FEMALE FOUNDER SERIES

This interview is a part of our Female Founder Series where we explore the journey of female entrepreneurs and what makes their brand unique.

Meet YouMe Lin, Founder of Cloud Studio, a Social-Media First Creative Agency.

YouMe started a seven-figure agency Cloud Studio in her twenties partnering with brands like Living Proof, Korres, and Sundays. YouMe has been a fierce advocate for breaking down barriers and pushing brands toward sustainability and eco-consciousness. She started her career during college as a creative director at Screenshop, a company later acquired by Snapchat working alongside Kim Kardashian. She later worked as the Brand Director at Naadam, a sustainable fashion brand before starting her own agency in 2020. YouMe is also the creator of Cloud Cafe, which offers minority female business owners free consultations. She has since devoted over 100+ hours to helping small businesses.

We sat down with YouMe to discuss her entrepreneurial journey, Cloud Studio’s mission, and the advice she has for female entrepreneurs.

Tell us a little bit about the beginning of your career and what led you on the path to start your agency, Cloud Studio. 

I started my career as a creative director for a fashion app acquired by Snapchat while still studying at NYU. Learning from Kim Kardashian, the app’s advisor, I gained valuable experience in social media and influencer marketing. Later, as the brand director at Naadam, a sustainable fashion brand, I led the social media team and partnered with eco-friendly brands to help amplify sustainability messaging. Frustrated by the industry’s lack of diversity, I founded Cloud Studio in 2020 during the pandemic. Within two years, our agency grew into a strong team, achieving seven-figure revenue through collaborations with mission-driven brands. I am proud to say that Cloud Studio has become a platform for change, reflecting my values and commitment to making a positive impact.

At the start of your career, you were finishing your studies. What is your advice for young professionals to achieve balance while pursuing their passions and earning their degrees? 

In my experience, the key to balancing passions and earning a degree is to not be constrained by timelines or societal expectations. During college, I took a year off and did part-time studies to create a more balanced lifestyle that allowed me to pursue my passions. It’s important to prioritize your well-being along the way. Don’t be afraid to take an unconventional path and find your own balance.

What inspired the name of your marketing agency, Cloud Studio? Tell us a little bit about your agency’s mission. 

I started Cloud Studio in 2020 as a full-service creative marketing agency to serve mission-driven and sustainable brands in beauty, wellness, and lifestyle.

As an agency, our mission is to inspire both consumers and businesses to lead with impact and intention. “Cloud Studio” captures the essence of our creative space by blending the boundless shapes of clouds with the welcoming environment of a studio.

Just as clouds have no restrictive form, our work knows no boundaries. Here, we foster a collaborative team culture, bringing together diverse ideas and talents under one roof—a true creative home where limitless possibilities take shape.

Cloud Studio focuses on eco-conscious and sustainable brands. What are some of the brands you partner with and how are they driving sustainability across beauty and fashion? 

Petite Studio for slow fashion and KORRES for skincare. I am constantly inspired by their creativity and unwavering commitment to sustainability. They prioritize sustainability rather than treating it as an afterthought, and they excel in finding innovative ways to repurpose recycled materials and waste, transforming them into lovely accessories and goods.

You’ve started Cloud Cafe, a community for advocating for minority women business owners. Tell us more about this initiative and how you are helping minority women achieve their goals. 

Being a minority female entrepreneur, I intimately understand the challenges and journey involved in building a business. This motivated me to establish Cloud Cafe, an initiative at Cloud Studio dedicated to providing resources and support to fellow female founders. Through workshops, podcasts, panels, articles, and more, we offer complimentary guidance in digital marketing, utilizing our expertise to empower small female business owners.

What is your advice for other female founders that want to build their own businesses? 

Be your own biggest competitor and avoid comparing yourself to unrealistic expectations that can be detrimental to your success. Embrace your unique perspective and strengths, and believe in your ability to make a difference and achieve remarkable things. Use the superpowers only you have.

What’s next for Cloud Studio and where do you hope to take the business over the next few years? 

We’ll be rolling out more initiatives to amplify our mission, support important causes, and provide more resources for our community. This year and next, we are thrilled to undergo an exciting rebranding process to build out the Cloud Studio brand. Stay tuned for updates and follow our journey.

The Final Five

Uncommon and Curated wraps up every interview with these five “food for thought” questions.

1. What song is always on repeat on your playlist?

Anything Blackpink.

2. What is the most impactful book you have read?

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant.

3. What’s a brand you absolutely love and why?

Shameless plug, but I love Cloud Bar, a holistic wellness brand that I am working on building as a side passion project. We focus on helping you heal from within through Traditional Chinese medicine superfoods rooted in self-care.

4. What is a ritual or routine that brings you joy or keeps you grounded?

Personally, I find incorporating traditional Chinese medicine wellness and beauty practices such as gua sha, acupuncture, cupping, and Cloud Bar’s superfood infusions into my daily routine to be very relaxing and centering.

5. What are your words to live by?

You can do anything, but not everything at once. Give yourself some grace.

UNCOMMON CREATOR SERIES

Sophie Lepourry shares the creative process and inspiration behind her jewelry collections at Sophie d’Agon. This interview is a part of our Uncommon Creators series that highlights unique and exceptional artists, designers, and creators who are pushing boundaries and innovating their fields.

Meet Sophie Lepourry, Founder of Sophie d’Agon Jewelry.

Sophie Lepourry is the Founder of Sophie d’Agon, an artful jewelry brand embodied by captivating designs featuring colorful, precious stones that spark emotion. Sophie has worked for some of the biggest names in fashion including Prada for six years before moving on to Saint Laurent where she honed her skills for over 14 years to become the head of worldwide purchasing in 2012.

In 2015, inspired by memories of her uncle’s jewelry shop, she embraced her entrepreneurial desire, and Sophie d’Agon was born. Self-taught and intuitive, she draws on her love of art, her childhood memories, and her knowledge of women to create stunning jewelry collections that are both unique and timeless.

We sat down with Sophie to discuss her entrepreneurial journey, her creative process, and what inspires her collections.

Tell us a little bit about your career path in accessories and what eventually inspired you to start your own brand.

I began my career at Hermès in their legendary first boutique at 24 Faubourg Saint Honoré, and this experience was a real turning point in my career. This role fulfilled my passion for beauty and craftsmanship, and I knew that this was the sector I wanted to pursue. 

I then moved on to Prada as an accessories buyer for France and the UK where I was truly inspired by the amazing creative talent. This experience also showed me the power of marketing and visual merchandising – Prada at that time invented the “it” bag concept, let us not forget. 

Next, came the exciting Saint Laurent years, where I worked for Tom Ford, Stéphano Pilati, and Heidi Slimane. I was in charge of worldwide retail merchandising, and that opened up my knowledge of international markets. 

All of these experiences enriched me in some way and have since served me enormously in launching my brand and my collections. If I had to sum up what I’ve learned and what I keep in mind every day, it’s that you can have the best product in the world, but if nobody knows about it, nothing will happen. Communication is the key to a successful brand and we work very hard on it every day. 

Where do you draw your creative inspiration for the Sophie d’Agon jewelry collections?

Sometimes it’s very precise and I know exactly where it comes from, but very often it’s much more diffuse. I think it’s the assimilation of everything that surrounds me, the vegetal world, and especially flowers.

Antique jewelry also has a big influence on my work and I have a big passion for the Victorian, Georgian, and Edwardian eras.

I also draw inspiration from a lot of paintings by artists like Sonia Delaunay and Vasarely. In fact, I’ve just launched a capsule collection with the painter Nina Koltchitskaia. The collection is called “Les bijoux-poèmes” with poetic jewelry pieces that make her drawings come to life through the brilliance of stones and gold. The collection also includes a beautiful silk scarf featuring her artwork.

Tell us about your creative process from start to finish for a piece of jewelry.

I need peace and quiet to design the new collections, so I work either from home in Paris or from Agon Coutainville in Normandy in our little vacation home. I “draw” my models in PowerPoint, I assemble the stones, and I test the color mixes. This tool is my best friend even if it always surprises people when I tell them I design in PowerPoint. 

I then send the drawings to the workshop which will transform them into 3D. There are a few back and forths until the technical drawing and the volumes correspond perfectly to what I have in mind. We then launch a prototype. If the new model is very different from what I usually make, I ask to see the resin model before launching the prototype. 

I regularly go to the workshop to follow the manufacturing process and chat with the craftsmen. I love spending time in the workshops and I never tire of it – their work is so incredible.

We absolutely love The Geometrics jewelry collection. Tell us more about the inspiration behind these designs and your creative process for this collection.

The Yellowstone collection’s round shapes are inspired by the volcano in the eponymous park and echo the circles and colors of nature’s miracle.

The rectangular shapes are a reference to antique jewelry, and more specifically to a ring I’d found at a flea market. I noticed quite quickly in the boutique that women very rarely hesitated between round and square or rectangular shapes, so I looked into the symbolism of the shapes and what made them so alluring. 

The Paloma collection is directly inspired by artist Vasarely, using the shapes that adorn the entrance to his foundation in the south of France.

What’s so appealing about geometrics, beyond the shapes, is the mosaic aspect and the accumulation of all those little precious stones.

You have unique collections curated by different emotions such as joyful, romantic, and audacious. Tell us more about the idea to create collections around emotion.

Precious jewels arouse a lot of emotions in themselves, as they are often linked to a happy moment in life, such as a wedding, a birth, and so on. 

The emotions in my jewelry are conveyed through color. Colored gemstones are so bewitching, they’re all different, and their little natural “flaws” – the inclusions – are very touching to me. In the case of emeralds, the numerous inclusions can resemble a beautiful garden. These inclusions are a reminder that these marvels were created thousands of years ago by nature. 

White diamonds, for example, inspire me much less; they’ve become very statuesque.

Your brand works with recycled gold and prioritizes working with second-hand materials. How have sustainability and ethical sourcing shaped your brand?

All our jewelry is made from recycled gold, and that’s very important to me. Gold is an incredible material because it can be recycled ad infinitum while retaining 100% of its virtues, so we don’t need to keep digging up the earth – there’s enough gold already extracted to cover our needs for the next 50 years.

I’m also very careful about where my stones come from, and I only use stones whose origins I know, even if it’s not an easy task for colored gemstones.

 I’m very careful about the environment in general, and I keep paper printing and packaging to a minimum. Again, it’s not always easy, as we have to find the right balance between our customers’ expectations in terms of the quality of the service they expect and the protection of our planet.

The Final Five

Uncommon and Curated wraps up every interview with these five “food for thought” questions.

1. What song is always on repeat on your playlist?

I often rotate between Elvis Presley and Beyoncé.

2. What is the most impactful book you have read?

The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald, I’ve read everything by this author.

3. What’s a brand you absolutely love and why?

Doên. I love their romantic, easy-to-wear clothes and their aesthetic. It makes me want to live in California with a whole slew of kids playing on the beach at sunset. 

4. What is a ritual or routine that brings you joy or keeps you grounded?

Playing tennis with my husband and then going for a swim in the Channel Sea at 16 degrees.

5. What are your words to live by?

Life is about friends, family, and travels.

FEMALE FOUNDER SERIES

This interview is a part of our Female Founder Series where we explore the journey of female entrepreneurs and what makes their brand unique.

Meet Joanna Lau, Founder & CEO of JEMMA Handbags.

Joanna Lau is the Founder & CEO of JEMMA, a disruptive fashion brand that has big plans to revolutionize the women’s workwear industry. Joanna, a NYC banker turned handbag designer, was inspired to bring the concept of the male briefcase to working women in a fashionable, practical way by fusing functional office needs with designer-chic quality.

Since launching in 2016, JEMMA has seen massive growth with the popular EMMA Work Bag and BIRDIE Gym Bag and has developed a loyal following of #JEMMAGirls.

We sat down with Joanna to discuss her entrepreneurial journey, the inspiration behind JEMMA, and what makes the brand unique.

When you were young, what did you dream of being when you grew up and how is that reflected in your journey to starting JEMMA?

I always dreamed of being a business owner. I felt there was something so rewarding about building something from scratch and owning it as yours and nobody else’s, almost like raising a child. So even though I started off my career at a bank, it made me realize how much I wanted to be an entrepreneur more than a corporate professional, which led me to my inspiration to start JEMMA.

What was the inspiration behind starting your own handbag line and the name JEMMA?

While in banking, it was bugging me that men had beautiful and functional bags while women simply had handbags that were clearly not catered to the workplace; no attention was paid to the functionality of handbags.

My goal was to combine the beautiful designer aesthetic of women’s handbags with internal functionality while building a brand around the #JEMMAGirl and her needs.

The name “JEMMA” is a combination of my name, “Joanna” and “Emma,” my sister’s name. We have a really strong bond and she has always supported and encouraged me to pursue my dreams.

What is the main mission of JEMMA and what sets it apart from other handbag brands?

The whole premise with JEMMA is not just about our bags, it is about the #JEMMAGirl community. We see ourselves as a fashion utilitarian brand. We are not about trends —we are about the customer and her needs. If she needs a gym bag, we will make her the best gym bag she will ever find. With all of our bags, there is a purpose—there is a reason for existing. As the designer myself, I am all eyes on what women are doing with the bags they are carrying daily. I closely observe and question the minute details so I can really hone in on what I should be doing for our next collection. I personally review all feedback that comes to us so that I can include it in upcoming designs and make better and better products for our #JEMMAGirls.

One of the things we love about JEMMA handbags is their quality and craftsmanship. With bags made in New York from fine Italian leather, tell us a little bit more about your design and production process.

What makes this process unique?

Whether designing a women’s work bag or handbag, quality is one of our main priorities with every piece thoughtfully designed in New York from fine Italian textiles like you mentioned. However, it’s important to note that our bags are not designed from an ivory tower but rather based on real-world feedback and the needs of our customers. We pride ourselves in really engaging with our customers on social media and via customer support to understand their pain points and build products around them rather than pushing something we think is on trend or pushing a decision made by a fashion designer who may not be accounting for real-world practicality. As a result, all JEMMA Bags are extremely well thought out and deliberate in design.  

What are your most popular JEMMA handbags and what features make them a bestseller?

Our signature EMMA Collection has been with us since day one and is still a bestseller for its chic and functional design for work. Our BIRDIE 43 and JOJO Bags are also extremely popular in their own way for the perfect fuse between practicality and design.

What JEMMA handbag do you use the most and why is it an everyday essential?

Great question. When I am carrying a laptop for work meetings I prefer the EMMA 37 as it is so chic and professional yet holds all my work items. When I’m running around town, I love the TEA Box Bag as it is such an easy yet spacious crossbody to use and can be dressed up and dressed down. 

We love the EMMA Traveler 39 that’s meant for both work and travel, where’s the most interesting place this bag has been your travel companion?

London. I have been to London for both work and pleasure and I just love how seamlessly the EMMA Traveler 39 fits in with my meetings and the quintessential British aesthetic. I feel so put together when I carry the EMMA Traveler 39 around.

The Final Five

Uncommon and Curated wraps up every interview with these five “food for thought” questions.

1. What song is always on repeat on your playlist?

All Too Well (10-minute version) by Taylor Swift. I  love how long it is. It’s great for working as it just goes on and on and there’s something therapeutic about it that allows me to get into a work mindset without being distracted. 

2. What is the most impactful book you have read?

Shoe Dog by Phil Knight. Always love a frank entrepreneurship story. 

3. What’s a brand you absolutely love and why?

Restoration Hardware. Love their stores. There is something beautiful about how they sell products in the most elegant way.

4. What is a ritual or routine that brings you joy or keeps you grounded?

My grounding ritual is as basic as taking daily walks. It helps me think better and stay calm despite everything that may be going on in my life. 

5. What are your words to live by?

Life is too short to not push the boundaries and reach for the stars. 

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