It all started in 2010 with Enjoy Lighting when a friend from co-founder Lisa Carrick’s Coles Myer buying days reached out to her looking for a distributor in Australia.
“He was the president of the number one flameless candle company in the US and wanted to expand into Australia,” she explains.
Carrick rang her friend and she told him she had found a distributor…Carrick and her (co-founder) husband David. He needed some convincing because while she had been a buyer for 15 years, she knew nothing about distribution. However, after a week of ringing him each day they both agreed they valued passion over experience and he gave her the green light.
Enjoy Lighting made its debut at the AGHA Melbourne Gift Fair that same year, which was quite the experience, Carrick remembers.
“We had a lot of foot traffic going past our stand and no one was stopping. Eventually I realised that people didn’t know they weren’t real. I stood in the aisle, put a candle upside down on my head and stopped people in their tracks. Theatrics worked. We were nine deep for four days straight, reprinting our order forms twice to keep up with demand. Giftrap wrote a double page on how we were the success of the trade fair. It was all a little surreal.
“Even with all of my buying experience, I didn’t understand how rare it was to launch a product category, not just a product. And the opportunities and challenges that came with that.”
So what spurred Carrick on to rebrand to Enjoy Living? One word… Covid.
“We took the opportunity to look at our business and how we would do things differently. At that point I really wanted to be able to future proof my business and company by pursuing my first love, which is home interiors and home design.
“I thought, how do we change our name and not erode the value of the brand recognition, which was Enjoy Lighting? Everyone had known us as Enjoy Lighting for many years. Enjoy Living was the most obvious and easiest transition as both names have the same initials i.e. EL and it was very similar enunciation.”
Enjoy Living allowed Carrick to embrace anything under the Enjoy Living umbrella, giving her scope to branch out into other categories when opportunities presented.
“Under the umbrella of Enjoy Living, if I wanted to diversify into accessories and furniture, I could and I did.”
Want to read more? Check out the full article in our Home & Living feature in Giftguide’s July Directory issue. The print edition will also be available at the Melbourne gift fairs where you can pick up a FREE copy.
Enjoy Living will be exhibiting at Reed Gift Fairs Melbourne, 2 to 6 August, stand NN25, MCEC.
