Inspiring Conversations with Emily Jennings & Melissa Boldt of Lulu Rae

Today we’d like to introduce you to Emily Jennings & Melissa Boldt

Hi Emily Jennings & , thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Ooh, ten+ years of backstory. Well, here’s the cliff notes version of our backstory!

Emily taught first grade to my first-born son, Samuel, who is now going to be graduating high school this year (yikes! di dI just age us?!) The school was a brand new charter school at the time and so many of us involved parents and teachers spent an ungodly amount of time at the school. When you spend so much time together in one space, its easy to coerce the teachers and other parents into liking you. 😊 We spent several years at the school and in that time Emily fell in love with her now husband (who also was my son’s second grade teacher!) and we all journeyed from acquaintances, to “co-workers” to real friends. We all eventually left the school, but stayed very close and have spent the last ten years encountering life’s ups and downs – job changes, loss of lvoed ones, “framily vacations”, and in Kyle and Emily’s case, a very difficult and heartbreaking infertility journey.

After years of losses and unimaginable grief, Melissa agreed to become our surrogate and carried our little girl. Our daughter was born after a very scary pre-term delivery at 22 weeks and survived a 150+day NICU stay. Those days were our most difficult test of strength and Faith and while it could have very easily broken our friendship – we stayed connected and we truly now consider each other family.

Whew, that’s heavy. But, with all that behind us, we decided why not become business partners too! I left my position as an elementary teacher to be home with my daughter and Melissa knew her job would be ending soon due to her boss’s retirement goals. We both love to be creative and really wanted an opportunity to utilize that energy in a way that was flexible for our family needs while having the capacity to be able to grow a business over time and expand as our children grew. In that vein, LULU RAE (our company name honors our daughters’ names) was born!

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Our little gift shop is now a little over a year old and this process has been anything but smooth. Neither one of us has any real entrepreneurial experience. I used to be a paralegal for quite sometime so I was very familiar with the process of starting a company on paper, but once that process was complete – we were a little in the weeds. Neither Emily or I have strong social media, or advertising skills so everything we’re doing is basically trial and error. We originally started by sharing our products – jewelry, home decor, clothing – on a simple facebook page which is still our main source of engagement and advertisement. We’ve since expanded a little to participating in local craft shows and events. It has taken the loss of funds and time and energy for us to learn that some events are just not for us – its an expensive lesson figuring which types and sizes of events work and what doesn’t. Towards the end of 2024, we decided to rent space in a local store and are figuring out retail displays, pricing, and all the other psychological factors of appealing to in-person shoppers when you can’t be there to greet and engage face to face.

As much as Lulu Rae was meant to be flexible and accommodate our family needs, we have found that sometimes flexibility means walking away temporarily – which isn’t very good for business and requires us to work even harder to regain customers.

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Lulu Rae is essentially a small goods gift shop. We create beautiful hand-made goods including jewelry, home decor, wreaths, ornaments, candles, clothing items, etc. We love to re-purpose items and create new products and upcyle thrifted finds. We’re a little all over the board (much like our personalities) so to speak in terms of products we offer essentially not specializing in any one thing. Our products are a reflection of what speaks to us and what we hope then speaks to our customers. Melissa and I agree that our favorite items to make are the custom requests. We are so beyond honored when we have people entrust us with their meaningful visions. We’ve made memorials for fallen officers, wedding signs, engagement ornaments, jewelry reminding the wearer of their personal mantras, fingerprint and handwriting ornaments that forever honor loved ones.

We want your readers to know that we strive to make all of our offerings personal – that everything we put out is hand-made with love and care. If you purchase from Lulu Rae, you can be assured that you are supporting a dream.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shoplulurae
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ShopLuluRae

Image Credits
Mendy Colby