Sweet Funky Vintage Interview and Giveaway

This is Boutique is very proud to present this wonderful interview with Missy Severson and Liz Snowden of Sweet Funky Vintage. Sweet Funky Vintage is Boutique Custom at its best. Their funky yet functional range of boutique girls and boys clothing is available through their website and also through a fantastic trunk show program. Both the site and the trunk shows offer the opportunity to design your own range of clothing using Sweet Funky Vintage silouhettes and a great range of fabrics. Sweet Funky Vintage is generously offering a Gift Card for a Sweet Funky Vintage Custom Tee. See the end of the interview for details on how to enter.

1. Can you tell us a little bit about Sweet Funky Vintage - who you are and what kinds of products you sell?

Sweet Funky Vintage is a children’s clothing company specializing in custom clothing. We celebrate and encourage individuality and creativity by allowing our customers to design their own stylish children’s clothing, both on our website and in person at trunk shows across the United States. Sweet Funky Vintage offers a line of custom children’s clothing that is fresh, stylish, and beautifully hand sewn in the USA from top quality fabrics.

2. Sweet Funky Vintage is a fabulous name for a fabulous brand - can you tell us a bit about your name and how it came about?

Missy was talking with Maggie Phillips of Boutique Graphics one day and trying to come up with words that described what they liked about children’s clothing and what their daughters like about their clothing. They like sweet styles on little ones, but as they grow, they like to dress a little more funky. And, as designers, we like to throw in some vintage-inspired styles.

3. Launching a children’s label is huge achievement - you must be so proud of what you have achieved since you launched in 2007. Can you tell us a how you decided to embark on this incredible adventure?

For Missy and Liz, meeting online in 2006 proved to be a pivotal moment. Luckily for Sweet Funky Vintage, the two had a common love for fabric, which led them to an online discussion board where they chatted and struck up a fast friendship. It wasn’t long before they realized they had more than just fabric in common: their lives were seemingly parallel, and so similar to each other, it was as if fate had no choice but to bring them together!

Both grew up in Tallahassee, Florida, and attended Florida State University where each was a Kappa Delta. They both majored in the fashion industry and married spouses with mobile careers that required moving frequently. As well, Missy and Liz were each teachers before deciding to individually focus on designing children’s boutique clothing to sell on Ebay and their personal websites.

When their paths finally crossed, they felt as if they’d known each other forever! Missy and Liz soon collaborated on a common mission and goal: to open a children’s clothing business that was unique in the industry, and offered a social mission to help needy children as part of it’s foundation.

In October 2007, Sweet Funky Vintage was launched as the creation of two friends who were destined to design beautiful, functional children’s clothing together, and feed their passions for sewing, designing, children and…fabric!

4. Do you have any advice for people wanting to follow in your footsteps.

1. Plan, plan, and plan some more.
2. Don’t be afraid to take calculated risks.
3. Talk to others who have gone before you and ask about their experiences.
4. Ask for help.
5. Research.
6. Work hard. Really, really, really hard.
7. Don’t give up your dreams!

5. Sweet Funky Vintage has its beginnings on eBay - can you tell us about this time. Do you still sell on eBay?

Liz and Missy actually both sold on ebay as individuals before launching Sweet Funky Vintage. Liz designed and sold as Three Pink Monkeys, and Missy sold as Lanie Paige Baby and both were part of the design group SWAKD (a terrific bunch of ladies)! Ebay has its ups and downs, as we all know, and Liz and Missy were both looking for a different adventure when they were talking one evening about their dreams and discovered that both had similar dreams and ideas. While neither is still selling on ebay, Sweet Funky Vintage does sell on etsy from time to time.

6. Sweet Funky Vintage is sold through your website and through trunkshows - can you explain how these work? How would someone interested in hosting a trunk show go about this?

At our trunk shows, our customers can see, feel and truly appreciate our exceptional quality and beautiful designs, while hand selecting their children`s wardrobes.
Our trunk shows allow our customers to create their own designs. Begin by selecting from our many fabrics and then combine those fabric choices with our silhouettes to create one of a kind designs.
Our trunk show hostesses are available to answer questions, make suggestions and assist you with your order.

Hosting a trunk show is so easy and so rewarding! Our hostesses schedule their show date(s) with us and a few weeks before their show, they receive an e-mail invite to use, as well as postcards and hosting tips in the mail. If there is a Sweet Funky Vintage stylist in their area, the stylist will bring the trunk to them and assist with their show. If they are in an area that doesn’t have a stylist yet, the trunk arrives on their doorstep with samples and design guides to show their friends as well as a notebook that contains information to answer any questions they might have and pictures and information to assist with display. There are order forms and everything need, but our SFV trunk show coordinator is also available to answer questions and help with whatever they might need! They display the garments and collect the orders. When their show time period is over, they re-pack the trunk and it is picked up right from their doorstep!

7. Something that really makes Sweet Funky Vintage stand out is the opportunity to design your own clothing? How does this work?

Design your own is something that our customers really love! We offer all of our approximately 40 styles and 40 fabrics as design options at our trunk shows. Our customers can choose the style they want and combine the fabrics to create truly one-of-a-kind designs at affordable prices! SFV also offers customized sizing for hard to fit children. For example, our customers can order a size 4 pant with a size 3 waist, or add an inch in length to a skirt to get a great fit! We are also offering some of our styles as design-your-own on our website, and will be adding more each season!

8. Can you tell us a bit about the structure of Sweet Funky Vintage?

Sweet Funky Vintage is a company that believes in supporting women and their families! It is owned by Liz and Missy and we currently have 12 women working with us. SFV enables and encourages each of those women in the pursuit of their dream - being creative and being able to work from home.

9. What kinds of designs can we expect to find at Sweet Funky Vintage?

Liz and Missy have 4 daughters and 1 son between them. We believe that fashion shouldn’t have to take a backseat to affordability and durability. Our clothes are made to be worn, not saved for special occasions. They wear well, wash well, and look terrific! We feature many mix and match separates that can be worn in various combinations and from season to season.

10. Where and how is your clothing manufactured.

All of our clothing is handmade here in the United States! We have a network of seamstresses who create each garment by hand when it is ordered.

11. I notice many fabrics in your designs loved by the boutique community. Where do you source your fabrics and do you have any favourites?

We source fabrics in a variety of places and enjoy trips to Quilt Market to meet new fabric designers and visit with some of our favorite designers and friends! We purchase our fabrics wholesale from the manufacturers, but recommend if you want to purchase fabrics retail, visit our favorite fabric sellers - Jona - and Myrinda - and we sell previous season’s fabric overage on etsy at killer prices!

12. What distinguishes Sweet Funky Vintage from other children’s labels?

We offer so much more than the typical children’s clothing company - we offer our customers the opportunity to shop in home at our trunk shows or in their p.j.’s at their computer online! We offer our customers the opportunity to earn free clothing by hosting a trunk show. We offer customers the opportunity to design their own garments by choosing from our many styles and fabrics. We offer our customers the opportunity to support a woman owned business here in the USA. We offer our customers the opportunity to partner with us to support women and children with our social mission.

When we sat down to put the dream of Sweet Funky Vintage to paper, the first thing we wrote out, even before the business and financial plans, was our social mission. As women, and former teachers, we knew that more important than the bottom line on our balance sheets is the contribution we can make to our community and the world around us. We believe in helping others, so we drafted our social mission and put it into action from the very beginning. Our current programs are our birthday program and our Wonderfully Worn program. With our birthday program, we encourage our customers to register their children’s birthdays with us. During their child’s birth month, we email a discount for our customers to use and when they do, we donate $5 in their child’s name to FirstBook.org and that $5 buys 2 books for communities in need. With our wonderfully worn program, our customers can return to us their gently used SFV clothing in exchange for gift certificates they can use to buy new SFV clothing. The gently used clothing is then donated to Treehouse, a women and children’s shelter in our hometown of Tallahassee, Florida.

Sweet Funky Vintage is generously offering a gfit certificate for a Sweet Funky Vintage Tee. To enter you can leave a comment mentioning your favorite SFV item (click here to go to the site) for FIVE extra chances to win you can blog about the giveaway and come back and leave a link or for TWO extra chances you can tweet the giveaway and then come back and leave a message telling us that you’ve tweeted. A random number generator will then be used to draw the winner.