Jessie Wong

Every girl on my dad's side of the family has something Mei.

Ling Mei, Mei Mei, Hou Mei, Yume.

Yu means kind of like beautiful, jade, pretty, and then Mei means little sister, young girl.

And so...

It just made sense for that to become the brand.

So the genesis of each bag is the personality of someone close to me that had a need that wasn't being met.

So we have the Brooke bag.

We have, you know, the Claudia tote.

We have the Brady bag.

And these are, you know, people close to me in my life that, you know, I sort of saw a bit of a caring problem.

And usually if you're solving a problem in a design, there'll be other people who gravitate towards it.

On the other side of the coin, I was down in Dunedin and I

that area around central Otago is where New Zealand deer are farmed.

And so I was introduced to the material, which actually is an incredible regenerative material from our land, which would otherwise be landfilled.

And there were luxury houses using it at the time.

So I was lucky to be introduced in that context.

It was perfect for these larger laptop toning bags because it was buttery, soft like a lambskin, but strong like a cowhide.

So it just sort of worked.

And that really became the center of, you know, the core of the product.

And that's what all of our key styles are made out of.