Love Your Merry People Gumboots? You’re Going to Want to See This…
For 10 years now, Dani Pearce has been making rainy days merry and bright with her puddle-ready, splash-worthy Merry People gumboots. Not only has she paved the way for gumboots in the workplace (TYSM!), Dani has also made great strides in the US and UK markets and the sustainability space – and she’s now set her sights on sunny days, too. Yup, that’s right: Merry People are serving up waterproof sandals. We heart.
If you like what you see, act fast because Merry People are currently taking pre-orders for delivery (available in Australia only, for now…) between 9 and 16 December – and it’s the only sandal drop of the summer. Amid this much-awaited launch and the company’s 10th-anniversary celebrations (including some amazing Instagram giveaways), we caught up with Dani to talk about the brand’s humble beginnings, collaborating with Karen Walker and spontaneous mother/son days at the office…
Congrats on a decade of Merry People! Tell us about your 10-year-old self. What did she want to be when she grew up?
Ten-year-old Dani was a farm girl and an average B-grade student who loved running, playing netball and watching cartoons with her siblings. I loved music! I love a strong female vocalist – at the time, it was Whitney Housten and Marah Carey – and I loved singing and dancing in my room (I’d instantly stop if one of my siblings walked into the room).
I wanted to be a stay-at-home mum. Growing up, I didn’t really see women working full-time. I loved kids – and still do – and I never really thought about a possible career.
How did you wind up in the gumboot trade?
I never thought of myself as someone who’d start a business. However, I felt there was a gap in the market and at the time, I was in my late 20s and wanted more for my life – I wanted to live a life of purpose and passion.
At first, I just wanted to see if I could get the product that was in my head to come to life in a prototype. From there, it was about seeing if retail stores would stock Merry People. When I showed a sample to one of my favourite boutiques in Melbourne, the feedback was really positive. They wanted to stock Merry People – that was a moment of commercial affirmation that made me want to place my first order.
What are you wearing on your feet right now?
Bright Olive Billies – our new release clogs! And Merry People socks.
What do you have on the schedule today?
Every day is really different in terms of my work calendar. Mondays tend to be quite busy; I try to limit my meetings to four hours a day, so I can have some time to do my own work and emails. I normally wake up at around 5:45am and do some sort of exercise – Pilates, a run or a cardio class – before my kids (aged 11 months and three years old) get up. Then I make breakfast with them while my husband goes to the gym.
I get to the office by 9am. Today, my eldest son, Jack, came with me for the first half of the day; he sat in my office, colouring in and watching Paw Patrol. My husband came to pick him up at lunch. I’m working full-time now and this morning Jack told me he was sad that we don’t spend as much time together anymore (genuine heartbreak moment!) so I made a spontaneous decision to bring him in. I normally finish at 5:30pm but today I’ll leave early as it’s a beautiful day and I want to spend some time in the sunshine with my family. We normally have dinner at around 6pm and I’m normally in bed by 9pm.
We love a collab here at Peppermint. Can you tell us about your favourite Merry People collaboration?
I’m so proud of all our collabs, but the first Karen Walker one was really special to me because Merry People was still quite small when Karen reached out (I only had four employees). I really love Karen Walker and I grew up wearing her sunnies in my high-school years, so getting to meet her and her husband, to go for dinner with them and have a cup of tea in her home will always be a special memory to me. They are such wonderful people and a beautiful, fun couple!
You started with market stalls and now you sell gumboots throughout Australia, New Zealand, the UK and North America. What did you gain from those early interactions with your customers?
Markets taught me who my customers were, why they were purchasing from me and what was important to them about my product. I loved the market community; I made lifelong friends with some of the owners of other brands.
If you could give that young business owner some advice, what would it be?
Start small, get your product or service right before trying to scale and really get to know your customers. Also, try to enjoy the journey – stop to smell the roses and celebrate your wins.
You initially considered making Merry People a social enterprise. How did you come to balance social and commercial requirements?
At the time, my now husband (a co-founder of the social enterprise HoMie) told me that running a social enterprise was essentially like running two businesses: there’s a charity/purpose side and a commercial side. I was working by myself, paying myself $20,000 a year, and struggling to keep up with business requirements as it was – so it just made sense to grow Merry People into a profitable business first.
Can you tell us about some of the challenges you’ve come up against over the past 10 years?
At the start, I was in my early 30s, working seven days a week and living like a university student again (I also went through a break-up with a long-term partner.) All my friends were settling down, buying houses and progressing in their careers. I really had to put on the blinkers and remain focused on what I was trying to achieve, but it was definitely hard as a solo founder going to markets and coming home with no sales and struggling to pay rent at times.
It was hard when I had our first child. I wasn’t able to take much maternity leave, so I was back in the office four days a week at 11 weeks postpartum. I hired nine staff members the year he was born and my company grew 300%. It was a huge year with a very steep learning curve on both fronts.
What have been some of your proudest moments?
Getting into a Monash University start-up program called The Generator. Merry People was one of 10 companies that were selected and I was given $10,000 for my business. Also, being recognised as one of the top 50 e-commerce companies in 2020. I’d never received an award in the e-commerce space and it was very exciting to receive that industry recognition. And then every day I see a customer wearing Merry People! I always get a little flutter of excitement.
As a brand founder, how do you approach sustainability?
It’s about wanting to make genuine improvements to our sustainability – not simply following what seems to be on trend with other products. We recently did a life-cycle assessment with an industry consultant to map out the CO2 of our Bobbi boot (our top-selling style) and to understand the parts of our process and materials that have the biggest negative impact. Now we have a pipeline of projects to help us reduce that CO2 figure. We work with consultants and a chemist to help us stay across industry trends and learnings.
What do you have planned for the next 10 years?
I just want to be happy and to design products that I love. I hope by then we will be a global leader and world-class in our sustainability initiatives and that we continue our community impact.
