Sister
ACT
Launching a brand when you live on opposite sides of the world is always going to be a challenge, however, for sisters Becca and Jess Stern the time they’ve got to spend with each other and their family wouldn’t have happened without this business.
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hen you think of lockers, grey, boring and something to store old files come to mind, right? That is until you see Mustard Made’s lockers. Think bold colours, funky designs and the perfect addition to any space in the home or office. Sisters Becca and Jessica Stern started their new brand a couple of years ago, after Becca had her second son Ellis in 2018 and Jessica had come down from London to meet him. “We dreamed up the idea of a locker brand because I loved vintage metal furniture and had a bunch of old, rusty lockers in my home and studio that I adored but weren’t very practical,” Becca enthuses. “Jess wasn’t convinced at
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first but soon came round. Six months later we were in China with Ellis and six months after that we launched our products at a trade show in Sydney.” Indeed, introducing their lockers to the market at Life Instyle Sydney was the best thing they could’ve done as people were buying, complimenting them and genuinely excited about their products. It was a huge moment of achievement for them both, says Becca. “We also get to work with brands and businesses we genuinely admire–from the brands we collaborate with to the independently owned stockists and even our factory and warehouses, we love the people we get to work alongside and feel very honoured to have
found such good people in business. Also seeing our products in shops we adore is still so surreal, we dreamed of being in Libertys and now we are.” It’s the little features such as hooks in the doors, the cute keyring or the colour palette they use that make Mustard Made’s lockers stand out from the crowd. They are strong and created to be easy to assemble as well as really versatile and flexible. And then of course there is the name, which came to Becca when she was in the car. “I tend to mull over things, giving myself time to allow ideas to come to me. I call it ‘incubating’, you can’t always rush these things. I knew that our brand and products were going to be all about the colours.