So when my Dad moved to New York about 35 years ago, he came from Puerto Rico, he needed a place to work. At the time my uncle had found a job working in a factory that produced charms and metal findings for costume jewelry. My uncle brought my dad into the business and almost immediately my dad fell in love with it. As the years passed by, the owner of the factory decided to retire, my father being still so young and loyal to the business, was chosen by the owner as his successor.
My father now owned his own factory. He continued to create charms and finding for other customers , except now had the freedom to dabble with his own creativity. I remember my dad always bringing home amazing trinkets, frames, candleholders and jewelry that he designed himself, he brought them to get a reaction from us, and it was always one of amazement. He was good, unfortunately with no real business experience he didn't know how to make a separate business out of his own stuff. I used to ask my dad to bring home lots of things he had laying around the job and I would sell them at school. One year in elementary school my teacher decided that instead of a traditional bake sale, she wanted to put on a vendors fair, where the class would be broken into groups and each team would create a boutique of their own, she wanted to teach us about money. I was appointed leader of my group, of course I chose to sell jewelry. . . now the name wasn't so creative "super jewelry store", but we did quite well. That was just the start for me.
As I got older, the interest remained, however I never acted on it. I did, though always have sketches in every notebook laying around in the house, of trinkets, bracelets and other jewels I could think up. It wasn't until I was in high school that I got back into the whole jewelry thing, except this time it came about, because I had learned that my sister also had a secret interest in the business as well, that seems to be the problem with my family, we are all talented yet completely lack confidence, and that is the major determining factor in a persons success, Confidence. We went out to lunch one day and started talking about how cool it would be to start our own business.
Fast forward to 5 years later, we decided to give it a shot, we were going to start a t-shirt business. I had just finished graduating college, with an associates degree in Fashion Design and Merchandising. It's funny because I once heard, when you start a business, it turns into something totally different than what it was intended to be. At first I did not want to believe that, I wanted my t-shirt business to work out. Of course while designing T's my sister and I decided "how cool would it be to have some accessories to match?", well my sister was living in California at the time, and I was here in New York, working as a Supervisor to the morning crew for a huge baby store here in NYC. Despite the distance and me working in the wrong field at the time, we were determined to make it work, after about 2 months, we realized we were so much more into designing jewelry, we put our passion to work and gave in to the urge of jewelry craft. It was of course inevitable, after all it was in our blood.
Which brings us down to current times, currently I am working at a large Denim company in the fashion industry as a technical designer. My Sister lives in Long Island with her three beautiful kids and her Marine Husband. It has been roughly almost 2 years since we decided to start up our business and we have come a long way.
Our designs are inspired by all that is punk!, we are fascinated by fascinating people, the fiercest women in history are what make PunkPussycat. From Marie Antoinette right down to the comic feline Catwoman. We design for women who want to make a statement without being stereotypically punk. We know that not every environment (some jobs, your kids schools) will find "punk" appropriate but, if its who you are than we say go for it, just do it with a little class. 2008 we will be launching our official website, featuring our 1st ever full flowing collection. We harnessed lots of traditional punk materials such as spikes, pyramid spikes, skulls, ball chain, wings etc, in an amazing collection, so classy yet still truly punk that it will easily transition. We call it Punk Royale, and we invite you to come check us out. For more info, you can contact us at Krazylion@yahoo.com.
2008 will be different for us, we will introduce our punk Royale collection and begin introducing our new line of T-shirts (we finally got back to it), awesome T's totally funky, you will love them, and a few other accessories that will definitely get some attention. Come visit our shop, you wont regret it. . . .enjoy.
Check them out at PunkPussycat.etsy.com
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