Although its written on my instagram page and I of course have made various posts about it, for those of you who don't know my full time job is working for fashion brand Motel (www.motelrocks.com) as their wholesale manager, i've been with them for most of my 20's now and i'm going to tell you a bit about how i got there and what it is I do!

Although i always thought i would do the going to university thing before i got a job, i never actually did make it. I grew up in the north of England (Derby / Nottingham way) and I discovered going out with friends at the time when i started college and i also discovered that i preferred to do this than actually go in to college where i learnt quickly that i could easily get away with not being in class. My favourite hang out back then was Rock City, every Thursday and Saturday night without fail and then somewhere else around town on the Friday between. Anyone else who lived or went to Nottingham around the same time as this around 2003 / 2004 might understand the ritual about being out for these nights each week. 

I've always had a minor geeky side to me (i blame my games programming brother) and so got into the internet at the age of around 12, now days this is normal, however, back then hardly anyone i knew had it and the only way i was allowed on was through this free service my brother had found that entailed you dialing in to try and connect up to the internet. Oh the joy when you finally heard those crazy internet dial noises meaning after hitting reconnected for the 50th time you finally were actually connected. So even back then although we didnt have facebook etc (jeez sounding like an old woman much?!) i did already have a blog! It was part of 'Live journal' (please let me know if you are around the same age as me and had one of these too) and my name was a classic emo lyric 'Thefadedsummer'. So during my above party times i was also blogging and connecting with people from around the world, the most significant people i made friends were some people from South wales who after a few meets I ended up going out with a friend of a friend and this started me on my journey of leaving home and making my way to where i am now. I was with this guy for 3 and a half years and in this time we lived in Newport in south wales and although (of course) things didnt work out with me and the guy at the time I met some other incredible people and had an amazing time living there and some of those people who i met through living in Wales are actually are still my closest friends today. After we broke up i hung around for a while but then 6 months in I decided I needed a change. My best friend at the time Emily had just moved across the bridge to Bristol and this seemed like the right move to make so i started to think about what i was going to do in order to make it work.  While on a day trip over to Bristol i discovered the shop 'Motel' and instantly fell in love with their iconic vintage inspired prints and unique styled dresses. It almost felt it was too good to be true when i noticed the 'We're looking for an assistant manager' sign behind the till and instantly spoke to the manager - i'll cut this bit short but i came back for the interview and they offered me the job the next day! Hoorah!

I quit my job where i was currently earning over 10k more than i would now and packed my house, my bags and off i went... Nothing felt strange about giving up this much money etc, even though people said I was mad i knew it was right and this is where i started my Motel journey. I worked in the shop for around a year and a half and became the manager there after around 6 months, then i moved over to the website (it was much smaller back then) and they wanted me to take over the general running of the site, promotions, buying and overseeing the graphics etc i did this role for around 2 years before my boss asking me to relocate to London to help him set up a London showroom and run the wholesale side with him which i have been doing ever since!

Being the wholesale manager means i over see (with the owner) the whole of the wholesale sales team. While i am the only internal sales team member we have various agents placed around the world who sell the brand for us and its my job to help assist them to make sure they have everything they need to be able to to sell the brand to other stores / current stockists and help plan out ways to grow the business. As well as this i also sell to all the Major accounts in the UK as well as indies and majors around the world where we dont have any agents. I've been lucky that this job has given me an opportunity to travel, meet new people and gain lots of experiences i dont think i could ever of gained in university and i've met some amazing people along the way. 

I joined Motel when i was 20 and i'm turning 30 next year which means i've spent my entire 20's growing up with Motel and I really have enjoyed it. I'm lucky that im one of those people who actually wakes up and enjoys going to work. Since i've been with them so long i have naturally have got involved with other aspects of the business such as setting up and organising our recent collection collaboration with Grace Neutral, a previous collaboration between Motel and Jeffrey Campbell , moving and setting up our London office twice, creating promotional teams across the UK, helped with photoshoots... just to name a few.

Which leads me nicely really to why i can get so quiet! I love social media i really do and i love to blog and talk and i really want to give you all an insight into life this end, our journey, the wedding and new brand but sometimes my time can get so used up and it can all become quiet over whelming. If you ever catch me and Carlos on our snapchats you might see they we can be working late up to midnight, especially because we both deal with America and so this can really leave us with little room for doing as much of photo taking / blog posting as we would hope to. I am working on this though!

This last week I've been moving us into and setting up our new showroom space which is part of the We Work community in Old street. Its a small office but one of our coolest, the environment and vibe there is great. If you haven't heard of we work you simply rent an office space within a shared building. Its a very open space with all the offices being made of glass to create as much natural light as possible but to also make sure people don't feel sectioned off and instead part of the one big community, theres big open spaces where you can hang out, have meetings, make phone calls in private mini desk booths or even just stand a the Kitchen pouring yourself a free coffee, beer or cider! If people are interested i can do a bigger post about the we work building itself as the whole concept and design is really great and it is a very visual space.