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

Lily, appreciate you joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

Oak + Rose has a strong foundation of friendship and community. It is where our story starts. Small businesses are the foundation of the USA, with 37.1 million small businesses making up 99.9% of the economy. The freedom to have a passion, turn it into a business and change not only your life but the lives of the people in your local economy is something that is profoundly American.

In 2020 I was inspired by the way that Americans came together to support the small businesses in our local communities amidst the many challenges that resulted from COVID-19. While 43% of businesses were temporarily closed at some point in 2020, the simple decision to buy from a family-run shop down the street rather than buy from a large corporation affected many people trying to stay afloat. It is important to appreciate the “mom and pop” stores that rely on their small business. This sentiment is what drove me to bring Oak + Rose to life. I felt that a “Buy American” and “Small Business First” mentality should be a strong consumer value beyond 2020.

Oak + Rose’s mission is to increase visibility to amazing American brands and provide consumers an easy way to buy Made in America. We believe that it should not be so hard to shop American Made, so we do the research for you. It is also important to us that you not only love the products in our boxes, but are also inspired by the business stories of the companies we partner with. Many of the companies in our boxes give back to the community in some way. Some of our businesses donate to wildlife organizations, others support victims of human-trafficking, and others are thoughtful about their business process from beginning to end in order to be environmentally friendly.

I felt that this business would be worth while because every person that I mentioned the idea to loved it and told their friends about it. Buying American is a concept that everyone can get behind, and I strongly believe that the success of the business is solely dependent on the amount of people I get to see the brand. We pay a lot of attention to detail in our brand, our research and the quality of the products in our boxes. We are now starting our 2nd year of delivering our subscription boxes to our customers and we have had so much success and positive feedback about the brands that we choose to partner with and represent in our box. We always want our customers to feel like they are getting a gift in the mail from a friend rather than a business.

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?

My name is Lily and I am the Founder and Owner of Oak + Rose. I grew up in a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where I developed an appreciation for small businesses and hard work. Throughout my childhood my parents taught us, through their own actions, the foundations of perseverance, dedication and ambition. My father, and grandfathers were in the military so I naturally have a respect for our country and the military. In college I studied Vocal Performance and Business at Carnegie Mellon University. Oak + Rose was born out of the intersection of my upbringing, my creativity and business background.

After seeing many small businesses struggle throughout 2020 due to COVID-19, my entrepreneurial nature and appreciation for the “hard-working American” inspired me to create Oak and Rose. Our mission for Oak + Rose is to provide access and awareness to high-quality products made by small businesses across the US.

Personally, I started my Oak + Rose journey in January 2021 (3 months after getting married). Developed my brand guidelines, business strategy, built our website, set up social media, partnered with a box manufacturing company, and developed partnerships with the brands in our first box while pregnant all of 2021. And in 2022, while being a new first time mom, I was focused on developing our business process and figuring out the best and most optimal way to operate. In 2023, we are focused on GROWTH and brand awareness and we couldn’t be more excited!!

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

In January 2022, Oak + Rose was fresh. At that time we had delivered a beautiful Fall and Winter box to our customers with 8 unique and high-quality products in each. I was feeling so great about what we sent out to our customers, and we had an unexpected number of new subscribers. I was overjoyed and I was on a high with all our success! Also in January 2022, I had my first baby and I was loving everything about being a mom. They say that when a new baby is born that the mom is “reborn.” Priorities change and my focus naturally changed too. As a business owner it became a little bit of a challenging to manage everything, especially with having a small team. I realized that I needed to be incredibly efficient and methodical about the operations of the business so that I would have enough time for research and creativity. Reflecting on the year I am so proud of myself for pushing forward, making the strides that I did, and developing a system for the business. Sometimes an example of resilience isn’t a story of fighting through a tough time. Sometimes resilience is a story of fighting the distractions.

How’d you think through whether to sell directly on your own site or through a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc.

Oak + Rose is an ecommerce subscription service and we sell our boxes through our website that we built on wordpress. Originally I wanted Oak + Rose to be similar to Amazon where people could go to the website to buy something specific but know that it is Made in the USA but also high-quality. I want the shopping and checkout experience on our website to feel high-end and trustworthy.

The pros of selling on our own branded website is that it identifies our brand, we are our own voice and we make the decisions, but a con is that if we had the structure of Amazon our a big company we might be more in the public eye. We rely a lot on word of mouth and recommendations.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.oakandrose.us
• Instagram: @oakandrose.us
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/oakandrose.us
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/oak-rose/

Image Credits
Brand design by Kristin Bural at Soulbeam Studio