Camille Forbes
Cedar City, UT
Marketing Major
Creativity Engagement Track
Our Home Divine
Our Home Divine is a business that I started with my good friend, and decided to use for my EDGE project. In a nutshell, we make wooden clocks in the shape of LDS temples. But we are so excited for the day we can make more home décor to share with our customers. We’re currently only selling large temple clocks, but in the next few weeks we’ll be launching smaller temple clocks and Christmas ornaments. However; we want to do more with our business besides selling beautiful home décor! Our slogan is “Branch Upward” and our social media platform is to create optimism every day. We started Our Home Divine so we could create a space online and a product for homes that can be a reminder of the hope and joy that life has to offer.
Since I’m currently going to school I have the opportunity to apply what I’ve been learning in my classes to my business. This has been more helpful than I can even express, I literally read a line in my textbook that talked about how watch companies make their clock hands point up in advertisements so customers feel like the product is smiling at them. That directly benefited our business, and now we do that every time we post our clocks on social media. I’ve also been able to have the ease of working with professors and using campus resources to gain more insight. This has been a major part of my project.
The inspiration of the business came from my business partner. She was making a clock in the shape of the Phantom of the Opera mask as a gift for her mother-in-law, when she had the epiphany that people would love clocks in the shape of LDS temples! The inspiration of making this my EDGE project came from the fact that I was so busy and had no idea what I was going to do for my project. I had just started working on the foundation of my business with my business partner, when I had this realization that this business would work perfectly for the EDGE program. I was able to combine an important part of my education with an important part of my personal/work life and apply what I was learning to and from multiple outlets.
Obviously, there are a lot of challenges that come with starting a business. Starting a business is a challenge in itself, and there were things that I didn’t even know I had to think about! But the number one most time-consuming and difficult thing to do was finding packaging boxes and shipping boxes. We spent months talking to box suppliers from all over the world, and we looked through so many websites. So, the day we found boxes we could work with was a huge weight off our shoulders. Even though there were a lot of little things that we had to think about in the beginning, the hardest thing I had to do was fire someone.
We don’t have any employees, but we work with suppliers specifically for our clock shape, and their organizational management is imperative to our business. We found a company that we thought was perfect, but they were three hours away which made it hard for us to work closely and efficiently with them. After multiple problems with the company that involved expensive mistakes, I had to call them and fire them just a week before our preorder date ended. I prayed so many times before that call, and it is the scariest thing I’ve had to deal with in our business. But this challenging experience was so beneficial for me.
Our Home Divine is also beneficial for those who buy our products, who follow our social media pages, our local small business supplier, our families, but most of all, my business partner. She came up with the idea of this business, but she has been able to rely on me to share the load of our business. We have been able to split up our work load. We turn to one another for support, and developing new ideas and tactics. Owning this business would be a lot harder if there was only one of us running it.
The benefits of this business are already worth more to me than I could’ve imagined, like working with my business partner, and the fact she wanted to share this business with me. But I’ve been able to apply things I’ve learned from my classes, which has been so intriguing. It’s also been eye-opening to see how a business works, and how I can think critically and creatively to try and benefit my business. But probably the most beneficial thing for me is the fact that I’ve been able to overcome a lot of fears, from finding and overcoming my weaknesses to the challenge of speaking with suppliers.
“If there is one thing I hate in this world more than beets, it’s trying to find
cute packing boxes.” (July 15, 2017)
“We shipped our first clock today! Is there honestly anything more exciting
and terrifying?! I don’t think I can truly express the mix of emotions I’m
feeling right now.” (October 18, 2017)
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