We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Peggy O’Brien and Willa Callahan. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Peggy and Willa below.
Peggy and Willa, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?
It is! One of our first investments after starting the business was working with a branding agency to help us develop our name and visual branding. While all of the exercises they hosted were incredibly engaging and beneficial to our thought process, it ultimately led us to our own brainstorming work. We dove into our personal and professional values and styles as California-based individuals. We found ourselves drawn to the delicately beautiful Pacific coast, the laid-back elegance of the coastal lifestyle, the many interesting terrains of Northern California. The state flower, Poppy, quickly came to me and felt wholly representative of these qualities that would therefore inspire our brand aesthetic, brand/product discovery, and gifting curation. We each have our own California journey and it felt right to honor that and share it with our clients.
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?
The only thing better than getting a great gift is giving a great gift—nailing the right balance of someone’s style and interests while hitting the perfect note of sentimentality.
Poppy was started out of a need to modernize gifting, making it more efficient and thoughtful.
Willa and I each have backgrounds in marketing, merchandising, and customer relations. In these roles we were frequently gifting clients and business partners as core strategies of our relationship management. Gifting fosters connection, celebrates important relationships, and honors partners and loved ones. But, we found our resources were either antiquated, i.e. old-fashion swag companies, or generic, i.e. ready-made gift boxes.
We were seeking a better option and realized if we were renting designer dresses, requesting cars from our phones, and paying someone to pick out groceries—why couldn’t we tap someone to help source and deliver our gifts?
Poppy was created to help individuals and companies save time, delight loved ones, and never miss another occasion.
We’ve now come to realize that it’s not just sales teams who value our help, but busy millennial moms, working professionals, and boutique service brands who seek the opportunity to outsource a time consuming task with a partner that delivers at a high standard!
From your fifth 4 year-old’s birthday party of the month to your mother-in-law’s 75th birthday or boss’s promotion, Poppy Gifting will ensure you never miss the mark!
Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?
When we were first building our brand, pre-launch, we found Lydia Fenet’s boo, The Most Powerful Woman in the Room is You, to be a great source of inspiration. Lydia’s recap of her experiences coming up as a working professional and entrepreneur by way of corporate America proved to be a fountain of motivation for us. She guided us to charge to take command of our goals, tap into our values, release the feeling of intimidation, try/test/learn without fear, speak up for ourselves but preserve grace, so on and so forth. We frequently revisit the book, her tips and tactics, and even more frequently look to her Instagram or podcast for daily doses of inspiration.
Willa and I each have our own mentors, whether personal connections or friends, and former business leaders. But we found it to be a tremendous help to have a shared mentor in Lydia, a public figure, who influenced some of our brand-building philosophies that were especially key during our early days.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
Among our many great qualities, Willa and I are certainly people pleasers. While we appreciate our abilities to be flexible, accommodating, polite, etc., it has also been a cause for slowing down our journeys at times. At times, we’ve had to unlearn being people pleasers and stop ourselves from being overly polite. Instead, speak up for ourselves and be confident in our opinions, policies, pricing. If we are going to go forward with our own business and brand we have to own our position for continued success.
Contact Info:
- Website: poppygifting.com
- Instagram: @PoppyGifting
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PoppyGiftingSF/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/71243253/admin/feed/posts/
- Other: Text for service: 415-943-3210
Image Credits
Allison Busch Photography and Calista Jane Styling