TALK Greenville

Michelle Lawson has lived all over the place and worked in all sorts of creative endeavors, but now she brings joy and passion to a business that offers whimsy and delight to human customers and their four-legged best friends.

She’s pretty happy about it.

Lawson grew up in a military family, ultimately landing in Florida where she “had a completely different life” as a creative director, graphic designer and photographer. She and her husband moved to Greenville a decade ago, and in the time since, her day job and side hustle have switched places.

Lawson owns Livy & Company Handmade Haberdashery, and she is the hands and mind behind it all, creating items for pets like collars and bandanas, often from hand-dyed fabrics.

“My old self, I was always helping businesses create their brand and take products or services to market or doing market strategy,” Lawson says. “I thought I knew everything. This should be easy, piece of cake – start your own business because you’ve helped everybody else.”

Lawson and her sister initially started the business together in 2016, but before they offered their first item for sale, Lawson spent a year doing market research and working on branding.

“I think it’s really important for any person thinking about going into a handmade business,” she says. “I spent the first year looking at the landscape here — who was making dog pet products, what that looked like, who the big businesses are. I looked at the dog spas, dog stores, all that stuff, and I probably reviewed a thousand Etsy stores, because that’s where my sister and I decided we were going to start.”

Oh, and Lawson also needed to learn how to sew.

“I did not know how to sew, nor did my sister. My background was art and as a graphic designer, I did a lot of set designs,” she says.

The business started with adorable – and important, as it turns out – fabric flowers for collars, followed by bow ties and braided collars. Lawson continued to challenge and improve her own skillset, moving to beaded collars and then watching “50 million YouTube videos” to add expert sewing to her toolbox. She took classes and learned to dye fabrics from her friend Beckee Wheelock, owner of The Indigo Tribe.

Livy & Company is named after Olivia, a 10-year-old Chihuahua mix whose own side hustle is collar modeling. Lawson has continued to grow the business, selling online, at markets and through vendors. Along the way, she learned and gained more than she ever expected.

“To be truthful, in the beginning, I resisted so much because I was like ‘that person,’ like I know how to do everything,” she says. “I made my business plan. I was going to do it exactly like you would do for any other type of business. And I learned a lot of lessons in that – to really be open when you have a hand business, to know that there’s just so many nuances to it, and learn from other people. That’s probably been the biggest thing. Some of my best friends now are my vendor friends.”

For Lawson and her pack, which now includes miniature dachshunds Emmett and Ida, openness and joy are key elements of the mix. The flowers Lawson creates were inspired by a gift her sister sent after Lawson adopted Olivia, a tiny, scared pup that had been discarded in a ditch.

“She was very afraid, obviously, and I put that little flower in her collar, and I just remember I was carrying her around in a bag,” she says. “With that bright red flower on that little dog, everybody commented on it. It is absolutely impossible to talk to a dog in a regular voice if they are wearing a flower or a bow tie, and I believe that really helped her evolve. She is the most social little thing. People are often amazed. And that’s why we started with flowers. I could sink my teeth into it because I physically saw how it helped Olivia.”

Learn more and shop at livyandcompany.com.