Meet Tiffany Gray, Founder of Luxury Handbag Company TIFFANI & LU

January is the month of many first here at Haute People and we would like to officially introduce you to our new series “Style Leaders”.

Style Leaders look at individuals who work in various parts of the Fashion Industry who have taken the leap to launch their own businesses based on their natural skills and talents. Style Leaders are dynamic, bold, fun and tenacious and have an innate gift for using what they already have to create a life they love.

In Today’s debut feature, we Introduce you to Tiffany Gray, Co-Founder of TIFFANI & LU.

Meet Tiffany Gray, Founder of Luxury Handbag Company TIFFANI &LU

Haute People: Tell us who you are and your background ?

Tiffany: Hi, I’m Tiffany, I lived and grew up in Jamaica where I attended school and went to the University of the West Indies Mona where I studied Entertainment and Cultural Enterprises Management. It was there where I got my feet wet in Entrepreneurship , Fashion Designing and Artistry.

TIFFANI & LU

Haute People: Tell us about the TIFFANI & LU Brand and how it got started?

Tiffany: The brand basically started in the beginning of the 2020 Pandemic because I found myself working in the corporate world for about 7 years. I have no regrets as I’ve learned so much along the way. I think the 2020 Pandemic kind of opened everyone’s eyes; it showed my husband and I that life is short . So many people were dying and so many people were losing their jobs. I was like “I need to get back into that space that I love which is designing and being creative”. Then the idea came about of “what shall we do”? I’ve always loved handbags so I said “why not handbags”? It just came to me and that’s how I knew I had chosen the right thing to go back into that world. My husband said why not call it TIFFANI & LU and I said “that actually sounds nice”.

Haute People: What inspired the “Isabella” Collection and the colour story?

Tiffany: We started the Isabella Collection because we were looking for uniqueness, we wanted to make an entrance to the market with something unique and also something minimal. We wanted a minimal design with unique colours that complimented the design. Choosing the colours was one of the hardest things to do because we wanted 5 introductory colours. I was asking friends and family their opinion and also people were like “Black” , White, Burgundy, and Navy Blue and I was like “no”! Those colours are boring. It had to be unique colours, I’m not gonna do boring colours. So that’s why I decided to do colours like Orangeand Teal that complimented the design. We did nude and Olive as I wanted to add a safe colour.

Haute People: How would you say your Jamaican influence is expressed in the brand?

Tiffany: Well, looking at the brand itself, you can’t really see a Jamaican Influence. But I am Jamaican, I am the owner of the brand — for example, we want to shoot a video a commercial. I specifically want the video to be shot in Jamaica, by a Jamaican and a Jamaican Model so we’re working on getting that done in a couple of weeks. That’s one way I’m trying to still keep the Jamaican Influence alive in the brand.

TIFFANI & LU

Haute People: How important was it to use leather sourced in Italy

Tiffany:It was really important because when we first started, the brand, I really wanted to focus on quality. We were looking at different manufacturers in different countries and it just wasn’t meeting my standards. I said, “my husband is Italian, why not source everything from Italy. It was really important that we did quality — and Italy is known for quality.

Haute People: What is one important life lesson you’ve learned since being in business?

Tiffany: Definitely patience! This business has tested my patience on so many levels because we’ve been working on this since March 2020 and we only launched in December 2021. All that time when we were thinking of colours, design, packaging. The Packaging is very detailed and it took a lot of sitting down, ordering samples because I was living in the Cayman Islands at the time when we were doing most of the ground work. You really want to get this thing off the ground but good things take time I would say just being patient.

Haute People: Entrepreneurship is not new to you .. but are there similarities with managing a Fashion Brand vs a Beauty Brand?

Tiffany: Definitely even though Make up Artistry is a service you are providing whereas what we’re doing is providing a product. It’s different, but it’s very similar.It’s similar in a way with Inventory for example and making sure you have enough inventory because you don’t want to go on a make-up set and realise you’ve run out of wipes or something that you might need to get the job done. Whereas, we don’t want a customer to go to our website, try to purchase something and then it’s out of stock. Balancing Inventory and definitely time management because with Make-up, if you’re doing a wedding party and you have 5-7 people to do, you have to manage your time so you don’t spend too long on one person. Time management is very important when managing a brand — making sure we reply to emails in a timely manner and so on.

Haute People: What can we expect from you in the coming months?

Tiffany: We did a poll on our Instagram recently because we want to add more colours to the Isabella Collection. We got really good feedback from our customers. We’re planning to add new colours in a couple of weeks and we’re working on a new design.There is a launch price of 69 Euros that is valid until February 13, 2022. After that, we have to increase the price.

Haute People: Where can we find the products?

Tiffany: No physical locations (yet) everything is online. You can visit our website at tiffanilu.com and Instagram @tiffaniandlu

Haute People: Any words of encouragement for aspiring Entreprneurs?

Tiffany: Just take the leap and do it! That’s what my husband and I did when we left a comfortable lifestyle with comfortable jobs to go into the unknown and it’s paid off.

#Meet Tiffany Gray, Founder of Luxury Handbag Company Tiffani and Lu

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