Managed Growth

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how much noise there is around growth.

Not just online but inside my own head. The pressure to be bigger. Louder. Faster. More impressive. To have a plan for everything and answers for where you’ll be in one year, three years, five years.

And the truth is I never really had that.

When I started Marea, I didn’t have a two year plan. I didn’t even have a one year plan. I didn’t go to business school. I didn’t go to design school. I didn’t sit down with a spreadsheet and reverse engineer what this brand needed to be.

I had a feeling. I had taste. I had this quiet pull to make something of my own.

My first dresses came from a vendor I found on Etsy. That still makes me smile when I say it out loud. I found silhouettes that felt right and I worked on customizing them and tweaking them and slowly making them mine. I built a website because I needed somewhere for the product to live. Not because it was perfect. Not because it was “ready.” It just needed to exist.

I launched before I felt ready because if I waited to feel ready, I never would have launched at all.

And from there, everything grew the same way. Slowly. A little scrappy. Very human. One hire at a time.