Chatting With The Founders of PIXIE MOOD!
The Handbag Accessories industry is a competitive one. Luxury designers now plan for accessory lines in their collections, as a smart business move. Consumers love handbags, wallets and clutches and the fact is, with the current economy, people tend to spend more on accessories. As fashion lovers, we take notice to cute pieces worn by the fashionable ladies of Toronto. Lately, we’ve been noticing cute satchels and totes from PIXIE MOOD, a cruelty-free brand of hangbags and vegan-leather goods that launched in 2010. You can’t ignore the bright colors and original designs from Chloe Ho and you have to love the branding of Kelvin Ho. When us HerCastleGirls LOVE something, we seek them out, corner them and ask as many questions as possible! The lovely couple were happy to chat with us. Here’s a portion of our chat with Chloe and Kelvin, the founders and operators of this fast-growing Canadian company.
Chloe & Kelvin, the Founders and Designers behind the brand.
Where did the idea of creating vegan leather goods come from?
Chloe– We love animals and we love fashion, just like every other girl. Based on that, I wanted to create a handbag that was fashionable and cruelty free. It wasn’t often that we would come across cruelty free items that were fashionable.
Your brand is a strong one. When we see PixieMood it really can’t be mistaken for another designer. What inspires the bright colors and style of Pixie Mood items?
Chloe– The little monkey we use in our branding, we use because it’s our favorite animal and the monkey is just a fun and playful animal so it represents our brand as well. As for the color blocking, I try my best to follow the trends, so I thought it would be cool to have a bag that follows along with color blocking. The most random things inspire me in design, like a wallpaper that I like or a book cover I like while I visit the book store. I just take pictures and work from there.
Did you ever think Pixie Mood would take off the way it did? Blogs, boutiques and Toronto consumers have caught on to the brand so well.
Chloe– That was one of our goals when we started. We wanted to be carried in independent stores and little boutiques instead of huge department stores.
We LOVE the Vanessa bag! It’s so versatile! But for you guys, what handbag do you think people gravitate towards the most?
Chloe– The Steph bag is very popular, probably because of the color blocking trend. Its great for adding a bit of color to any outfit, so that one has done well with our customers.
Another great fact we see with Pixie Mood are the price points. They are so affordable, which makes for repeat customers who want to collect all the styles.
Kelvin– The reason why its so affordable is because we resource all the materials ourselves, so we try to stay competitive with our price and our bag are manufactured overseas. So, every year we fly over to do the quality check ourselves. We go to the market with the best price to stay competitive.
Do you think we will see other items from Pixie Mood, like shoes, clothes?
Chloe– That may be a part of our future later on. Something I see happening with a short term is Iphone cases or laptop cases, travel accessories as well.
Kelvin– We are also working at becoming Eco-friendly by next season.
In making the brand Eco-friendly, that adds some more work for you guys for your sourcing I would imagine.
Kelvin– It does and with the extra amount of sourcing the prices could increase a little bit, but we want to try to keep the prices as close to what we do now. We want to go Eco-friendly because it helps to continue our goal in saving the environment and animals.
The Eco-friendly culture has grown throughout the years, especially within the fashion industry. Why is it, do you think, that people seek out vegan leather, cruelty free products?
Chloe– I think it has a lot to do with the fact that people know how materials are harvested and collected in the environment. We see clips on Youtube and it is really disgusting how they extract skins off animals. It repels a lot of people , so its just logical to go Eco-friendly for us.
What’s next for Pixie Mood as far as expanding the brand?
Kelvin– We want to build the brand overseas and bring it to Europe. Places like France and Japan, we want to get our name out there. After our name is out there, we want to open our own store, Pixie Mood Boutique, as our own branded store front.
