This month, in honour of Mothering Sunday,
we meet four marvellous mums who juggle busy family lives with running their
own successful businesses…
Karin Janssen
Her beautiful handcrafted bags and
accessories are stocked in more than 50 shops across the country – but start
life somewhere far more exotic. Louis Cummings meets crative mum Karin Janssen
to chat about her unique business, Suki & Rose Originals.
For most people, going to work offers
little more than the 9-5 grind. For stylish mum Karin Janssen, however, it
involves regularly jetting off to one of the most beautiful places on the
planet. Sourcing the fabrics for her unique vintage bags, scarves, corsages and
clothes means a long-haul flight to Vietnam – home to the majestic mountains,
sparkling coastline and fascinating cities. A veritable Mecca for silk and
cloth awaits her, its markets laden with dazzling fabrics in a kaleidoscope of
colours, patterns and plies.
Though the business trips mean leaving
husband Kevin and her adorable 10-year-old daughter Suki at home, Karin admits
she relishes the chance to scour the markets for inspiring new materials. “I do
out there for about 10 days normally and I absolutely love it. Just touring
around the markets, seeing all the different fabrics and buttons; there are
thousands of different types – and stalls can literally stretch for miles,” she
enthuses, showing me pictures of the eyecatching textiles heaped on top of each
other in cherry reds, canary yellows and vibrant purples.
Chatting in Karin’s office – a stunning
high-ceiling room at her traditional stone Willingham home – weare surrounded
by her handcrafted products, from on-trend blue bird-print scarves and kitsch
polka dot purses, to luxurious velvet flower corsages and cross-body leather
satchels. On the huge table that dominates the room, amid fabric swatches, a
Cath Kidston sewing kit and various bags, sits one of the imaginative mum’s
latest designs – a beautiful beret bearing an oversized corsage, perched on a plastic
model head. “That’s one of my new designs,” she says, as she catches me eyeing
the hat. “It’s part of a new collection which has a distinctly vintage feel,”
she explains.
Just down the hallway in the lounge there
are audible whoops and cheers as Karin’s 10-year-old daughter Suki – a bright
and vivacious young thing with jet-black hair and an infectious smile – is
celebrating her birthday with a friend. “She’s so excited,” Karin smiles.
“We’ve been celebrating her birthday for days now!”
Suki
& Rose Originals’s Poppy Antique Bag
Suki, it turns out, is very much
the
inspiration for her mum’s business, she being the Suki in the title and
Rose
the yappy West Highland Terrier making herself heard in the kitchen.
Suki was
born in a province near Hanoi in Vietnam, and adopted by Karin and Kevin
when
she was give months old. The couple couldn’t have children of their own –
and
when looking where to adeopt, there was not question that it would be
Vietnam; Kevin fell in love with the country on his post-university
travels. “He was really
struck by Vietnam’ Kevin fell in love with the country on his
post-university
travels. “He was really struck by Vietnam and how great the people
were,” Karin
recalls.
“It’s an amazing country because of the
landscape and a fascinating mix of old and new; they have temples and then
great big skyscrapers, and they’ve got good beaches as well,” she enthuses.
Although there was a bilateral agreement
between the UK and Vietnamese government on adoption at the time, the process
still took a couple of years to complete. “We didn’t do an Angelina Jolie and
just fly out there to pick up a child; we had to go through social services
checks and various processes.
But it has been an absolutely fantastic
experience – and Suki is a lovely little girl, and so well adapted and attached
to us; we’re very lucky,” Karins adds softly.
Bringing their gorgeous new
daughter back
to Britain, the couple decided to move from their Braintree home to
Cambridge because of its multicutural mix. “A lot of Vietnamese people
settle here in the
1980s, so there’s quite a thriving community. We’ve become very involved
with
the Vietnamese community; Suki was bridesmaid for a friend who runs the
restaurant Thanh Binh in Cambridge. She flew out to Saigon – or Ho Chi
Minh as
it’s known – for their wedding.”
Having worked most of her life in food
technology and development, including ceating deliecious recipes for Cadbury’s,
British Sugar and Calledbaut (the biggest chocolate manufacturer in the world),
Karin was looking for a less frenetic career that would fir in with her
motherly responsibilities. “In the last job I had I was selling thousands of
tonnes of liquid chocolate and used to cover an area from Banbury all the way
down to the country where Suky was born, and hoping to harness her creativity,
she sought out artisans in Hanoi and commissioned them io interpret her
designs, before shipping the finished bags and accessories back to Britain. “I
wanted to five Vietnam some business,” she says. “And it was amazing to see my
designs come together within five or six days.”
To test out her authentic Vietnamese goods
Karin took a stall in Cambridge market selling her eyecatching range alongside
Fair Trade bags from Madagascar. After a year, heartened by that fact that her
own bags were far outselling the others, she approached local shops to stock
Suki & Rose Originals. That was four years ago – and now the inspiring
mum’s stunning vintage and contemporary day and occasion bags, silk scarves and
gifts are stocked at more than 50 stores, from the Channel Islands to
Warwickshire and locally in Daisy Chain Histon, Ladytron in Saffron Walden and
Ethnic Origins in Godmanchester.
“I work with two separate businesses in
Vietnam now,” Karin explains. “One is a young company run mainly by women and a
lot of them are graduates and speak about four or five languages: they are
absolutely amazing. The other business has a closer link to fair trade and
employs people who have previously worked in the paddy fields or have
disabilities. I visit every year to make sure I’m happy with the working
conditions.”
Surely it must be a great feeling knowning she
is keeping people in jobs and wages through her booming business? “Ah, I don’t
like to go on about that as it always souns a bit schmaltzy,” Karin says, a tad
bashful, before conceding a little, adding “but, yes, it is rewarding.”
Already a very busy working mum,
Karin
shows no signs of slowing down, hoping to expand her product range to
include
more clothes and seek out another company to work with in Vietnam. But
it’s clear that however crazy work becomes there’s one little lady that
will always
take precedence. “Oh Suki always comes first, without a doubt. Although
it’s
great that she does love what I do; that’s her little sewing machine
over
there,” says Karin, pointing to a dinky turquoise John Lewis number.
“She’s
always running up things. She made me something the other day and said
‘How
much would you give me?’ and I said 50p and she complained ‘That’s not
fair
trade!’ She might follow in my footsteps one day, but whether she does
or not,
this is a good way of maintaining the link with Vietnam…and she quite
likes the
fact that the company is named after her!” Karin laughs.
