After moving to London and immersing myself in the local photography scene, I was starting to finally understand that big shot commercial photography is just not my gig. There are many reasons why this was the case - the culture, the work-life balance to name just a couple. What was most important though was that commercial photography just didn't bring me the inspiration and drive I had felt back when I had started doing family and children photo sessions. And to quote one of my photography professors in university: "Whatever kind of photography you do, you need to have the utmost passion for it, you need to burn with desire". If you have one thing as an artist, it needs to be passion for what you do.
At that time, we had just moved into our lovely London flat, overlooking the nearby park which I absolutely loved. I was getting really into decorating and arranging it, and I was trying to find a particular type of kitchen storage containers to fit my cupboards without any success. Amidst all my other photography projects, I decided that this might be a fun idea for a little side business - creating a brand for kitchen organisation.
I started working on my idea - I created a website, I started looking for places that could make the product I had in mind, spent many hours trying to bring my vision to life and to learn all the ins and outs of owning a business in the UK (a country I had moved to only a year prior to that). It took me about a year from start to finish to build my brand from the ground up, and so George Olivier was born.
I officially launched my first product in August 2018 and to this day I still remember the excitement of seeing my first 3 sales on the dashboard. I couldn't believe somebody had actually bought my products! Within the next couple of months my sales kept growing - before I knew it, I had hundreds of sales each month and the "little side hustle" became my full time job.
The next few years were some of the best in my life - my brand grew from only having 1 product to having a whole host of products, I worked with many suppliers, I tackled serious problems, I had many sleepless nights and equally many incredible days where I had reached new heights.
...Stay tuned for Part III
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