How it all Began…
Two and a half years ago I came to the realization that I needed to make a major change— both for my family and for me. Although I enjoyed my career as a merchandiser for a large furniture chain (basically the creative designer of the store’s displays), I felt stretched between my job and my responsibilities at home. As many moms can relate, there’s a ridiculous demand on the 24 hours each day that fly by between carpool and commuting. With that in mind, I decided that my family and career would be best served if I worked from home. That meant quitting my reliable 9-5 and hiring myself as owner, boss and designer. I’d love to say that I knew exactly what I wanted from my new business and had a detailed plan in place... but that wouldn’t be true. I had a lot of dreams and even more questions. All I knew was that my family was and is the most important thing in my life and I knew that I had to make my new business succeed in order to support them financially, emotionally and in every other way that parents do.
With my family on my mind, I founded an interior design blog which we named Cattie Lou— a mashup of my kids’ names: Cale, Hattie and Eloise. Cattie Lou represented everything that mattered most to me and was deeply personal because my family depended on its success. Just like that, Cattie Lou was born!
Originally I wanted Cattie Lou to be a blog about Interior Design as a way to connect with other designers, discuss and learn about trends and reach out to my local community. What I didn’t expect was the amazing network of friends, neighbors and community members that would keep me so busy with design projects that I did very little blogging. It was an absolute blessing to have so many referrals and projects as a brand new company. I’ll always be incredibly thankful for those first couple clients who believed in me, trusted me and referred me.
Since the days of the Cattie Lou blog, so much has changed. The business has become entirely focused on corporate and residential design projects. In a lot of ways, the business has aged just like a child... and it’s time to graduate from high school to college. We felt like it was time to change Cattie Lou to better reflect the nature of our current business. Specifically, our expansion into corporate interior design necessitated a more formal company name.
I’ve learned a lot in the past couple of years through a series of successes and hiccups (yes, my life is perfectly imperfect). When you dream up a company from your couch, you have no idea how it’s going to take-off or if it ever will. You have to be flexible... always bending, not breaking. We are so grateful for how it has succeeded and want to change Cattie Lou to encompass that growth.
