Shopping

Today I want to introduce you to a friend from college and her business partners. These three women have seen the need for traditional, quality clothing for children and are making it their dream to meet that demand. Catherine Bailey is the voice for today’s interview and she’s one of the creators of The Ivory Pony. I’m excited to share with you what she has to say.

1. Tell me about your business. How and why did you start and what is your inspiration?

The Ivory Pony is a line of traditionally styled, boutique quality, children’s clothing. When I was pregnant with my daughter I was so excited to start shopping for her wardrobe. I found some beautiful things but overall I was a worried by some of the styles that were being put forth for little girls. Everything seemed so modern and even a little sexy and I was looking for something more traditional and classic – like what I used to wear as a child – smocking, ruffles, collars, sashes, all things girly and vintage. I was discussing how and where to find such things with any friend that would listen and that’s how Holly and Jenny and I began discussing the possibility of making our own line of clothing that would provide exactly the style we were desperately searching for. Among the three of us, we each contributed something to the whole that was necessary for the process to work. Holly designs, Jenny has the business savvy, and I handle the legal and marketing aspects. After a bunch of texts, emails, and late night meetings after our kids went to bed (and our husbands watched them) The Ivory Pony came to life! Our inspiration definitely comes from our daughters. Each of them is in a different age category. Holly’s daughter is 6, Jenny’s is 4, and mine is 5 months. We want to make sure that little girls, at every stage of childhood, can look like a proper little lady but still have fun and be contemporary. Also, we are inspired by the outfits we used to wear as girls. We will often look at our old dresses and take elements from them when creating a new piece.

2. What makes production of The Ivory Pony line unique?

Currently we work with one factory to produce our dresses. We want to make sure our product is high quality, which means we pay attention to every detail. The buttons, lining, stitching, fabric—we want each of them to come together to create a top notch product for our customers. Therefore, it takes time to get each dress just right. We request only a limited number of each dress to be made so that we can ensure that they each meet our standards. We feel like we can better control the quality of our product by limiting the amount we put forward, and I believe that is what makes us special. We don’t want to sacrifice quality for quantity.

3. Let’s talk about the elusive work/life balance. How do you handle it?

Each of us has a full time job separate from our work with The Ivory Pony, plus, we are all married and have children. People probably think we are crazy for adding anything to our already overflowing plates but we are very passionate about what we are doing at The Ivory Pony and are committed to making it work, no matter how busy we already are. We are very mindful of each other’s time and so we are able to handle many things over email and group text messages. We also have divided up the tasks needed to be done so no one gets bogged down. Like I said previously, we have our meetings late at night, usually around 9:30pm, after our children are asleep, so we can spend as much time as possible with our families. I think that we all feel that if you are committed to something, you will make time for it, no matter what else you have going on. We also are so blessed to have married the most supportive husbands on the planet. They keep our kids, provide encouragement, and listen to us go on and on about little girls dresses with such enthusiasm. We definitely would have had a hard time getting The Ivory Pony off the ground without them!

4. Tell me three things that you must have/do each day.

I think the number one thing we must “have” is a smart phone! We are able to accomplish so much just by being able to send emails, pictures, texts, etc to each other quickly and from our phones. It doesn’t matter if one of us on vacation, or at work, or home with a sick child—we never have to slow down thanks to our phones. As for “doing” each day, I know personally I must check the email, Instagram, Facebook, and orders every day, several times a day. I don’t like for customers to have to wait to get an answer to a question they have sent or comment they have made on our social media pages. We strive to have excellent customer service and to me that means thorough responses delivered quickly! Finally, and most importantly, we definitely have to have a lot of faith—faith in our factory that they are making our designs the way we envision them and up to the standards we set for them; faith in each other that we are accomplishing the tasks that need to be completed; faith in ourselves, that we know what is best for our business and its future; and faith that God gave us the ideas to start our business, with the friends and skills necessary to do so, for a reason, and that we can realize HIS plan for it and for us!

5. Where do you see your business in one year? five? ten?

It’s so much fun to think about where our business can and will be in the future! In the next year, we hope to start releasing new designs at least once a month, if not twice. We will have designs for major holidays, like Christmas and Easter, but also more casual and versatile outfits, like our Bonnie Blu, that can be worn for many different occasions. We are looking into swimsuits, knit options, and even boy designs! The future is so big and bright! We hope to continue to market and sell online to keep costs as low as possible for our customers. As for five to ten years? We can only hope and pray that we have the support of our customers to get us that far!

6. What is the biggest business lesson that you have learned so far?

Expect the unexpected and plan accordingly. You never know what can happen when things are outside of your control. We have no control over shipping, production time, etc , so we have to prepare for glitches and setbacks. That being said, we make sure we do things very early—for example our Christmas dress is already in production. We want to make sure we have it in hand long before Christmas so we can make sure we can ship it to our customers as early as possible. By doing things super early, we take back some of the control we lose.

7. Who do you go to for advice and feedback about your business?

Our greatest feed back comes from our customers and friends, many who are one in the same! We of course have an idea of what designs we are going to offer but we want to provide products that our customers need and are excited about. We will ask friends for their opinions on outfits to make sure that there is a market for them. We also get feed back from them regarding our marketing strategies and promotions.

8. Tell me who you pay attention to online — certain people, podcasts, blogs, facebook groups?

I know that I pay attention to the buy sell trade groups on Facebook. I never knew that such a world existed before I had a daughter but Jenny and Holly and other friends introduced me to it. I like to follow them not only because you can get some great deals, but because you get a sense of what other parents are looking for when it comes to their children’s wardrobes. What styles are people gobbling up and sending out ISO’s for? What styles are sitting on the boards without sellling? People on these boards have children of all ages and live all across the country, so you are able to get a broader idea of what may be popular.\

9. How can we keep up with you online?

Our website is The Ivory Pony. You can create an account and sign up for our newsletters via email through the site. You also, of course, can order our designs online exclusively, and our first dress, the Bonnie Blu, is available for purchase right now. You can also follow us on Facebook and Instagram. We are going to offer a surprise for our followers soon so make sure you like and follow asap!

The Ivory Pony is owned and operated by Catherine, Jenny, and Holly. They all live in Gadsden, Alabama, and are married to the 3 greatest guys around! Catherine has one daughter, and Jenny and Holly each have both a son and daughter. Catherine is an attorney, Jenny owns her own small business, and Holly runs her husband’s ENT practice. They may be busy but they feel so blessed to be stressed! ☺

I love seeing how other Mama’s juggle their businesses as well as their families and getting an inside look at how these three women are balancing it makes my heart jump. We all know that there is no such thing as a balance to work and life. Nor is there a switch that Mom’s can flip to erase all guilt related to trying to balance. But these three women set a great example that you can make business and family work with a little dedication and support. Not only are they balancing their day jobs and their families, but also a side hustle too! This week I’m going to try and focus more on banishing guilt about my performance — Mom-wise, Wife-wise, or Entrepreneur-wise — by giving my whole attention to the task in front of me and not thinking about things that I need to do in the future or that I might have mishandled in the past. Do any of you have any work/life balance suggestions or tips? I’d love to hear them in the comments! Or chime in on any of our social media platforms!