Hear from Louise Qiu, one of our NEIS participants and the founder of Endimals, “An original, ethical, organic clothing line that aims to fight for animal liberation and environmental justice through art, narrative and fashion as a form of self-expression.”
During this quarantine period, I took this as an opportunity to finally build my website for Endimals. Endimals had been tracking well at our soft launches, gaining a solid following, yet prior to these few months I’d found it difficult to find the time to perfect the website. Since the website launch, I have been receiving sales from all across Australia, with a few international orders.
I gave myself a month once I’d made the decision to follow this through, setting its launch date as 05.05.20 – using Shopify as my chosen platform, and creating a social media campaign on Facebook and Instagram around this date. Some of the challenges in quarantine, was lack of access to resources. Shopify as a platform is easy to navigate, and build on, which meant I was able to construct it close enough to how I’d envisioned (which, coming from a design background, I can be fussy). As Endimals is a clothing store, I’d originally planned to hire a photographer, possibly models too, to do the shoots. However, I quickly learned that photographing the products was something I could execute myself, on my trusty iPhone. So, hundreds of photos of myself, my partner and my wonderful housemates later, in various locations in my neighbourhood / backyard – my website was ready to go.
As Endimals is an ethical brand, with a strong environmental justice and vegan message, I was contacted by various organisations with similar motives who had found me on social media. For various reasons including; collaboration, to use my clothing as their team shirts (including a University movement in the US) and, to write about me. It feels incredible to be forming connections with businesses, organisations, and individuals who are not only in support of my products, but are motivated to create the same positive changes in the world.