We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jamey Gresham & Margaret Boyce. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jamey Gresham & below.

Jamey Gresham &, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Quality control is a challenge almost every entrepreneur has had to focus on when growing – any advice, stories or insight around how to best ensure quality is maintained as your business scales?

As a small business, one of our differentiators is the fact that we take great care in the quality of our handbags. We source only the best materials and we work directly with our manufacturers to make sure that all of our products are up to our standards. We don’t have the luxury yet of having a household name that is synonymous with well-known quality, so we have to ensure that every bag that leaves our manufacturer is in the best shape it can be. We feel that the quality of our handbags is a direct reflection of us and who we are as founders. We test and sample every material to ensure that it meets our quality standards. We are extremely involved with sourcing, manufacturing, and distribution. As we have grown there have been hiccups, which we have addressed head-on and made adjustments where needed. That means we have had to change manufacturers or distributors or work with them directly to fix any issues we were having. It’s important to us that we never “check out” of the details and the processes that go into making our handbags. It can be tedious and stressful, but it’s worth it when at the end of the day we know we have produced a beautiful product for our customers.

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?

J. LOWERY is a female-founded contemporary handbag line that is designed in the South and handmade in the U.S. We are lifelong friends that set out on a mission to create an intentional and effortless handbag line. Each bag is designed with style, functionality, and self-expression in mind. The brand name is a merging of us as founders, the “J.” for Jamey and “LOWERY” for Margaret’s given middle name. The brand is a true collaboration from start to finish.

When researching the handbag industry, we noticed a lack in the offering of timeless handbags with a contemporary edge. So when designing our bags, we always keep our customers in mind. Important questions we’d ask ourselves were “What is she doing?”, “Where is she going?”, and “What is her style?” In founding our business, it was key for us to build an intentional brand that made every customer feel like their bag was created specifically for them. And one that continues to grow and evolve with us as we enter new life stages. When designing each product offering, we continue to ask ourselves, “Would we carry this?”, proving that we are determined to make a chic, yet practical product.

Every J. LOWERY bag is handmade in New York, something that is important to the quality and integrity of the brand. We wanted to work with artisans in their own backyard helping to stimulate the leather goods industry in the U.S. while providing us with the opportunity to have a personal, hands-on approach to the construction of every bag. Materials and resources to create the Italian leather handbags are ethically sourced and made, which is a key component of our brand DNA.

We founded J. LOWERY to help women feel confident and empowered by their style. We’ve made it a point to create an intentional, ethically sourced, and manufactured handbag line that uses only the best materials. With every new style, color, texture, and material, we look to make J. LOWERY the bag every woman reaches for when going from day to night and season to season.

How’d you meet your business partner?

Our journey together is probably longer than most co-founders and business partners. We are both from Meridian, MS (born two days apart) and have essentially grown up together and gone through just about every stage of life thus far with one another. From elementary to high school and eventually on to college at The University of Mississippi (Ole Miss), we have been side by side – we even joined the same sorority. We’re even further connected by the fact that Jamey is married to Margaret’s first cousin. Our long-standing joke is that we were together in the same hospital and have never experienced a moment in life without each other since.

After we graduated from college we moved to different cities and began our professional careers in marketing and event planning, but deep down we always knew we were meant to do something different. After years of working for other people in different industries, we decided to come together and pursue our mutual passion for fashion and accessories. Thus, J. LOWERY was born. We have the unique joy of not only growing a business together but also growing our families together – side by side, just like it’s always been.

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

Our products are manufactured by a small factory here in the U.S. We had no experience in the industry when we launched in 2019, so producing our bags close to home was very important to us. Google was our best friend at the start. As people who had never manufactured anything, we had to start somewhere and that seemed like the most logical place to compile the information we needed. We required a little hand-holding in the beginning to educate us through the process and were not afraid to express that to all the manufacturers we met with. As with most things, it took time and a little bit of trial and error. Through the process, we’ve learned that designs on paper do not always translate to real life and we eventually found the perfect partner to help guide us on our journey. For our brand and our sanity, it was crucial to us that we found a partner, not just a third party. Someone who would take the time to work with us and who would put as much care and attention into our products as we had.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.shopjlowery.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shopjlowery/?hl=en

Image Credits
J. LOWERY