Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Serena Houlihan. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alright, Serena thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
The concept for Le Wren came to us very organically. It is really a culmination of life experience and professional experience. In the spring of 2019, I found out that a dear relative had been diagnosed with Glioblastoma, the most aggressive form of brain cancer. The news was devastating and also hit a little harder as I lost my mother to Glioblastoma in 2009.
I searched for care packages to send her that were both tasteful and useful and would help support her as she underwent her protocol. I knew exactly what she would be going through since I had watched my mother go through the same thing a decade earlier.
I couldn’t find a collection of gifts that were both beautiful and useful, curated specifically for those undergoing cancer treatment. I was shocked. Gifting is my love language, and I really wanted to send my family member something to let her know how much we were thinking of her, while also adding some value into her every day life that was changing so rapidly. In the absence of any existing options, I went ahead and compiled it myself. That was the first Le Wren gift box.
Fast forward a few months and the company I was working for went out of business and I gave birth to our twin boys. There were all sorts of shifts in our family life! In thinking about the future of my career, I kept coming back to how such a gifting service did not exist. How was that possible? I literally felt goosebumps every time I thought of it. I decided to float the idea by my friend Amanda (now business partner). She was immediately supportive and as the daughter of a breast cancer survivor herself felt the need for such a company deeply.
My professional background is in merchandising, buying and product development. Hers is management consulting and finance. Between the two of us, we felt equipped to bring Le Wren to life. We started working on the business plan and worked through the numbers, the long term viability and the market opportunity. The output was encouraging.
We decided to go for it, but as we were getting ready to launch, Covid hit and the world shut down. All of a sudden my eldest daughter was home from preschool indefinitely.
After a few months, we were able to re-calibrate, find reliable childcare for my three children and were able to launch officially in September 2020.
Serena, 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?
I started in the retail world straight out of college. I was lucky enough to be part of the Saks Fifth Avenue buyers training program in New York City and spent the next several years there learning the ropes of the luxury buying world. I had always been interested in fashion but knew I wasn’t going to be a designer. Enter the role of buyer, where one gets to be creative and analytical. It was my dream job. I spent the next fifteen years working my way up the ranks at various brands like Coach and Gap and while I loved what I did, after my mother’s passing, I yearned for more meaning in my work. In this way, Le Wren is a perfect culmination of my professional and personal experiences.
Our mission is to make it easier to show your loved ones you care when they are going through a difficult chapter. So often people have the best of intentions and want to help their loved ones but feel paralyzed on how to do so. Will I offend them? Maybe it’s better to do nothing? Should I just send flowers? We wanted to provide a gifting service that helped people feel less helpless as they supported their loved ones through tough chapters of life.
We started Le Wren focusing on cancer care and support but we quickly broadened our scope to several moments when loved ones need support: bereavement, recovering from surgery, postpartum, mental health challenges and chronic illness. Covid care packages also became very popular.
Our products are carefully researched, curated and thoughtfully compiled into a beautiful gift box for a unique and luxurious unboxing experience. Most of our gifts come from other women-owned businesses as well. We finish each order with a handwritten note, for that extra personal touch. Customers can shop for either ready-to-give care packages or select products from our collections themselves, depending on how much they want to be involved in product selection.
The initial response has been so overwhelmingly positive that we know we’re headed in the right direction. I’m so proud we launched against some overwhelming obstacles and that we are able to help people, in our small way, feel more empowered to support their loved ones when they need it the most.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
I was always so intimidated by the idea of entrepreneurship. I could manage in big companies just fine but the idea of starting something from scratch was just beyond my comprehension. At some point, I had taught myself I wasn’t cut out for entrepreneurship; that I was better off in the corporate world.
Luckily, Amanda and I felt so strongly about the need for Le Wren – and what it means to us – that we pushed past any intimidation about starting up our own company and just went for it.
Interestingly, while it certainly isn’t easy, with all of the amazing technology that is available in today’s world, it is much “easier” than we expected. All the logistics that I couldn’t fathom turned out to be the easy part. Scaling is much harder!
How did you build your audience on social media?
This is a tough one. I had only ever used social media for personal reasons and had limited my followers to only people I know, etc. I didn’t want to grow on social media but obviously for Le Wren, a growing audience was essential to our business growth.
Until very recently, we handled all the social media ourselves, drawing inspiration from all over and trying hard to keep messaging consistently and in line with our mission. As a creative person, I enjoy the visual side of it but certainly struggle, like many, to keep content fresh and engaging.
I was also disappointed to see how many brands buy followers. We felt very strongly from the beginning that we wanted each follower to be a real person that wanted to actively engage in our brand and mission. We’ve been approached several times by companies to buy followers and flat out refuse to do so. Authenticity and community are at the heart of our mission and we can’t forsake that just to hit an arbitrary follower count.
One of the best pieces of advice I can give on starting a social media presence is to engage with other accounts and influencers and people you admire and that are relevant to your brand/company. Comment, like, share, DM. All of it. It may seem like you aren’t cutting through but if your comments and DMs are genuine and relevant, eventually you will get noticed and get some traction.
Example: we had an amazing collaboration with a six figure influencer that started because I just happened to comment on her posts a lot. She eventually reached out and said how much she loved our brand and would love to support us any way she could. For a business in its infancy, this was extraordinary exposure! She’s still a great supporter of ours and I’m so grateful for building that relationship with her through Instagram.
It’s a very steep learning curve, especially as the algorithms continue to change, but slowly and surely we are finding our way, It’s a real privilege to be able to interact with followers and customers via social media. It’s hard to imagine starting a business without it as a source of marketing and brand exposure.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://lewrencare.com/
- Instagram: @lewrencare
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lewrencare
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/le-wren/
Image Credits
images from Amanda Barker Photography.