Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Carmen Olsen. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Carmen, thanks for joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

Almost every precious memory in my life including my wedding, family camping trips, making maple syrup, breathtaking views, traveling, and adventure took place in nature.

The nature around us is so beautiful, rich, and precious, a pure marvel that brings joy to so many. We can keep it clean and beautiful through simple changes. When I learned that 11 million tons of textiles go to the landfill each year I knew we could do better. Park + Coop is one way to do that, by keeping textiles out of the landfill and making use of the raw materials we already have rather than generating new. Changing how we do business is really powerful and rewarding.

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.

I first began Park + Coop to create premium, upcycled, no-tie aprons for my children and soon expanded the product line to include other home goods and gifts. We help our customers create a beautiful and joyful home, life, and planet by using rescued textiles in all of our products. Our products are original, uniquely designed, each one different from the next and made in small batches to last a long time, extending the life of the fabrics we rescue.

I’m proud of what we create, our methods, and our values. Supporting Park + Coop and other companies that choose to be part of the circular economy makes a difference.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

I have a 9-5 day job and have built up good credit over the years, which helped me secure a loan to initially fund the business. But it took a lot of time, research, and development to nail down the right product designs and methods for upcycling. By the time we got our products to market the loan money had dried up and we weren’t generating revenue yet. It’s been challenging, working a third job to pay for the business and keep up with loan payments as we build our customer base.

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

When I was first trying to design our products I tried to do everything on the side. I was working with contract designers and sewists to develop the products, and talking to marketing and branding consultants to learn how to get my products out to people. It was moving along very slowly, taking years and costing a lot. I felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere and decided that to truly make a go of this business I needed to dive all in. I got a loan, rented a workshop, and hired some part-time employees to help me make fast progress. Our original product design was too expensive to make and couldn’t command the necessary price on the market for the business to be profitable, so we had to redesign. It took a long time to nail down the right design.

In hindsight, the overhead associated with all of that put me at risk and the additional job I work to pay for it takes me away from the business. Although it did accelerate the product creation, if I had it to do over again I would have done everything I could to delay that larger financial commitment until after I had tested the product on the market. That’s what my advice would be to other entrepreneurs, too. Have patience and keep going!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.parkandcoop.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/park_coop/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ParkAndCoop/

Image Credits
Photography by Amy Gregg, Amyliz Pera and Valerie Condon