a makeshift photography studio. Each day, I would iron clothes and take photos. I was also building the ecommerce Web site. After building most of the pages, I found out that there was a maximum on product pages. I ended up having to abandon all of that work and restarted with Shopify. I once again built out the catalog and products pages.

Big questions loomed. How could I affordably ship all these clothes? And where was fulfillment going to be? I felt like my tweed creations would be most appreciated in the UK and Scotland so it didn’t make sense to take them to the US. I thought about all my contacts in the U.K but no one came to mind who would want to deal with the hassle of housing and shipping my clothes. After much research, I found a small fulfillment center in Nottingham called StoreShip. Their costs were reasonable enough that I made the decision to get them there somehow. Shipping was too expensive so I had to utilized my baggage allowance and take as much as I could.

So many details had to be sorted in order to have the products ready. I designed and ordered tags and had them shipped to the UK. StoreShip required that all items have a barcode. I had to figure out how to set that up in Shopify and then ordered the printable labels that were also shipped to family in the UK. I knew that some things would have to be figured out once I got to London. I also built out an online store on the wholesale site, faire.com in the hopes that stores would purchase my clothes to feature in their retail locations.

Not only was I spending every available hour working out these issues, I was working full-time as a Digital Project Manager for a company in the States and thus on their time. That meant starting my regular work day at 6pm and ending at 3am in the morning. My alarm was set for 11:15am and had my breakfast at Noon. It was tough but at least I had the days to track down accessories, work with the tailor and to set up a photoshoot with a model. I was fortunate to have a fully remote position at that time.

When I arrived in London, with bags bulging, I had worried about customs and had done a lot of research on what I might have to do in advance. In the end, I took my bags to be declared and told the officer my story. He said the amount of goods I had didn’t make the threshold for them to take any action. Plus, I had bought a lot of the fabric in Scotland and had already paid taxes on it. Shew, that was a relief when he just waved me on.

With the help of some extended family, I had a room outside London and could work on getting the clothes packaged. One generous cousin let me come to his office so I could get the barcodes printed. It took a full two weeks to have all my clothes store ready. I then rented a car and drove north to Nottingham. It felt like such a monumental load was off my shoulders when I dropped everything off.

Those months planning, designing, coordinating, worrying and hustling were some of the most wonderful of my life. I certainly had a purpose I was driving towards and had set myself some difficult hurdles to get over but I kept at it and made it happen!

I have since done the London to Islamabad trip again, carrying a load of Harris Tweed and now have more items to add to my site. My next endeavor will take some years. I want to have an actual shop in Scotland where all of my contemporary tweed designs can be brought together. They are best seen and felt in person. I have no experience running a shop but I’m hoping my Project Manager experience will help me break it down and slowly work out the steps. I’m looking forward to the ride!

Bayberry, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a clothing designer who has taken on this creative endeavor later in life. Although I’ve enjoyed designing clothes for myself for decades, I’ve finally decided to take it more seriously and thus created a Web site and invested time and funds to produce a couple lines of clothing to be sold to others.

I have a love of Harris Tweed from the isle of Lewis & Harris in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. It is a fabric with a grand heritage and is certified by the crown to be only produced on that island. I love supporting this industry of small-scale weavers.

I also love finding unique fabric while visiting family in Pakistan. One can go crazy visiting the fabric and shawl stores. I’ve created some unique items inspired by these trips.

I am still producing on a small-scale so my pieces are often one-of-a-kind prototypes. Once I see that I can have them tailored successfully and I love what I see, I produce more but there are a lot of hurdles working internationally. I like to give my tailors and embroiders a fair wage and the rich fabrics I use don’t come cheap so my clientele has to be someone who isn’t into fast fashion and appreciates heirloom clothing.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

It is such a joy to take a design, search out the best fabric and then have it made into an actual piece of clothing. It is like wearable art! Each time I visit the tailor or receive a shipment, it is like Christmas. It is definitely a labor of love to take photos of each piece and put them online for others to enjoy. When an item is purchased by a friend, family member or stranger, it is a delight to hear how they love it and to later see pictures of them wearing it with pride. It makes all the effort worthwhile.

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

Getting the word out is not easy, even with all the online tools these days. I tried posting my clothes on the wholesale site, faire.com, in the hopes that shops would purchase my clothing for their stores. However, with my profit plus theirs, the clothes become too expensive for most people to buy. The popular clothes on that site seem to have been mass produced at pennies on the dollar. I ended up taking that site down so I could offer my clothes at a more reasonable cost.

Also, I’m so frustrated with Instagram and how they have changed their algorithm. When I first got on Instagram and posted pictures of my trip to Scotland, I got hundreds of followers. When I started my BayberryDesigns1 for my clothing, I seem to have been blacklisted. They won’t allow me to promote my posts and don’t share my images to people who would be interested, no matter what hashtags I used. What I’ve heard now is that hashtags actually hinder you since only bots use them. I am currently depending on adding enough descriptive text to my posts so that hopefully new people can find them.

I’ll keep trying different methods to reach my target audience. I know there are lovers of Scottish fashion out there who would be delighted to see these unique pieces.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.bayberryapparel.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bayberrydesigns1/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@BayberryFineArt

Image Credits

Also photos by Bayberry