5 Lessons / 10 Years

As many of you know, Nuu-Muu is totally into birthdays, especially decade birthdays. And now we find ourselves, 10 years into this bold experiment, pondering what we’ve learned as we celebrate our own first decade birthday.

 Here are 5 little (big!) things we’ve learned through 10 years of Nuu-Muu:

• Creativity and failure can be great friends. Nuu-Muu came to be and WOW! We’re really doing this. Exercise dresses!!! What about pockets? We definitely need those! And a Tee?? Yes please! Arm warmers?! (Um…we tried.) How about bike rides?? Let’s do it! Yoga and Ski Retreat?! Can we make our OWN prints?? (Enid – you’re an artist! Do that!!) Anyone want to try pants? (OK…that little experiment was a bit painful.) Nikki – please make Facebook happen – whatever that means. What about Scoops? Three cheers for Scoops! Nuu-Muu has been an amazing launch pad for so many adventures. Much of our joy and satisfaction from our business comes from embracing the creative process and exploring potential. Not every experiment has been successful in the full sense of that word, but every experiment has taught us something about ourselves, our company, and our community.

• If you show up, something will happen. Remember that time when we went to an outdoor tradeshow in September and it was FREEZING and RAINING and WINDING and there was no internet so we couldn’t run credit cards and so we “sold” 27 dresses in the pouring rain, gave dresses to wide-eyed people and asked for email addresses so they could pay us later??? They all paid up. Every single amazing woman. There will be hiccups. Our job is to show up, take a look around, breathe, and then do our thing. Rain or shine, there is a conversation worth having.

• Self, team, community: in that order. In the beginning we stayed up all night, fueled by coffee, adrenaline and a healthy fear of failing – desperate to figure out this and that and what about the other thing and ACCCKKK!!!!!!!!!!!! Now we take naps, do yoga, work wisely and somehow it all turns out. It’s even awesome. Thanks, universe. Lesson learned. We are useless to our families, our work and our world if we don’t keep ourselves healthy and happy. We want the same for our customers that we want for ourselves: balanced and beautiful lives.

• We can do this our way. We used to worry we weren’t “doing Nuu-Muu right.” And there were plenty of people offering advice from the sidelines. In the end, there are a million rule books on running a business, but none of them are about Nuu-Muu. We get to choose to go down this path with humor, joy in our hearts and a guiding commitment to keeping it fun.

• Nuu-Muu is more than a dress company. What keeps us here, and lights us up, is not actually dresses. It is the people who wear our dresses and share their lives with us. We do sell a product, and it is a great one, but this community of amazing people is a once-in-a-lifetime, OMG this is really happening, pinch me please, #gratitude, adventure.

Thank you for making history with us. What shall we do for decade #2?? We are open to suggestions.

With love,

Ashley and Christine

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P.S. On Thursday, January 18th, every single adult dress on our website is ON SALE for our original retail price of $55. That's over 40% off! Click here to shop! 

Christine (left) and Ashley (right)...in the very beginning.