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

Stephanie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

We love to serve our customers and the meaningful connections they make and create with others. We do this through high quality, personalized, handcrafted leather goods and caring customer service.

Our mission above came from our desire to be valued and show others how much they’re valued. The stories our customers share with us are ones filled with sentimentality and care for others–gifts for loved ones or having the best swag for their team. Whatever the use of our personalized leather goods, our customers truly make it their own. And we’re happy to be a small part of creating that connection and meaning with others! It’s truly amazing to have the stories of how a customer continued to build a relationship with a loved one through a custom, personalized gift. Plus, we love treating others with kindness and respect because we know how nice that can be–especially from 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 background and context?

My name is Stephanie, and I turned my geeky hobby into a business. I spent years learning and practicing bookbinding and leatherworking before I sold my first leather journal. Once I started selling my journals, I started to look for better ways to reach people and got very intentional about creating a business. I have great team members who’ve helped build what we have today!

At Ox & Pine, we know how hard it can be to find a gift that’s meaningful and timeless for yourself or others. There’s a lot of junk out there and companies that don’t care! That’s why we only handcraft the best leather goods and personalize them just the way you want. Our speed of delivery and caring, top-notch customer service are just cherries on top to the best leather goods you’ll ever own. With our personalized, handcrafted leather goods you can create something meaningful that will last forever!

We’re obsessed with 4 things over here: leather, creating quality leather goods, getting you your order fast, and giving you the best customer service you’ve ever had.

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.

I love this question! I feel like there are a lot of people out there that make their products and not a lot of stories behind how that happened!

I didn’t have a plan to get into manufacturing, but I was on a mission to make the best leather goods and be able to have extensive personalization options on those leather goods. I had zero experience in manufacturing. And zero resources in how to make leather goods and teach others to do it.

I had to figure out more and more efficient ways to run our manufacturing processes. Then, recording those processes and teaching them to others became important. It’s helpful to have everyone making things the same way!

We also came across better tools and techniques and implemented those things. It’s not just about the fastest way to do something–you can do something really fast and end up with a low quality result.

We make each and every product we send out the door! We decided to keep it that way because we have very specific quality control standards to ensure our products are the very best!

Can you talk to us about how you funded your business?

I started my business by selling some of my own personal items to purchase the leather and materials for my first journals I would sell! From there, I invested the funds back into my business. I didn’t pay myself very much at first as I built up my business without debt. It’s given us more leverage and flexibility to grow and make good decisions to be completely debt-free!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://oxandpine.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oxandpine/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/oxandpine
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/oxandpine/

Image Credits
Ox & Pine