Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year to all of customers and supporters of Notion Fashion. It’s been a busy year for Notion Fashion, I have always had a dream to own an online platform and studio to showcase and sell New Zealand designer fashion. It is satisfying feeling when you buy New Zealand made and New Zealand designed clothing, you feel like you are supporting New Zealand fashion and are proud of our country’s fashion industry. So this was the dream but I wanted to take the service of selling designer fashion to the next level. We want all of our customers to feel welcome when entering The Notion Studio and find it easy to use the website and will continue to tweak things along the way to make it even better.
In March Notion the name was invented, Notion is a concept and belief. I love the name it sits well with my beliefs and the concept plan we have been building on. In the same month of March I was made redundant from the Cadburys Chocolate factory in Dunedin, at the time I was a Front Line Leader and had worked with the company for 17 years. The closure of Cadburys was heartbreaking and a emotional rollercoaster. I have had a lot of tough stuff go on in my life at the age of 30 I had already buried her Brother, Mother and Father, but none of this was not even close to the emotional and mental stress that I have had to face with the Cadburys closure. Cadburys was a community within a community in Dunedin City, it was like we lived in our own bubble were the standards of quality and delivery were at the highest level and the people were loyal and with loyalty comes family. There is a saying “blood makes you related loyalty makes you family”. Every floor, every shift had their own family units and these units were competitive there was always competition to outdo another shift or floor I have never seen such a competitive workplace which was healthy because how else do you think the people on the factory floor made $130 million dollars profit before being made redundant?
May came and I completed my first fashion show with the help of Monica Wilson from Beats clothing, we were first up to show at ID Fashion in Dunedin 2018. I then worked tirelessly on the website to get it pulled together it is a huge undertaking to set up a website to level it needs to break into the New Zealand fashion industry. We finally got the Notion site up and going by late June and pushed on to another fashion show that went two weeks prior New Zealand Fashion week. The support and comments from this show was inspiring to hear that our show looked better than many of designers shows shown at New Zealand fashion week. This was confirmed as designers started to contact me and people in the media wanted to talk and know more about this girl from a chocolate factory.
The Notion Studio opened to the public with a pop up shop in the start of November with Temple & Co and from there we have continued to grow the brand with opening up the Studio room to the Dunedin Public on Friday and the weekends so the public of Dunedin can see the exceptional work put in my Megan and her partner Craig France. People are amazed and so positive with the look of The Notion Studio and website, thank you for all of your comments and support I know I am on the right track!!!
Along this journey I have never stopped working and I currently work for The Print Room in Dunedin, thank you to Chris and Jon for their support and giving me the flexibility to run Notion Fashion as well. I work as well to pay the bills and to put food on the table and all of those gift packs!!! In the new year I am working on my own little project which will be a collaboration with OCHO Chocolate factory in Dunedin and this collaboration will be printed at The Print Room where I work as well. This project is closure not only for me but for all of ex-Cadburys workers, it is the voice they never had. To mentally heal people need to talk so it’s time we as a country celebrated the fundamental work produced by the staff that worked in the 150 year old chocolate factory in Dunedin.
I will post our Studio open hours on our social feeds for all to see, and keep following our social feeds as we have two huge events early on in 2019. More to come!!!
Merry Christmas to you and your family and stay safe and well over Christmas.
Megan xx 💚