Hello Tuesday! Today is a long one. So grab a glass of something you love and settle in for some words on life, business and big wild exciting changes.
We’ve been spending the last few months stitching up the very last bags that I personally will design and produce at MoopHQ. I’ve been Moop Shop for 16.5 years, encompassing the majority of my adult life, two coasts and a rust belt city that I love. It has taught me as much about human connection as it has business, manufacturing and design. I’ve been working hard behind the scenes to neatly wrap things up, knowing I’ll spend a lot of time in the messy middle of closing down a complicated business that has provided jobs, a purpose and huge parts of my identity for more than a decade and a half.
I started Moop in early 2007 and never could have guessed the adventure that would follow. My daughter was nine, I was newly married, deep in the throws of trying to blend a family, having just left grad school for my then new husband’s career. I was newly in love but it required me to give up a lot to follow the opportunity. I leapt into a void, with no defined future for myself and it resulted in me starting Moop.
I was nineteen when my daughter was born, a single mom from the very beginning. Most everyone around me told me I would fail. It’s incredible how much my belief in those words impacted my ability to actually see the achievements I was making. When I started Moop, I wasn’t fully aware of how significant the storytelling of brand building would help me see that my own story was not anyone else’s to write. Each bag taught me something new about design, production and possibility. From the beginning, you all engaged with the process, carried my bags and in turn helped to create the validation and success that would become the driving ethos of this brand…and of me.
I have built a solid business and am very proud of the role I’ve played in community building through placemaking and job creation in every city and neighborhood in which I’ve located myself, my studios and my shops. This will be the last collection that I myself will have designed and produced.
I am excited about this massive life change. I have built a very fulfilling life with this business as a product designer, photographer, manufacturer, job creator and substantial contributor to the creative class. I've been lucky to have such opportunity while I created a career for myself, raised my daughter and got to work with some of the best people on the planet. I never could have guessed how much community would come from making the bags that would hold the contents of our daily lives.
I’ll forever be writing cocktail recipes and cooking in tiny kitchens, entertaining as many people as possible while I build community wherever I go. I am so grateful for the role these years played in helping me establish myself as a designer, writer, place maker, employer and creative professional. I’ll be launching a writing project via Substack once I’ve wrapped a few things up. I hope you’ll join me there when that time comes. In the meantime, maybe buy Moop?! Maybe hire me?!! But, definitely buy the very last bags designed and made by me. Each one is filled with the magic optimism of a hard working life, very well lived.
Forward always.
So much love and endless gratitude.
xo,
Wendy
✨✌️❤️🌞
