Meet Megan Franklin | Mental Health Therapist and Owner of Fenn Collection USA

We had the good fortune of connecting with Megan Franklin and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Megan, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
I had already owned my own mental health private practice for a few years. Although I am passionate about mental health, it wasn’t really a business model I could get my family involved in. The idea of being able to step away from the intricacies of mental health and into something fun, colorful and uplifting was enticing. I shared my idea with my family and they got very excited about it. My children (ages 5, 9 and 10 at the time) began asking such thoughtful questions about the process of identifying a product, contacting a company and working towards importing a product line. They asked about production, shipping and warehousing, I could really see that just the idea of doing this was making their cogs turn about an industry we have never really thought about before.
They asked about how I was going to sell and market the handbags, they became excited about creating business cards and coming up with creative ways for me to market the handbags. They would remind me to always be “repping my merch” so they wouldn’t let me leave the house without carrying one of the Fenn Collection purses.
My 5 year old daughter took a sharpie and wrote Fenn on a few of her play purses. It was fun watching my children learn about the business, as I did too. They are my biggest supports and I hope to be a good role model for them in life and business.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
The Fenn Collection line is such a popular brand in South Africa, Mauritius and Europe. The brand is well established and has so many fun attributes, I just knew it would do well in the American market after having multiple inquires of “where can I buy a Fenn”. I reached out to the owners of Fenn Collection in South Africa and we started the process. They were so easy to work with, and I liked that even in South Africa it was a woman owned business that employed multiple people from impoverished areas.

Some of the challenges initially faced once we had the handbags delivered to us in Colorado were coming up with a business plan to get the handbags in front of our target market. We decided on a phased approach, which included business to business and business to customer avenues, worked on building our website, attended the NY Now retail trade show in New York City and things started rolling from there.

We have been picked up by multiple boutiques, we do home handbag parties, pop up markets and have the online store.

The challenge still facing our business in growing our social media, that is an area we are focussing on at the moment.

As Fenn Collection USA we do import the handbags and distribute them from our at home warehouse out of Evergreen, Colorado. We are a small, woman owned US based business, and I employ my three children in the process.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I absolutely love Denver and the diversity of activities it has to offer. As a mother of three we spend a lot of time at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, we love City Park. I would definitely take guests to Red Rocks, so much fun music history there. We enjoy dipping our feet in the rivers, and going for hikes. We love our mountain community of Evergreen Colorado – of which my husband is a native. Downtown we enjoy a walk down 16th Street Mall, the art district and always make a reservation at La Loma on Broadway.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?

My shoutout goes to my whole family I love how supportive, encouraging and interested my husband and children have been during this process. My sisters (in Colorado, Connecticut and abroad), mother and even father-in law have stepped in to help me with packaging, shipping, marketing and retail and trade shows across the county. I could not have been successful in this business without their support.

My other shoutout goes to my mental health clients. I have watched them do uncomfortable and hard things, I have walked with them in taking chances and stepping out of their comfort zones to achieve success in their industries and gaining better control of their mental health. I used the same encouragement and positive self-talk on myself that I had encouraged my clients to do in their own lives. Watching my clients be successful helped me to push myself when things got hard and when I had self doubts.

Website: www.fenncollectionusa.com

Instagram: @fenncollectionusa

Facebook: @fenncollectionusa