Interview with Entrepreness Megan Clark of Hi, Friend

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September 10, 2010 by Megan J. | Comments (0)

Megan Clark is the co-owner of Hi, Friend, an online boutique specializing in fabulous stationary, too-good-to-open gift boxes and the cutest invitations and ribbons. Megan also runs her own personal design studio Clark and Co. Read our interview to learn more about Megan and her experiences as a female business owner!

So, tell me a little about your background and how you came to start “Hi, Friend”
I studied design in school, and I worked in an advertising agency for a few years here in Portland and one of the account managers at the Ad Agency and I worked really well together. Once we both left the agency we were really sad that we weren’t working together anymore and meanwhile I had had this brainstorm of an online retail company that was more focused on what I was trained in but would be a little more free form and fun. So, I approached her [Jennifer Mele] to see if she was interested in partnering up with me on the side because she had her day job and I still had my design studio. She totally loved the idea and together we started this new adventure of “Hi, Friend.” It has so far been really fun! It was in the works for at least a year before we actually launched because I had to do the design for all the different pieces and the volume of it is massive.

I was actually on the website and was so impressed by how much variety and diversity there is at “Hi, Friend!”
Totally! Well, and we kept getting delayed thinking that we were going to launch at a certain time but it never did. So as it happens the more we delayed I was able to produce more to put on the site; but there is always more to be making and more to add, which is a big challenge. We ended up launching in April of this last year and we took a huge deep breath and were like “Ok, this is it, we’re launching!”

What have you learned since the big launch?
A lot of it is actually boring technical stuff, like how to run a retail site and how to capture payments, how to deal with emails breaking down and how to actually build a website. I had dealt with the design of the site, which I do for a lot of my clients, but I had never designed something like this for myself, so I ended up being involved 100% which usually I hand off the design and someone else does the technical side. So now I’m like the user and the creator, which is a different story, so I mainly learned the technical stuff that goes into building a retail site. Then there’s also how to deal with customers, but luckily my partner does most of that stuff! I get to do the design work and she handles all the ordering and billing and all that fun stuff. I don’t have to do much once we get it up on the site, but we’re definitely still in it together. The decision making is always jointly done, we share all the finance stuff, which can be tricky but we’re really transparent with each other. Jen is really great at what she does, she handles all the people side of the business, because when we first started I was thinking “if I’m going to do this little brainchild, I need Jen’s help.” It’s great because I can’t do what she does and she can’t do what I do, so there’s a great balance.

So tell me a little about your creative process. Where do you get your inspiration from? How do you deal with no creative limitations, which is sometimes creatively more difficult, than having a client give you parameters. How do you self-edit?
Jumping into it I was thinking how cool it was that I could do whatever I wanted! But then a second later I realized how overwhelming it is! So, it can be really overwhelming and really hard to focus. In the beginning we were all over the place with the designs, so what we did is we met with someone who looked over everything and then told us what they thought and what advice they had and they suggested that we categorize everything by style and create a personality from each style which is how each of the girls where created, from that conversation. So, we created these fictional characters that works for the shoppers as well as for myself. Shoppers can go directly to the style that they are most interested in and find what they need to find, you don’t have to go through those portals but it makes it easier to look for things within the site. But, it works really well for me because they serve almost as muses, so I can think “I need to design a wedding invitation for Lila..” and now I can wrap my head around what to design. Each girl has something written about what they are to us on the site, so I can go back and look and know that if Lila was getting married that this is what she would swoon over, so that’s where I get my inspiration.

That’s really cool! Because I’m sure there are so many styles that you enjoy so it’s hard to narrow it down to just one.
Exactly, but it still can be really hard because I don’t have that other brain there to tell me what they want and what they don’t want, which is what you have when you’re working with a client. But I do find that I pay more attention when I’m out and about, I have a tendency to catch things that I think I should incorporate into certain pieces. I do that all the time for my clients, but it is especially helpful with Hi, Friend because it keeps it me generating new things. It also helps that I have my own studio stuff to do too, because when I’m feeling confined by client stuff I can jump over into Hi, Friend and be inspired and vice versa.

Each persona you’ve created are all so different from one another but there is a sense of cohesiveness, where do get the inspiration within each character?
I think a lot of the cohesiveness comes from the fact that it is just me doing all the designing so ultimately I get to make all the creative decisions. But when it comes to what inspires me, I am really inspired by photography. Also, if I’m online, I have a folder on my desktop that is titled “scrap” so when I find a picture that is really interesting I put it in there, so it becomes a kind of archive of all these things that I have find interesting. I’m also really drawn to old stuff, there is a vintage shop right down the street from my house and they have the coolest things. They actually have old can labels that never got used so now they are preserved in these plastic sheets, so I’ll go buy a couple and throw them on my desk as something cool to look at. I have never mimicked that style directly but I have found compelling color palettes and other things from those pieces which I’ll use in random projects. Like, if I find a killer color combination, it can work with so many things on Hi, Friend, whether its stationery or wedding invites.

I have found in the past with myself, that when I’m working on a project I start noticing different aspects of that project elsewhere. Do you ever notice or pay closer attention to stationary and invitations now that you’re designing them?
Ya, I do but I try not to actually. Because although I notice silly things about stationary I try not to focus too hard because I don’t want to be influenced by other peoples work. Sometimes once you get something stuck in your head you copy it without even realizing that’s what you’ve done which is what I try not to do. But, one thing that I have noticed is that a lot of people are relying on screen printing or letter press, and there are some people who do this excellently but there are some who rely more on the process than the actual design and it turns out kind of disappointing.

Where do you see Hi, Friend going in the future?
Well we definitely want to venture in further into wedding invitations. There is a huge market for that, and we really are interested in designing things for milestones in a woman’s life. So we want to design wedding invitations, baby shower stationary, etc..

Do you ever think that Hi, Friend will have a store front?
You know, probably not. We had talked about it and there is just so much overhead that goes into having a store and with online retail our overhead is relatively low.

Ok, so because this is CRAVE, what is it that you’re craving right now?
Oh wow! That’s a hard one! I think a good book….and a vacation!

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