Today we’d like to introduce you to Ottway The Label.
Hello Ottway The Label, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
Ottway The Label was born in 2018 at our cabin house in Melbourne, Australia. Created in the footprints of two-spirited voyagers, Neri and Manu, with a deep respect for nature, exploration, and tradition, Ottway pays tribute to the narrative of true vintage.
The inspiration behind launching the brand came after meeting so many inspiring entrepreneurs and spending time in Melbourne’s creative community. This encouraged us to tap into our own creativity, producing unique designs and vintage-inspired styles that Ottway the Label has become known for.
Adding to this, the Otway Ranges, largely untouched and with a fascinating history, are the inspiration for this journey. It’s a beautiful area down the Great Ocean Road in Victoria that we have been exploring for many years.
We cemented our love for the region by acquiring a piece of forest to build our own unique cabin house (Gloria) to be shared with the Ottway community.
We knew we wanted to create our own, like-minded community that appreciates clothes made in small batches so as to step away from fast fashion and stay sustainable. The support from our community keeps us inspired and driven to keep creating!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Our main focus has always been online through our website and in the last two years, once the online presence was more consolidated, we started to move into the brick-and-mortar space, opening our Flagship Store and also growing our stockists around Australia.
The key learnings for us have been “remain true to yourself”. It is important to not pretend to be someone or something else online. If you are constantly pushing the brand to project an image that is not you, it would be very difficult to make it work in the long term… and more importantly, it won’t be as fun!
The pandemic taught us some very valuable lessons.
Firstly, how to adapt to different challenges such as designing our clothes without being able to visit our factories like we used to do. Another important lesson was to enjoy and live in the present without planning and thinking too much about the future, as it has been difficult to predict how and when everything would resume normally.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Ottway The Label is a premium quality clothing designed in Australia that’s moving away from fast fashion. With every purchase, we install clean energy in the community. Promoting a sustainable future.
Inspired by the community feel here in Australia, we knew we wanted to create our own like-minded community that appreciates the outdoors, having a good time, and sustainable living. Our designs are a reflection of all this.
The support from our community keeps us inspired and driven to keep creating!
Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
This journey would not be possible without the daily inspiration, support, and passion of the entire Ottway Team: Jian, Lily, Taz, Stacy, and Daiton & Marie.
Contact Info:
- Email: hello@ottwaythelabel.com
- Website: ottwaythelabel.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ottway_thelabel/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OTTWAYTHELABEL
Image Credits
OTTWAY The Label
