BOWtique

Hello Everyone..

I know its been a while since I last had a small business feature run on the blog, its been a busy winter for us here! We are back on track again now though and I have had the pleasure of recently buying two petitskirts for my daughters from BOWtique and I was so impressed with them that I invited Christie to be our small business feature for the month.

Without any further ado..here is Christie's story in her own words..

I have always been business-minded. Whilst working fulltime, studying at Uni and running my own small business, I learnt how to juggle life and all that comes with it.

However, I must admit I had no idea what I was in for when I fell pregnant!

I had a grand idea, I would continue my life, as is, and baby would play in a play pen - how wrong would I be?

So, once baby came (7-weeks early) I realised that life had changed and there was no looking back.

With my degree behind me, a great partner in my hubby and all the support of my family, it was time to move on business-wise and focus on family.

I was a happy at home mum for about 6-months, when I realised I needed a little more to keep sane!

Dr Phil would only keep me entertained so far and I had a lot of creative energy (and little money as we had dropped to the one income).

I started to create pieces here and there for my now 6-month old daughter.

She was a baldy and I a novice sewer so it made sense to work on small bits to dress up an outfit and make cheaper bits look "expensive" (as Alex Perry would say)!

So big bows became an even bigger obsession and my perfect little model was selling them for me!

We would go to functions and people would ask where I got her hair accessories.

Soon, I was making them for everyone and by the time her first birthday rolled around, there was a business card in every kids goody bag to promote BOWtique!

I was happy with the direction, and soon the first bow became an online store - with real stockists!

From there, it has grown to more than 50 stockists in Australia and some overseas too!

It is truly a dream - one that enables me to work from home and enjoy my little girl and also keep my sanity too!

Through the "journey" not much has changed - I still aspire to create great, well-priced pieces for little ones.

Mums want their children to look fab, but it is so hard when lots of us are just on one (sometimes small) income.

So I am consious that I create affordable bits that can transform an outfit, enabling mums to create several looks from one thing by just adding a big flower, or some cute "bling for baldies" for your newborns!

I love what I do and I would not have it any other way.

Sometimes I feel guilty that I do spend time with ribbon and not my little girl if I have an Expo or a market to attend, but at the end of the day, having that creative outlet enables me to be a better mum.

Having the diversity to surround myself in work allows me to appreciate my beautiful daughter Addi (now going on 3) so much more!

So that is Christies story..what a journey she has had so far with her business 'BOWtique' I can highly recommend Christie's products as I recently purchased two of her gorgeous petitskirts for my daughters as I mentioned earlier.

They arrived super fast and it was a real pleasure to do business with Christie as well. My daughters LOVED their skirts and here is a picture of their skirts they were only too happy to model for me at short notice (I now need some shirts to wear with these for them and stockings).

The skirts are made extremely well and you can see the quality in them. So do yourself a favour and head on over to the BOWtique website with a cup of coffee and have a good look around. Its FULL of gorgeous things, only a limited number would fit in this small business feature! We are now eyeing off some of those gorgeous hair clips!

Christie has generously offered our lucky readers a chance to go into the draw to win one of the very gorgeous ZEBRA PETITSKIRTS like my daughter just got - large size. Its very easy to enter, just pop on over to her BOWtique website and have a look around there and come back here to the blog and leave a comment with what your favourite product was on her site. Anyone who leaves a comment on our blog is in with a chance to win, and the blog is open to all comments so head on over to her BOWtique site now and have a look around for your chance to win one of these beautiful skirts!

Christie also has a FANTASTIC facebook page and you can join it by clicking on this link!