We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Belinda Jacobs a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Belinda , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

Of course it takes a lot of things to be successful, but for me – one of my main challenges is remembering to enjoy the ride. Having a product brand is a journey with SO many moving parts (like many businesses) – there will always be ups and downs, just like in life. It’s important (but hard for type A’s to stop and smell the roses, celebrate achievements, and just enjoy simple things each day.

Especially so for designers and product brands… you develop and launch a product and dive straight into the next one, probably with even tighter deadlines this time round! If you don’t take the time to celebrate the wins, you’ll just run out of steam eventually and get burnt out. Taking the time to pat yourself on the back, review what went or didn’t, is an investment in the future longevity of your company.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My company Tech Packs Co helps fashion and textile brands bring their product ideas to life. With 15 years of experience in design and manufacturing, We’ve developed thousands of products for hundreds of brands—some of which have been seen in the Apple Store, Vogue, and on Shark Tank. Tech Packs Co specializes in purposeful, profitable product development that makes a positive impact.

I used to work in the fashion industry for some big name brands, and we always had so many issues when communicating our design ideas to our suppliers and vendors. Things would get lost in translation. Misunderstandings are very expensive and time consuming when you are dealing with physical products that are cut and sewn! I started working on my own process for communicating more clearly with factories, and simplifying the processes involved when taking a design and turning it into a physical product.

After refining this for a few years, I knew I had something that could really make a difference to the way brands develop products.

Fashion is a very “top down” industry where brands are at the top of the food chain and have all the power. The people at the bottom of the chain, who actually work in factories sewing, are mostly women of colour from developing nations. And they are the ones who really suffer the most from these “communication issues” and “misunderstandings”. It’s for them that the industry needs to change for the better.

I hope that I’m able to start making waves in my little corner of a trillion dollar sector.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

I wish I had realised the value of having a community or group to go to to share entrepreneurship experiences. Being a boss can sometimes be a lonely journey. It’s essential to have a “squad” who you can talk with, share stories, resources and be in the same boat with. Definitely key to staying sane as a business owner!

Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?

I started Tech Packs Co in 2016 after immigrating to the US. I’d been in the UK fashion industry for 5 years working for a few brands as a designer. I wanted to march to the beat of my own drum and do development better than the inefficient traditional ways.

I’m British and my husband is Swedish. We applied for a green card (to become permanent residents) back in 2020 after 4 years of loving Los Angeles.

In 2021 we were lucky enough to add another 2 members to our family, our littlest one is an American citizen and our “big one” is a furry friend called George!

2022 we spent navigating the jungle that is the LA housing market, amidst skyrocketing interest rates. (While we closing the deal, rates went from 5% to 8%, my still heart palpitates when I remember those weeks!) After 6 deals falling through, we finally had an offer accepted and deal closed on the 7th house… But all things happen for a reason and this one was our dream house. November 2022, we moved in!

The next six months are a blur again. Me commuting 2 hours across LA to get to childcare across town while waiting on a list to get in somewhere closer to our new home.

Renovating our house and yard between 8-10pm every night as that’s all the free time we had. Mostly my husband actually, I’d pass out at 9 haha.

End of June 2023, we take a breather, the urgent house items have been checked off, and we can start to get settled in.

July 2023 rolls around, and we get an online notification from US immigration saying our green card application has been denied. Ironically, it’s the 4th of July. Goodbye says the land of the free. We then wait an agonising 10 days for the accompanying letter explaining what’s happening – to arrive. Horrifyingly, when it does, it says we have 30 days to leave the USA from the date on the letter (so on opening only 19 of those 30 left).

1st of August we had to be out (or risk ever being allowed back again). Our little one was finally about to start a local pre-school on the 2nd.

We had several client projects on at Tech Packs Co that month, one in particular was an extra large project for us that involved around ~15 styles or so of complex technical garments.

August was probably the hardest month of my life. We had to figure out how to move our lives, family, possessions, my business, etc out the country, with big business deadlines… In the next 2.5 weeks!

Every “solution” we came up with opened up several other problems we didn’t know we had. Where do we even go, that our multi-national family can all legally enter, live, work, get healthcare and schooling? What do we do with the Tech Packs Co office? What do we do with our house? What do we do with our possessions (we just realised our loft has no floor!) The dog? Taxes? Car? It went on…

My husband and I barely slept. It was a mix of simultaneous shock, horror and sheer exhaustion. We were up till 2am with alarms set for 5am, there was so much to do. I’ve never felt so overwhelmed and afraid before, it felt like a nightmare.

Thanks to friends coming over to help us pack. Thanks to my team (especially my tech designer Verna) for keeping our projects on track. Thanks to my neighbours for pitching in on house things and looking after our dog. Thanks to my family for hosting us temporarily while we found somewhere to live. Thanks to my (many!) bookkeepers, accountants, lawyers across multiple countries who helped us navigate various immigration, tax and legal hurdles.

We ended up in Sweden for three months, while we waited for a UK visa for my husband. We moved to the UK in November 2023, back to London where I grew up. 1 year after the “dream house purchased” milestone was checked off. The last 12 months were unexpected to say the least.

Fast forward to today, and we’ve heard back from our second green card application. This time, we were successful!

Cue huge sigh of relief.

While a small part of me dreads moving again, this will be the 6th school I’ve had to enrol the little one in now! I’ll be grateful to be coming back to the US.

Lessons learnt in 2024? Firstly, I can do anything!

Secondly, learning to master your perspective is everything. Instead of suffering in “exile” for 12 months, we’ve enjoyed “living abroad” for a year, made my business remote friendly for myself, and had the pleasure of living closer to the rest of our family for a short while.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://techpacks.co
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/techpacks_co/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/belindaalicejacobs/