The Hunting for George Story (so far)

Woah nelly, what a seven years it has been! What started as a passion project between two sisters in a spare room has grown into an award winning business with plenty of feathers in its cap. We thought we’d run you through the highlights of the past seven years in the biz (just the good stuff of course!).

Let’s go back to the beginning. It was 2010. Crop tops were cool, Jo hated having her photo taken and Lucy still wore hippie bracelets from travelling the globe…

… when one day Lucy said to Jo “I wanna open a shop” to which Jo replied, “Yeah, me too”. So Hunting for George was born in the spare room at Jo’s house with just a handful of products, a pretty rad but basic website and a serious amount of passion. And that was it. But as Darryl Kerrigan once said, “yeah but it’s what you did with it”. And my word Darryl, we did it good.

About a year later we found out that we had a knack for product design. Lucy designed a print for her friend’s birthday, framed it up, gave it to him, he loved it, wow, you should sell this (insert arm twist here), we bought a camera, had our first photoshoot in our mate’s house, put the print online and within a few weeks it was our best-selling product. #truestory

Next on the hit list was the bedroom. We were struggling to find seriously good-looking UNISEX bedlinen and well you guessed it… Challenge Accepted. We launched our debut bedlinen collection in 2014 via The Design Files. We loved it, you guys loved it, so we started making more. And more. And more. And now our designs include furniture, tableware and a whole load of accessories.

Ok, what’s next? Oh, that’s right. Did we mention we were working out of Jo’s spare room? Well in 2013 we moved into a small studio space and two years later we’d run out of room. (Seriously, we had to step over product to get to our desks!) So in 2015 we upgraded our digs and moved into a large warehouse which was, let’s just say a renovator’s delight. But with a little bit lot of paint (thanks Haymes) it was good as new better than before.

A funny thing happened though, customers kept ringing our doorbell. For a few months, we’d open the door ready with our rehearsed “sorry this is just our office” spiel ready to go when one day we thought ‘why not give the people what they want?’ (It was kind of like when that cute Old El Paso kid decided ‘why can’t we have both?’ accept there were less tacos involved). Anyway… that’s when the Hunting for George shop began.

I think at this point we’re around 2015, I’ve skipped a couple of things. In that time we also launched the Hunting Collective, an artist collaboration to celebrate some of our favourite local creatives. We teamed up with a team of photographers to help us put together creative and a big thank you goes out to Martina Gemmola, Clare Plueckhahn and Bec Hudson.

We also welcomed our in-house DJ Kieran to our ranks, to bring you sweet beats every Friday and start a mean dance floor at all our parties!

Anyway, that brings us to our team, our wonderfully tremendous team. Being a duo was great at the start but not when the business started growing. So we set out to find the best of the best to help steer the Hunting for George train. Toot Toot.

Are you still reading? Ok good because we’re up to the present year, that’s 2017 folks if you needed a reminder (personally I’ve just recovered from 2016). This year has been a pretty epic one so far. Hunting for George was named the Best Independent Online Retailer at the Online Retailer Industry Awards (which is basically the Logies for eCommerce). Also listed as ‘One to Watch” in the Power Retail E-Commerce Leaders’ Playbook and scored a spot in the Top 50 People in E-Commerce by Internet Retailing. We were also named a Victorian finalist in the Telstra Small Business Awards and do you know what the best thing was? We all got to dress up and drink really good champagne.

So what’s next?

Well, I’m glad you asked because we have got something BIG coming and when I say big I mean MASSIVE. Do yourself a favour (love you Molly) and circle the day Friday, October 20, 2017 in your diary!! We’re excited to share with you our first Experience Store at Highpoint Official! Yup, you heard right! Opening this week, make sure you sign up to our newsletter here because we’re going to be giving away 100 EPIC gifts from our incredible bevvy of brands to celebrate!

A very big thank you to all those that have followed the Hunting for George journey, especially those that were with us in the beginning but also to those that are new to Hunting for George. We love what we do, we love our customers and we love working hard to make sure you guys get to enjoy an awesome experience. Because life is too short to be boring.

Also if you’ve read to the end, you’re an A+ in our book or just have a lot of time to kill, either way, you’re alright!

Peace out xx