We recently connected with Priya Vij and have shared our conversation below.

Priya, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

The idea for Hapny, my decorative cabinet hardware company, was largely influenced by the cabinet hardware distribution company my father started nearly four decades ago. I grew up watching him build and scale a successful business selling cabinet knobs, pulls, hooks, and hinges. I always had an appreciation for those small pieces of metal that help you open your doors and drawers and found they were often overlooked, especially by people my age who are still renting.

Despite growing up in that world, the idea for Hapny did not come to me until my late twenties. After high school, I hopped around a few different cities (the inspiration behind the name Hapny – Houston, Austin, Portland, and New York!) and spent a lot of time decorating and sprucing up my apartments. I came across all kinds of DIY / home brands showing me how to paint my walls and furniture, install shelving, buy or make decorative knick knacks, etc, but no one was talking to me about the power and ease of using a screwdriver and new hardware to revamp my space or furniture.

The biggest opportunity areas I found in the industry were around branding and product quality and design. There are hundreds of companies and millions of hardware options on the market (a Google search for “cute cabinet hardware” yields over 16 million results!), but there are little to no beloved brands in the space. Hardware is something you touch and interact with multiple times a day and is part of many rooms in your home, and yet there is rarely an emotional connection between the consumer and the brand from which they purchase their hardware. There is an opportunity to make the overall end-to-end experience more consumer-centric and create a brand that resonates with shoppers in a deeper way.

The quality and design of the products on the market is also inconsistent. Home retailers and fashion companies that offer hardware simply import mass-produced products of questionable quality, while hardware industry leaders have higher quality but less design-forward products. These leaders have also been operating in the market for decades, some even for centuries, so there is baseline room for a breath of fresh air.

Hapny formed from a desire to merge the two worlds – build a modern hardware brand, create content and energy around the brand / products, and disrupt a stagnant industry, all while designing high quality, durable, and unique products manufactured by industry experts.

Priya, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

A few months ago, I launched my company Hapny, a new home accessories brand focused on the small design details that have the power to transform your space, starting with cabinet hardware. The products are designed by me and created by reputable and long-established manufacturers in Taiwan. I source from the same factory my dad has used since he started his company nearly 40 years ago.

Our launch assortment includes seven solid brass hardware collections, inclusive of knobs, cabinet pulls, and appliance pulls, across the most popular center-to-center sizes and finishes, that are modern, minimal, and versatile enough for any kind of space. Our products are sold nationwide in nearly 60 decorative showrooms and online marketplaces, with more retailers being onboarded soon.

I am proud to be one of the few women, and women of color, leading in this relatively stagnant industry, and I love being able to launch a colorful, energetic brand in a sea of mundane, indistinguishable companies.

Beyond designing the product, I am on a mission to make hardware a more common part of the home decorating conversation, especially for renters. All you need is a screwdriver, a piece of metal, and 2 minutes to completely refresh the aesthetic and vibe of your space or piece of furniture. As part of that, I will be launching “how to” / educational content, ranging from basic product explanations to how to choose hardware types, mix and match finishes, and even drill your own cabinet holes. A majority of my friends and peers don’t understand how simple it is to change out your hardware, let alone what the difference between a knob and a pull is. I want to help bridge that gap and make designing your environment feel more accessible. I will also be expanding into adjacent product lines like bath accessories, door hardware, outlet covers, and switch plates.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

I started working on Hapny in late 2019 while I still had my full-time job. I was lucky that a lot of my initial milestones were ones I could accomplish at any hour of any day – researching about and designing products, communicating with a manufacturer overseas, photographing samples, designing a website, etc. I was able to accomplish a lot of the foundational work outside of business hours. Once I placed my first inventory order, the lead times due to COVID and supply chain circumstances were triple what they normally were, so I had a lot of downtime before I actually had the product in hand to sell. This allowed me to balance doing both and keep my professional life as stable as possible.

Once I received my inventory, my side hustle work began to bleed into my full-time job hours. I needed to make visits locally and around the nation to pitch new clients to carry my line, I had orders coming in during the day, and I had to answer customer support calls during business hours. I was able to balance and use vacation days to continue both roles as seamlessly as I could, but eventually it started to reach a tipping point. I knew it was time to make the tough decision to quit my full time job once I felt it was starting to take me away – time and energy wise – from showing up 100% to what Hapny needed from me. It was scary, but I knew it was the right thing to do for me to give this a real shot.

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

Anyone starting or operating a business between 2020-now demonstrates a certain level of resilience in my opinion. The phrase is overused, but there really are endless unprecedented circumstances around raw material costs, shipping costs, supply chain delays and disruptions (just to name a few) that make running a business today much harder than the “before” times. Plus, general saturation in social media and rising acquisition and advertising costs make standing out as a brand today really difficult… and expensive.

For me, I’m facing material costs that are 36% higher YoY, supplier lead times that are 2x the normal to create my products, shipping and unloading times that take up to 1 month longer than quoted to get from the dock to my warehouse, higher than normal travel costs to visit showrooms and customers, lower showroom brick & mortar traffic YoY that affects my sales, a pending recession… the list goes on and on.

On top of the professional-related obstacles, I had a very difficult year in 2021 personally. A close family member passed away suddenly, and another close family member is struggling with an advanced case of cancer. I moved to my hometown to save costs on my business and get it running, but I’ve also spent my time outside of the business taking care of my family and those around me, all while also trying to take care of myself. I’m sure many people can relate to having to manage that balance.

There were MANY days where I questioned what I was doing and if this was all a risky, expensive mistake. I expect more of those moments to come and go as I continue down this path. At the end of the day, I believe in my vision, and I know that not taking a chance on this idea at all will lead to more regrets than taking a chance and failing. I keep coming back to that in my core, and through that I find the drive to push forward through uncertainty. It isn’t always going to be easy or feel good, but finding a community of others who are following a similar path and trusting myself are what will help me get through.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://hapnyhome.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hapnyhome/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hapnyhome
• Other: Where to buy our products (we are currently not selling D2C): https://hapnyhome.com/pages/wheretobuy

Image Credits
Hapny Home