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

Nicole, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard

What Rare Olive offers is slow alternative wooden jewellery and accessories. Each piece is unique and smartly crafted— many are made with locally sourced materials and hand-selected wood grains. There is a quality to the craftsmanship that goes into each piece. There is also ingenuity, with styles that are versatile and that can be worn multiple ways.

All too often industry standard drives designs that are made the same way with expected materials that aren’t conscious of the environment. My mission is to create modern, sustainable, high quality products. I am always looking for ways to reduce waste within my making processes while providing a product I can feel proud of. I enjoy providing customers with unique items that are alternatives to mass-produced commercial products.

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?

What began as a creative outlet 10 years ago has since turned into an entire maker lifestyle.

My passion for creating and making stemmed from my roots. My grandfather was a carpenter, my dad a DIY-er and my mom a homemaker. Creating and working with my hands was something I found myself interested in from a young age. My mom, being from a large family of 10 kids, passed onto me the notion of reusing and saving. My dad taught computer programming, with a mind of ingenuity he passed onto me the ability to “macgyver” functional solutions out of things I have. As a kid, I often found myself saving my parents recycled boxes and containers to make myself storage solutions for my school supplies or hair accessories etc.

Come to find me years later heading off to post secondary to pursue a degree in “Product Design” where I learned a lot about making processes. I suppose it was fitting. But the world of mass production just didn’t quite jive with my soul. Most things were being made from plastics in large factories with poor labor laws. I wasn’t keen on the idea of contributing to more of this. I still loved making and creating but needed to find ways to do so that aligned more with my values.

I would draw my ideas out often, but they would stay just that, ideas. That is until I met my now husband, a woodworker, he taught me about different wood types and grains and how I could bring these ideas to life with wood as a material. I felt much more comfortable with this. In starting my own business, I could choose to work with wood as my medium because it is a more eco-friendly material. I could follow “cradle to cradle” strategies, by intentionally sourcing woods from trees that had to come down due to damage or disease. I could intentionally design wares that are versatile and can be warn many different ways for maximum use. And that is exactly what I set out to do. My works are made with quality craftsmanship made to last. I cut, shape, and sand all my own pieces using smaller woodworking hand tools insuring very little to no waste in my methods. Even the packaging I use if and when necessary is paperback wood veneer that is completely biodegradable.
Having this autonomy over how I create is what gave me the ability to build something unique, that I could feel proud of.

Running this business has provided me with the ability to grow and learn, allowing me to mindfully make products and meaningful connections. Since the woodworking and fashion industries are not commonly seen together—Rare Olive creations are truly rare and unique. It is part of a movement to provide a sustainable aesthetic for people who gravitate towards good design, slow fashion, and supporting local.

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

At first I began selling my handmade pieces on Etsy. In 2013 Etsy was fairly new and you could build teams and meet people through this platform. I was working cleaning jobs to pay the bills while growing slowly. Around this time, I began going to markets on weekends popping up a table with bed linens for covering and laying out what I had. I knew very little about selling this was clear, but I started meeting people, kind people, people who loved and believe in what I was doing . This encouraged me, and gave me the motivation to start trying to figure-out what I needed to do to sustain running a business. Slowly over time I worked on improving my booth set up for markets and started getting into bigger markets. Today we do about 20 to 30 markets a years and built our own official site for selling online.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Having a business that relies on ‘market life’ for the majority of it’s income isn’t without its challenges. I’ve found myself at markets where little to no one shows up and outdoor events in torrential downpours. During the pandemic years we had to pivot to online, one by one every one of our markets were cancelled and this went on for 2 years. With no end date in site at the time, we attempted virtual markets. They were nowhere near the same experience as in-person shows, but we did our best to keep things a float.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.rareolive.ca/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rareolive.ca/