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TRANSCRIPTION WITH SPEAKERS
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[00:00] SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Canada's podcast.
[00:05] SPEAKER_00: Hi, this is Celine Williams hosting from Ontario for Canada's podcast.
[00:10] SPEAKER_00: My guest today is the founder of Handcrafted Leather Artisan of a Handcrafted Leather Artisan brand and Mental Health initiative, Marney and Michael, Jennifer St. John. Welcome Jennifer.
[00:22] SPEAKER_00: Thank you. Thank you for having me today.
[00:24] SPEAKER_00: I'm very excited to have you today because, you know, to a little bit behind the curtains we were chatting before we hit record.
[00:32] SPEAKER_00: It was a really interesting conversation, so I'm excited to get into your journey and everything that you're working on.
[00:39] SPEAKER_00: And with that, I'd love for you to tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got to doing what you're doing today and, you know, these incredible leather goods that you create.
[00:52] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:54] SPEAKER_01: So I'll go way back.
[00:56] SPEAKER_01: As a kid, I was always interested in art.
[01:00] SPEAKER_01: I was very creative, but I was also a really high level student.
[01:06] SPEAKER_01: And so I think in high school, it kind of became all right, how am I going to marry this creativity with, you know, my intellect.
[01:14] SPEAKER_01: And so I ended up going to design school. I went to a fan shop for three years and that was for nature design program.
[01:23] SPEAKER_01: And at that time in Ontario, you know, I wasn't able to get a job relatively quickly out of graduation.
[01:30] SPEAKER_01: And so my boyfriend and I now husband, we moved out to Edmonton and I was hired right away.
[01:37] SPEAKER_01: And it was a thriving, you know, industry there.
[01:41] SPEAKER_01: I worked for a great company there and Beewolski and it was mostly commercial.
[01:48] SPEAKER_01: But I do that for a couple of years and I just found that it wasn't 100% satisfying what I thought of as a creative business.
[01:56] SPEAKER_01: And so then I actually translated my experience into the art department in film and television.
[02:03] SPEAKER_01: I worked for Nick Litzena who had a company called Imagination Productions that I've Edmonton.
[02:10] SPEAKER_01: And in the same film, I did an art department internship and also a producer internship that lasted a really like a long nine month period.
[02:18] SPEAKER_01: And I fell in love with producing and that kind of creative business, which was different from what I had just been doing.
[02:25] SPEAKER_01: And then a couple of years later, we moved back to Ontario and then in Ontario, it was Toronto.
[02:33] SPEAKER_01: I ended up finding my production company, you know, kind of Bestie, Aaron Fation, her and I started a production company called Cash A Film and Television.
[02:42] SPEAKER_01: And we did that for several years.
[02:44] SPEAKER_01: And I loved that. I really loved that.
[02:46] SPEAKER_01: But I feel like the 2008 crash hit when we were kind of in business.
[02:53] SPEAKER_01: So we were just really getting going at that point.
[02:56] SPEAKER_01: And then also we both started to have children and that just changed everything for us.
[03:03] SPEAKER_01: And so we both kind of went on to do other things.
[03:08] SPEAKER_01: And it was at that point for me that I just tried to figure out how I want to get back to that, you know, the creative business.
[03:16] SPEAKER_01: But also I wanted to do something much more hands on this time.
[03:19] SPEAKER_01: And I really had gone from service with film and television to now wanting to do product.
[03:26] SPEAKER_01: And I just I'd always admired and loved bags.
[03:32] SPEAKER_01: And if I ever traveled anywhere, I would get a leather bag as a souvenir.
[03:37] SPEAKER_01: Like it was just something that I was always attracted to.
[03:40] SPEAKER_01: And because of my background and design, it was pretty easy for me to get going and to develop that.
[03:48] SPEAKER_01: So that's what I did from home.
[03:51] SPEAKER_01: I started to learn, you know, just even through YouTube videos, through training.
[03:56] SPEAKER_01: You know, we have a local company in Barry Tandy that does, you know, lots of training and they have lots of information and helpful tips on how to do that.
[04:05] SPEAKER_01: And I literally started to hand stitch leather and I created my own patterns and design my own bags.
[04:12] SPEAKER_01: And about three years into that, I realized that there was something here like I'd started to sell them.
[04:21] SPEAKER_01: And along the way, because I had been in business before and just because of, I think the age and stage I was at in my life,
[04:29] SPEAKER_01: I also never wanted it to be a social enterprise and I wanted to give back to mental health.
[04:35] SPEAKER_01: So I developed that side of it as well.
[04:39] SPEAKER_01: And then in 2020, January 2020, I got keys to the studio space.
[04:46] SPEAKER_01: I got keys to the studio space.
[04:48] SPEAKER_01: And by March, the beginning of March, we were ready to kind of go.
[04:54] SPEAKER_01: And then obviously we know what happened.
[04:55] SPEAKER_01: So it was, it's been an interesting last three years.
[05:02] SPEAKER_00: I can, I can only imagine that timing is challenging at the very least I would imagine.
[05:13] SPEAKER_00: So I actually, I want to ask about that because I think, you know, how growing businesses navigate something like that and how it affects them is,
[05:24] SPEAKER_00: I think it's important to talk about because a lot of people faced a version of challenges during that time.
[05:32] SPEAKER_00: So I'd love to, I'd love to talk about that.
[05:34] SPEAKER_00: And I also want to go back to the social enterprise piece after because I know that was in the story.
[05:39] SPEAKER_00: But because we ended with the timing of the lovely pandemic that we've all been dealing with, how, how was that?
[05:49] SPEAKER_00: How did you navigate that?
[05:53] SPEAKER_01: So what I did because luckily I was just in start of mode, right?
[05:58] SPEAKER_01: So I didn't have, I was just beginning to pull everything together.
[06:03] SPEAKER_01: So what I did was I just kind of paused on starting to hire people because that was the next step for me was starting to hire local seamstresses and starting, you know, to build inventory.
[06:14] SPEAKER_01: And then obviously through e-commerce, you know, starting to end markets was the idea, starting to get out there and sell the product.
[06:22] SPEAKER_01: So what I did was I obviously took a step back from that and I developed more of these, the mental health side of things.
[06:32] SPEAKER_01: And I also developed, you know, just learned, I learned a lot about social media, you know, I took courses, I did training.
[06:39] SPEAKER_01: I just tried to use that time to still build the brand and build the business, but obviously not the way it thought it was going to build.
[06:47] SPEAKER_01: By that holiday, by the holiday of 2020, there was, you know, that brief period where we were out of lockdown.
[06:54] SPEAKER_01: I had hired people by that point.
[06:56] SPEAKER_01: And it was very interesting in the beginning.
[06:58] SPEAKER_01: I had this vision of, you know, one to have this creative studio space and, you know, how many seamstresses as we grow when we build.
[07:05] SPEAKER_01: It didn't quite start out that way.
[07:08] SPEAKER_01: It was hard to find people with this, with, yes, there's lots of seamstresses, but not everybody has sold with leather.
[07:15] SPEAKER_01: And it's different than just sewing with fabric.
[07:18] SPEAKER_01: So I actually had the kind of reach out to the community and to people who are, you know, like I had, you know, women who, you know, grandmas who would do quilting and they tried to help me.
[07:29] SPEAKER_01: And then I had a woman who had a business where she did boat canvases and she helped me immensely.
[07:35] SPEAKER_01: Actually, she was fantastic.
[07:37] SPEAKER_01: So it was just a matter of trying to piece together where I could find the help for the production side of things.
[07:44] SPEAKER_01: We were able to sell and to, you know, sell from our website.
[07:48] SPEAKER_01: And also we had kind of a little store front in at our current squeeze space.
[07:52] SPEAKER_01: And that was kind of our start of everything.
[07:57] SPEAKER_01: And between 2020, December and 2021, December, we actually sold almost a thousand units.
[08:03] SPEAKER_01: And we made almost fixed figures.
[08:07] SPEAKER_01: It was astounding.
[08:09] SPEAKER_01: And so what actually happened, the reason why our numbers were so high is that we had companies purchase large, like 200, 300 amounts of units from us.
[08:21] SPEAKER_01: Because they were looking for like a high quality client gift.
[08:26] SPEAKER_01: And they wanted it, one company specifically wanted the social get back piece to it.
[08:32] SPEAKER_01: And so it was like a perfect fit for them.
[08:35] SPEAKER_01: So that is like that was how we started, which was unbelievable.
[08:41] SPEAKER_01: And that's when it was just kind of like, okay, now let's figure this out.
[08:45] SPEAKER_01: So it's been, it's been tricky. I mean, obviously it's been it's always tricky business is always tricky.
[08:53] SPEAKER_01: We've now production has still continued to be the thing for us, the source for us that has been our, our sticking point in the problem solving situation.
[09:03] SPEAKER_01: We are determined to keep it in house.
[09:06] SPEAKER_01: We did try to do small batch production outside of our studio.
[09:11] SPEAKER_01: It just didn't work out for us.
[09:13] SPEAKER_01: So we've, we've now we're moving to a new space and very it's it's a larger space.
[09:18] SPEAKER_01: We're really committed to having it in house.
[09:22] SPEAKER_01: So that was a big step for us to finally make just say, okay, no, we're doing this and we're doing all of it ourselves.
[09:29] SPEAKER_01: So yeah, it's been, it's been interesting.
[09:32] SPEAKER_01: But I would say the other interesting thing about COVID is that mental health is very talked about now.
[09:44] SPEAKER_01: You know, when, when I was a kid, it wasn't talked about and you know, I, I have, I had a parent who was mentally ill and was undiagnosed and untreated with mental illness.
[09:55] SPEAKER_01: So my childhood was was immensely impacted by mental health.
[10:00] SPEAKER_01: And I was raised, I was born in the 70s and we did not talk about mental health at all.
[10:07] SPEAKER_01: So it was, it was interesting for me, just because of my own personal story to see that evolution.
[10:15] SPEAKER_01: I mean, obviously everybody, you know, everybody has their own opinions about it.
[10:20] SPEAKER_01: But I think that for the most part, majority of Canadians have probably learned a lot about mental health a lot more than maybe they knew three years ago.
[10:30] SPEAKER_00: I think that's a very important observation.
[10:34] SPEAKER_00: And I think you're right. I think that people are more aware of.
[10:41] SPEAKER_00: And speaking about in some way or hearing about mental health now than they were three years ago.
[10:46] SPEAKER_00: And I think I don't, you know, I'm going to make this statement and I might be wrong, but I don't think there's a person who is alive, whose life is not impacted by mental health in some way, whether it's their own or someone close to them or someone they work with or you know, whatever, this is not a thing that five percent of the population is dealing with and therefore only a small
[11:16] SPEAKER_00: mental health.
[11:17] SPEAKER_00: We're all impacted by mental health in some way.
[11:20] SPEAKER_00: And I think to what you're saying, the fact that people are speaking about it, thinking about it, have an awareness of it now more so than three years ago is incredibly important and impactful.
[11:36] SPEAKER_01: No, I agree to 100%. I mean, the stats right now from Cam H are one in five, millions under the age of 40. We'll have a mental illness or the age of 40. It's one and two.
[11:48] SPEAKER_01: And that's the person with the mental illness, but who is their partner, who are their friends, who are their siblings, who are their family, who are their coworkers.
[11:58] SPEAKER_01: That's that ripple that you're talking about that none of us do not have someone in our lives who are dealing with mental illness.
[12:07] SPEAKER_01: I think sometimes people think it has to be some high level mental illness. Mental illness is anxiety.
[12:14] SPEAKER_01: Like, like, it's there are many, many different ways that our brain is creating an environment for us that we have to live in.
[12:26] SPEAKER_01: It doesn't have to be, for example, schizophrenia. Right? It can be, it is also just anxiety.
[12:33] SPEAKER_01: And it's just for people to even realize that that is mental health and that we can talk about it.
[12:40] SPEAKER_01: You know, it's it's it's been fantastic to see the changes and we still have a long way to go, but it's come a long way in the last three years.
[12:49] SPEAKER_00: You know, to what you were saying that companies who were ordering a large number of bags and part of the appeal and interest was because.
[12:57] SPEAKER_00: And I don't know that it was mental health specifically, but that social give back that social enterprise in some way and mental health during the pandemic being the recipient, you know, whatever mental health services organizations being a recipient.
[13:12] SPEAKER_00: That's a wonderful thing for people to be aware of and to be able to use their money in an impactful way, an organizations to use an impactful way because it shows it's like putting your money where your mouth, your mouth.
[13:27] SPEAKER_00: Right? It's saying not only those organizations that I think there are still too many of them, but definitely before the pandemic who would be like, you know, we we care about everyone's mental health and we want everyone to feel supported.
[13:41] SPEAKER_00: And here's your, you know, it's online support, whatever it was that didn't really translate into anything at work. And I think something that I think that has changed for a lot of organizations and then being able to say, hey.
[13:57] SPEAKER_00: Here's some gifts that we're giving away yours and organizing here's a company that is having an impact in this way. I think that's huge and timing wise has lined up and I mean kudos to you.
[14:09] SPEAKER_00: It's lined up incredibly well from a business perspective, but from a world impact change perspective. It's pretty exciting.
[14:17] SPEAKER_01: It is, it is. And it's great that like we raise funds, I basically, whatever, but anybody purchases back from us up to 50% goes towards our mental health initiative, but what we do in the nation is we are basically we're big advocates towards any distinct around mental health.
[14:44] SPEAKER_01: And I believe the best way to do that is to educate and to provide knowledge and to be able to give a firsthand experience and be honest and open about the experience so that there can be some compassion and some empathy towards something that you maybe weren't familiar with before.
[15:01] SPEAKER_01: And we also we raise money for organizations, we do a lot of donations to sell in auctions or whatever it is. We have our own journal that we've like self published. So it's the story of like my mom and my dad and myself, it's excerpts from letters and from journals over 30 year period and it kind of in a nutshell tells our story.
[15:23] SPEAKER_01: And again, that's about being open and honest about mental health. But then we also share a lot of resources on our website and on our social media and just try to connect people with the right information or the right organization that can help them.
[15:38] SPEAKER_01: I mean, a lot of organizations are dealing with up to two year wait lists right now. Like it's it's just it's so unfortunate because the need for mental health has gone through the roof because of the pandemic, but it already needed so much support.
[15:51] SPEAKER_01: So now anything that we can do we're trying to do it away of raising money for organizations.
[15:59] SPEAKER_00: I think that I agree the it has become more apparent than ever how lacking in services and accessibility.
[16:11] SPEAKER_00: The world when it comes to mental health right now, how lacking it is Canada specifically as well because those wait lists as an example, I was at an event last night and one of the women on stage was talking about.
[16:29] SPEAKER_00: They put something together for survivors of specific types of trauma and one of the questions was how do you essentially market how do you find these people and they said we don't they find us they come looking for us because people are looking for even if it's quietly they're looking for help.
[16:56] SPEAKER_00: And there's just not enough resources and people know so many people general public they just don't know that.
[17:05] SPEAKER_01: And I mean I find like even with what we share with our own personal story and what we talk about people connect with us regularly to say like thank you because they don't they appreciate somebody being honest about it, but also at the end of the day they don't they feel like they're not alone.
[17:23] SPEAKER_01: And that's the biggest piece when you've had this experience and you're dealing with some sort of of you know really difficult situation whether it's you going through or somebody who's really close to you going through it is that you don't want to feel alone.
[17:38] SPEAKER_01: I mean that was like I felt so alone as child so alone as a child and so this is the big reason why I'm doing this.
[17:49] SPEAKER_00: It's really easy when we don't hear people you know I there's such a broken record thing to say but this is why representation matters if we don't hear people or see people who have a similar story element of a story whatever it is out in the world talking about themselves their situation their experience.
[18:11] SPEAKER_00: Then we are all we all default into this is only a me thing. I was anyone going to understand this.
[18:21] SPEAKER_01: Yeah and what I and with that representation as well on that conversation whoever is speaking out is listening to them.
[18:29] SPEAKER_01: It's so important and yeah I agree with this a thousand percent and I mean that's that's why we do what we do every day.
[18:40] SPEAKER_00: Yeah I think that I it's not I think I have a lot of respect and admiration for what you are doing and how your business is giving back and focusing on you know having a positive impact because you can still be you know.
[19:09] SPEAKER_00: I'm this is but we can still run it profitable business and have a positive impact on the world at the same time it is not an either or situation.
[19:21] SPEAKER_01: Absolutely we can.
[19:22] SPEAKER_00: I you know I recognize that you have that your story is is very specific to you why you've chosen mental health but I'm curious for those listening who are thinking oh maybe there's something I can maybe I can work some of that into my business some sort of social enterprise aspect whether it's 15 percent five maybe there's something I can do.
[19:46] SPEAKER_00: How do you go about how did you because I recognize you can't speak to everyone but how did you go about figuring that out for yourself and learning what that looks like and what that could be for you because I think a lot of people go well that's nice for them.
[20:03] SPEAKER_00: I can't do that with my business I might want to but I don't I can't.
[20:09] SPEAKER_01: I don't it's that's an interesting question because I feel like I just did organic I just knew that because of my background and because I was in a situation where I was creating.
[20:53] SPEAKER_01: But also they want people to get involved like they need volunteers they need people on their boards you know they need letter writing campaigns they need people to come out to events but there's so many ways that people can support organizations that are trying to do you know any kind of social work in the community.
[21:13] SPEAKER_01: And so for me that's we kind of got to the point where okay we can take a percentage of sales because we sell a physical product and that can you know we can collaborate with other companies we can raise awareness of what they're doing but that we can also write a check at the end of the day.
[21:30] SPEAKER_01: So that became a really easy one for us and then the advocacy and just you know kind of the ending of the stigma I mean even and how much we've spoken today.
[21:42] SPEAKER_01: You can tell this is this I can't not speak to this because this is my journey. This is my story.
[21:49] SPEAKER_01: And I've been on like my mother did finally she did receive some help when she was in her early 50s she only lived for another 10 years but that 10 years was very different for us.
[22:01] SPEAKER_01: So I'm actually very fortunate and that I have seen both sides of that not a lot of people get to that point in their journey.
[22:09] SPEAKER_01: And so I have a lot of experience and information and my mom as well and mom like her journals are included in what we do because she speaks very eloquently and very passionately what it's like to be in her situation which is she had bipolar to.
[22:28] SPEAKER_01: So I think it just it happened organically for us but absolutely there are so many ways that an organization can assist any any community group or you know bigger than that Ontario national that requires help.
[22:44] SPEAKER_01: And the other thing I think that is people just need to ask just ask how can I help.
[22:49] SPEAKER_01: That's you know we're not we're all trying to figure it out. We're all obviously trying to help each other figure it out.
[22:56] SPEAKER_01: So that's also you know a really big thing that we do when we work with the organizations just you know what can we do to help.
[23:05] SPEAKER_00: It's really interesting how many of us don't ask either for help or how we can help because there's this interesting.
[23:15] SPEAKER_00: It's not stigma but shame around needing or asking how like I should just be able to tell how you need help and you should just be able to tell how I need help and it's so interesting that a lot of these.
[23:26] SPEAKER_00: A lot of these things stem from shame and stigma and wouldn't life be so much more enjoyable in general.
[23:36] SPEAKER_00: If we asked and spoke to things and had real conversations about things like mental health.
[23:45] SPEAKER_01: Yeah no I was definitely one of those people because of my childhood I feel like in my 40s is what I started to ask.
[23:54] SPEAKER_01: Even with this business I've asked I'm so much more connected with like mastermind groups and mentorship programs and you know different networking organizations.
[24:06] SPEAKER_01: I've asked so much more you know just trying to seek information and seek help and support other people as well.
[24:13] SPEAKER_01: Then I was in my 30s when I had my film business like it's it's but I also had a pretty strong fighter fight instinct coming out of my child.
[24:22] SPEAKER_01: I did a lot of work on that in my 30s so I think that that's part of the reflection.
[24:28] SPEAKER_00: Absolutely it's growth right we're all growing and changing and it's a wonderful thing.
[24:34] SPEAKER_00: Jennifer where can people go to find out more about you and about money and Michael and you know the initiatives the journals that you mentioned what's the best place for them to find everything that they can.
[24:47] SPEAKER_01: And best place is to go to our website which is marnie michael.com.
[24:52] SPEAKER_01: On there we also have our social channels you can put through to those but we have a newsletter that we'll be enjoying if they want to.
[24:59] SPEAKER_01: We share lots of information there and personal stories but that's the website is kind of our hub so that's a good spot to start.
[25:07] SPEAKER_00: Perfect and I really encourage everyone to go check out marnie michael it's pretty incredible and there will be a link in the show notes for that.
[25:15] SPEAKER_00: And I just really want to thank you for this conversation Jennifer and being so open about your journey and about the work that you're doing it's really incredible and I wish you the absolute best of luck in your continued journey I cannot wait to see what else you get up to with marnie and michael.
[25:34] SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much I really appreciate this I love this conversation.
[25:38] SPEAKER_00: Absolutely it's been my pleasure and for those who are listening or watching thank you for listening to Kans podcast like comment and subscribe to all our channels to get the latest podcasts from entrepreneurs across Canada.
