Love Mugs - The Inspiration

Lindsay and I love business. We love ideas. We love design. We love words. We have been itching to do something that matters, that belongs to us, and that makes people happy and changes their lives for the better.

Our joint family holiday in Italy in summer 2017 was where the inspiration came together. We both read and cried over Jo Malone’s autobiography: “My Story”. If she could start two businesses against all the odds – unfinished school, chaotic home, breast cancer – then so could we.

The concept of bringing positive words into people’s hands on a mug had been brewing for a while and got us excited – it was both a useful and inspirational product and a perfect combination of our skills – positive words of encouragement and exceptional design.

Starting to do what you’ve been dreaming about for years is breath-taking – a culmination of your hopes, dreams, imagination and hard work coming together to bring into life all you have worked for and dreamed about.

It’s also terrifying, because we are so personally invested. We believe in Love Mugs with every part of us. We give up our weekends, our holidays and our evenings imagining, creating and developing it. What if the world doesn’t like it?

The soundtrack to this year has been the track from the Greatest Showman: “A million dreams”. This shows the young P.T Barnum awake at night dreaming as a boy, and then re-connecting with those dreams as a grown man, driven by love for his family and desire to provide a better life for them. The Greatest Showman beautifully illustrated that “We can (literally) live in a world that we design”. He imagined it, and then he created it, and that’s what we are doing right now with Love Mugs. PT Barnum said that: “The noblest art is making people happy” and we believe that Love Mugs will make people happy many times a day.

Blake Mycoskie, founder of Tom’s shoes, says that the “definition of success has now broadened to include contributing something to the world”. We think Love Mugs is both an incredibly useful and inspirational product, but we wanted it to contribute to those who don’t know what it means to hear life spoken to them and don’t receive love. So, we will donate 10% of profits to charities that align with our values of “Speaking Life, Sending Love”. This year, the charity we’ve chosen is Samaritan’s purse, the children’s shoe box charity. They literally send gifts of love to children in poor countries at Christmas.

So - there is the inspiration, the hope, the dreams, and the love.

What will the world think? It’s over to you.