An Organised Life with... Lana Hopkins from Mon Purse

Absolute power-woman Lana Hopkins is the tenth inspiring individual I'm excited to feature for 'An Organised Life With...'

I chatted to Lana, founder of cult brand Mon Purse, to find out how it all began, what her biggest piece of advice would be and, of course, how she stays so organised...

NAME: LANA HOPKINS

OCCUPATION: FOUNDER OF MON PURSE

How it all began…

Mon Purse began in an unsuccessful search for a handbag at the Bondi Beach Westfield mall led to an hour creating a Build-a-Bear. While sitting in my car afterward, I realised those two activities were not mutually exclusive.

I realised that I simply spent far too many hours pounding the pavement, looking for the perfect handbag. I wanted to solve this personal problem - the ability to have the perfect handbag, with the leather, hardware, lining and size that I wanted, to suit my personal style. I wanted it to smell, feel and look premium and luxurious (made in Europe) without the astronomical price tag. And I wanted the unforgettable experience of actually designing my perfect bag online. People create their own custom Nike shoes, and fashionable women around the world to design their own premium women's shoes, there simply had to be a way to create high quality, luxury and bespoke handbags.

I had a vision... to create an elegant, state of the art bag builder, and then follow this up with high quality, customisable and bespoke creations, delivered to your door. So, during 2014, I travelled the world looking for the best tanneries and ateliers, we hand selected quality leathers and raw materials, and employed incredibly skilled craftsmen. I also found some great software engineers to turn our vision into reality.

Biggest pinch me moment…

We launched in beta (online) in October 2014 and have only been truly trading for less than one and a half years, during this time we managed to open our Paddington flagship store, signed an exclusive deal with MYER (we currently have 5 concessions Australia wide, with more to come in 2017).
Partnered with two of the most prestigious department stores in the world, Selfridges and Bloomingdales.
From 17 million design combinations on our bag builder to 6 billion and growing.