Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Kia ora koutou, welcome to this very special episode of Shared Lunch, where we are sitting down with the creator and founder of Yumei, Jessie Wong. We're going to talk a bit about the formation of Yumei, how the business has evolved over the last 10 years, and then we're going to dive into a real special project close to Jessie's heart, which is a Wellington Biennial coming up this weekend.
So let's get into it.
Investing involves risk. You might lose the money you start with. We recommend talking to a licensed financial advisor. Everything you're about to see and hear is current at the time of recording.
Thanks so much for joining us today, Jessie. Can you tell us a little bit about why you started UMA? What problem you're solving and the journey you've been on since?
So I started UMA 10 years ago when I couldn't find a bag that would fit everything I needed to carry in a day. So that was my laptop, lunchbox, visual diary, charger, makeup bag, you know, the kitchen sink. And I think that that was a pretty common thing. story at the time for students. I was a student in Dunedin.
I had, you know, a canvas tote with all of my twiles and bits and pieces for my design degree. And I really just wanted something that reflected my design aesthetic value and materials and just functioned really well and had that utility to it. So that's why I started making bags.
And every, you know, a lot of people have had ideas, but you went and executed it. What was around you to go, yep, I'm going to make this happen. And how'd you go about that? And then how did it turn in from, you know, creating a bag for yourself to, you know, creating bags for people right around the world to be using now?
I'd always wanted to have my own business somehow, but I don't know if it was that. I just love making and then I loved making for myself. I worked in a fashion boutique when I was a student and I remember walking in one day with one of my bags and my boss, Amy, said, what's that and where did you get it? And I said, I made it.
And she's like, OK, well, when you make them for real, bring them to me. I want the exclusive. So that was sort of the first push into the commercial realm. But I suppose in New Zealand, especially in the fashion industry, if you want to be able to build a brand and craft things, you have to be able to do almost the full breadth of tasks within that yourself.
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Chapter 2: What inspired Jessie Wong to start Yume?
Every product you create in every leather goods that you have created and now that incredible recyclable nylon you're using, it all has a lot of depth to it. Can you tell us a bit about your design process, like how you come up with your concepts, what they mean, often named after somebody you know?
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.
And then everything that followed, you know, just kind of had to have that common sense around regeneration, around provenance, around how we run a business. So that's sort of, you know, been the guiding ethos.
Something that's maybe more behind the scenes with you, May, is just how much thought goes into how you're having a positive impact. And, you know, we're a B Corp, which, you know, we think quite a lot about our business being a force for good. And I know you may are too. So tell us a bit more about what being a B Corp means to you.
So within UMAE, we're B Corp. You know, I spent quite a long time on that certification to really kind of make sure that we were putting in place the best things we could in our production line. We're Toy2 Carbon Net Zero. We offset positivity. But we also have some programs in-house that, you know, allow the customer to actually engage with the product in a circular way.
Because I think the onus is on the business really to make sure that,
you know these things can be done so we have a care and repair program and a carry to gain program where you can bring bags back to us and we'll refurbish them in-house and you know sell them on because the end of your journey with the bag is not the end of the bag's journey I mean I used to make every single bag myself and it sort of would break my heart if they're just sitting in the back of a wardrobe or not being used I think that these things are integral to how you do business and
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Chapter 3: How did Yume evolve from a personal project to a global brand?
broken down into that polymer, remade into new nylon and the impact is like 90% less than any new nylon and it can be recycled infinitely. So it is a genuine story around that product and I guess that's why we didn't just settle for any kind of fabric. It took a long time but it instantly became quite a large percentage of our revenue.
growing it from an idea in Dunedin to now having stores across Aotearoa. You're also in Australia often and a really strong online presence too, even being in New York too. So tell us about how you've intentionally gone from, I love designing and making, the entrepreneurial spirit to now I'm a fully fledged businesswoman with, you know, a team and I'm running this internationally.
Like how have you scaled yourself and thought about growing you know, learning more in the business world over the last 10 years?
I think it's all happened kind of one step at a time, right? You know, you just sort of learn a new thing. You push the envelope a little bit further. I know that every time I'm feeling a little bit out of my comfort zone that to interpret that as, you know, that is you learning something new and kind of challenging yourself. If you're feeling too comfy, it's probably not a good thing.
I mean, we just, you know, started making bags and then we got to a point where it wasn't going to be possible to make everything totally ourselves anymore. I mean, I still have the calluses from, you know, those first designs. You know, I remember there was two years that I was just doing commercial leasing for retail stores and learning a lot about that.
And then, you know, going offshore, going into the Australian market, it takes a long time to feel like this is your place and people know you and you have a reputation and, you know, you're not sort of like cold calling anymore. So everything just takes time. So just kind of learn by doing really.
Yeah. I really like how all of those things that seem really unscalable at the start really do compound and that it does take time. You know, I think some people think Sharesies is, you know, it's just all of a sudden happened.
We've got a million users, but it's been like nine and a bit years, you know, and talking about growth, you've made a really big call in the last year or so around how you grow Yume. So you have bootstrapped this yourself, you know, for about nine years of creating Yume and then you decided to take on some capital.
Can you tell us a bit about what made you decide to bring on an investor, how that's going for you and Any lessons learned?
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Chapter 4: What is the significance of the name 'Yume'?
I love the city. We are not too big, not too small. We're sort of perfectly right sized to be the creative capital of Aotearoa. I think that I have, you know, over the last 10 years and especially building You May, observed so much incredible talent being born of Wellington, you know.
Wellingtonians have gone on to do incredible things on the world stage and we don't necessarily celebrate it enough because we're a very modest breed here.
You've thought so deeply about what Wellington needs and how important creativity is in Wellington. And it's always been the essence of what makes this city really special on a global stage, let alone here in Aotearoa. How can we re-own that creative technology capital that we are?
So I think it goes back one step, right? Like, how do you make Wellington a place that people want to live, raise their families, build businesses? You know, how do you make it just a fun, beautiful, exciting, vibrant place to be? And that probably is a combination of several things that allows, you know, creativity to thrive.
So there's probably, you know, those links for students who are coming out of their degrees. I remember, you know, when I finished my degree, there was you know, not heaps of resource and no super clear ways to get into the industry. It was all like a little bit figure it out.
And so being able to, you know, put some of those frameworks in place, more investment and capital infrastructure around creative industries. But I think in order for that to come, we have to have an event or a cultural anchor or something that really exemplifies
um design and the excellence and not excellence in the sense of being best excellence in the sense of you know we are a very collegial city we don't you know often speak about how um how we you know punch on the world stage but we we really do people like Sabine Marcellus studied here we have people like our friend Seb Hunt from Entire Studios building an incredible brand over in LA
which has absolutely gone global. You know, lots of people don't know that these people are from Wellington and I think we need to really show the kind of value that that creativity can have in the economy and the ecosystem that we live in and build that infrastructure for the next generations to come up and for it to thrive here.
Yeah, I remember when I was deciding what university to go to and I came here to Wellington, I remember on Marion Street, Creative HQ used to be there. And it literally was creators and makers, they were sewing machines in there. And it was quite funny, full circle, when we started Sharesies, we were in Creative HQ as a tech company and it pivoted obviously quite a bit.
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