CAREERS
MERI MERI FOUNDER AND DESIGNER Meredithe Stuart-Smith ON HOW SHE BUILT THE CHILDREN’S PARTY AND LIFESTYLE BRAND, AND ITS SUCCESS OVER 40 YEARS
I AM A COMPULSIVE MAKER OF THINGS. As a child, I spent hours colouring, building forts, decorating them, moving my bedroom around. Aged 10, I made little woven pot holders and sold them on the beach. I always knew I wanted to do something visual with product.
I’M A UNIVERSITY DROPOUT. After working with autistic children as a teacher’s aide, in 1983, aged 22, I got a job at the Children’s Museum in Los Angeles, encouraging children to make things from recycled materials. That led to my enjoyment of working with kids and making new things.
I WAS ALSO MAKING CHILDREN’S CLOTHING, TIE-DYEING DRESSES AND PANTALOONS IN MY SITTING ROOM. I sold a few things to a store, but shipped them late and they wouldn’t accept them. That taught me the importance of delivery timing, scheduling and material costs.
I GREW UP NEAR HALLMARK’S HEAD OFFICE.I taped cards to our windows, hoping somebody would walk by and discover me. Eventually, I sold my cards in a local store, where a salesperson who covered all of California saw them, and it grew from there. I created templates so I could hire other mothers to help me make the cards. That was the bones of the business.
I LOVE SPOTTING TRENDS. Interiors and fashion lead, and my industry follows; we don’t usually set the colour palette. For example, I spotted neon coming through early. I saw neon trim on a handbag on a mannequin in Paris, and thought, ‘That looks cool.’ Later, when we collaborated with Liberty, we put neon trim on products. We must’ve hit the trend early because we got to ride it for a long time before it really took off even in fashion. It’s exciting when you get something right.
MY ADVICE FOR FOUNDERS? Start small, don’t be intimidated, be nimble and pay attention to the market. When you need to change something, you can see it in your sales. It’s painful, but you need to change there and then. It’s like an earthquake: the first thing you hear is a rumble, a tiny warning. You could think, ‘That’s odd, what should I do?’ Or you could just get out of the building. You have to listen to the noise even when you don’t want to hear it. I heard a rumble in the early 2000s. The internet was coming, more handmade greeting cards were coming on to the market, our sales were shrinking. We’d owned this category, then, all of a sudden, other companies were following our formula. At first, I thought, ‘We’ll just
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