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

Holly, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I started Lost Woods to fix a big problem in the handbag industry – there was no plastic-free, high-quality, sustainable alternative to animal leather.

I’ve loved animals since I was a little girl. I decided to stop eating them when I was 14, but it wasn’t until my early twenties that I delved deeper and realized that the dairy, egg, and skin industries were just as rife with animal abuse and exploitation.

I think it’s devastating that humans have taken one of the greatest joys of our planet, animals, and turned them into products. Did you know that humans kill more than 200 million land animals for food per day? That’s not counting sea creatures, animals killed indirectly by habitat destruction, or animals killed specifically for other industries – like fashion.

Raising animals is also incredibly resource intensive and unsustainable. Raising hundreds of millions of animals requires a lot of room, water, antibiotics and animal feed. Cattle ranching for beef and leather is the biggest driver of deforestation in the world. It’s one of the highest emitting industries and it causes significant waterway pollution. Producing leather requires a ridiculous amount of water, and 85- 90% of leather globally is chrome tanned, which is toxic for workers and the environment.

I studied marketing and design at university, and for our final project we were tasked with creating a product we wished existed in the world.

I had always searched for a vegan leather handbag that wasn’t made from polyurethane, aka plastic made from petroleum, but I couldn’t find it. I was inspired to fill that gap in the market, and to create a vegan brand that was both luxurious and sustainable.

There’s a Japanese concept called Ikigai, which translates to your life purpose or reason for being – the intersection of what you love, what the world needs, and what you’re good at. Starting Lost Woods was my answer to this – the perfect intersection of my love for animals, the world’s need for sustainable fashion alternatives, and my skills in design and marketing.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m Holly Edwards, the creator of Lost Woods, a 30 year old designer from the Gold Coast, Australia.

Lost Woods is an eco luxury handbag label. Our bags are handmade at a small family-owned workshop in Portugal from a material called MIRUM® – which is the first 100% plastic free vegan leather in the world.

MIRUM is an incredible material. It is made from 47% natural tree rubber, 26% natural fibres and fillers, 27% plant oils and waxes, and is backed with natural fibres like cotton and tencel. Did you know that natural rubber comes from tree sap? Sustainably managed rubber farms can actually result in net negative carbon emissions, because of the carbon that the trees absorb from the atmosphere.

MIRUM was tested with the help of BMW, who are launching it for their car interiors. It’s proven to be strong, water-resistant and of uncompromising quality. It’s produced in a renewable energy powered factory in the USA. It can be recycled into new MIRUM. It’s up to 10 times less greenhouse gas emitting than conventional animal or plastic leather.

We offer a collection of quiet luxury handbags with timeless designs – including tote bags, crossbody bags, shoulder bags, backpacks and wallets. Some styles are buttery soft and others have sharp modern structures – some are minimal and others have accents like box chains. Every bag comes in silver or gold hardware.

We launched with classic black, and will be introducing colours soon. Every colour of MIRUM is created with natural pigments – for example, the blue is made with lapis lazuli crystals.

Our bags are high quality, cruelty free and made with next generation eco materials.

Cattle ranching for beef and leather is the biggest driver of deforestation in the world – our brand name Lost Woods pays homage to all of the forests and wildlife lost to leather.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

There was an earlier concept of my business that I tried straight out of university using cork leather – a material made from the bark of the cork oak tree, pressed into fabric.

I only had enough money to launch my business with one style of handbag, and produced 100 of them in China. This took all of my savings, and I hustled to sell the bags online with a very limited budget – only to get feedback from customers down the line that the cork was flaking and cracking.

I’d made cork purses as a university project years earlier, and the material had never cracked or flaked – in fact, it had aged very well. But I’d used a different cork material supplier for my business than the one I’d used for university. I was shocked and rattled by the feedback.

I had no financial recourse because the cork supplier claimed that they had never noticed an issue before, and the manufacturer of the handbags claimed that they hadn’t mistreated the material or put it under any stress in production.

Some customers experienced the issue worse than others. Some were happy with their bag regardless, but others wanted refunds. It was a difficult time, and I ended up significantly in the negative for the venture.

I gave up on the concept for a while, but over the years (whilst I worked for a marketing agency) the idea never left me.

I decided to keep an ear to the ground about new sustainable vegan leathers hitting the market. Over the years I tested cactus leather, grape leather, pineapple leather – you name it. They much more promising in terms of durability, but they still required a high percentage of plastic to be durable.

I first found out about MIRUM through a Vogue Business article that was interviewing the founders of their company, Natural Fiber Welding. I reached out to their team but I didn’t hear back. Their Instagram showed that they were in the very early stages of their start up – doing trade shows with companies like Porsche (exhibiting their material as a car interior concept), but not actually producing yet – especially for small brands. I kept emailing them over a 2 year period, but it was crickets.

After finding a great handbag workshop in Portugal, I decided to start prototyping with the next best material, which was 80% natural. I finished prototyping and was about to launch when I finally got an email back from Natural Fiber Welding, offering me MIRUM samples. It set back the launch of Lost Woods another year – but in the end, it was worth it. It was so exciting to finally launch with my dream material, the one that I had been waiting for!

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Since launching 9 months ago, my strategy has been holistic across paid and organic advertising. I’ve seen a steady growth of my client base, but with the increasing privacy legislation and limits on ad tracking, it can be a challenge to understand where exactly they are coming from!

I run consistent paid digital campaigns on Meta, Google and Pinterest. My ads get a lot of engagement, but they don’t track many conversions. It’s challenging because my products are hyper niche and expensive – not an impulse buy – so even if a user finds out about my brand through a paid ad, they are unlikely to convert within the tracking window.

I try to post everyday on Instagram, and to engage authentically with the small but passionate community I have built there. I got a beautiful professional photoshoot done with a model for my brand launch, but I find that my audience tends to engage more with behind the scenes, organic content that I make. I am trying to get more confident in front of the camera.

I invested in a publicist for a few months to get Lost Woods some initial press traction. Not only did this expand my audience, but it helped me to grow my domain authority and increase my organic traffic faster due to the backlinks. I also use affiliate marketing for referral traffic and backlinks – I’m on the ShareASale platform and I manually approach content creators in my niche via email – e.g. vegan recipe bloggers. My website is optimised for SEO and I invest time in writing topical blogs for my website. Overall I’ve seen consistent growth in organic traffic since my launch.

My products are also stocked on a few online marketplaces that are relevant to my niche.

When I look at my analytics, most of my sales come from customers searching my brand name, which is great, but also a pain. They could be finding out about Lost Woods through organic socials, paid socials, organic google, paid google, press, affiliates, marketplaces – you name it. Some sales track well, some don’t – I try not to stress about it and I ask my customers about their journey finding my brand when I can. Customers have many touch points before buying an expensive product, so the whole process plays a part!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://lostwoodsvegan.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lostwoodsvegan/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lostwoodsvegan
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lost-woods-vegan
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lostwoodsvegan
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@lostwoodsvegan

Image Credits
Chris Dwyer