Amenity : CEO + Founder

 Dream Job #3 – My Dream

Amenity was founded in 2004 with the dream of a cradle to cradle home. Our goal was to create a destination for stylish, sustainable living and, along with my partner Kristina de Corpo, we designed, manufactured, and marketed sustainable home textiles and furniture. We grew the brand to over 100 store and produced collections twice a year. In 2010, in the wake of the housing crisis, we reduced our wholesale business to key stores and focused on web sales. However, a dwindling home furnishing market place led to the company being dissolved. As a solo entrepreneur I then began offering creative services in sustainable product development and brand strategy with a focus on strategic brand alignments to authentically generate brand evangelists.
  

September 2003 - May 2014 { Los Angeles, Ca }

THE STORY

After the .com crash, San Fransciso was flush with great designers but little opportunity. It was time to reinvent. I packed my bags and moved to Los Angeles to pursue my dream of moving into the "Three Dimensions". My passion was to design furniture, mobile environments (a fancy way of saying the interiors for yachts and air streams), or public spaces like playgrounds. But after a semester studying for a master's in architecture, I came to the realization it was time to leave school and just go for it. For a while I tried getting creative with quilts and my sewing machine. Then one evening after a few glasses of wine with a friend, we decided to dream together. We wanted to make sustainable homeware that resonated with a more modern sensibility. 

To fund our line we created a brand agency called "Can" with all profits going towards the business and our first product. In 2005 at the Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York we launched our first collection – organic cotton bedding. Two years later we launched our first furniture collection, later expanding to home accessories, a nursery line, and the ability for customers to buy from other parties who we hosted on our site. In this line of work I focused less on design and more on the business and production aspects of the company. I love working with people and the Amenity family of staff and vendors gave me a lot of joy.