Moving On Up!

 There's a buzz at Joy HQ... We're moving!!

After a whirlwind few years, SH is all grown up and ready to fly the nest! Since the beginning, Joy HQ has been based out of Sarah's home. With tassel's and deco strips galore, our bags of joy have taken over every nook and cranny of the Haran home- and it's finally time for them to get their house back!  With our 5th birthday quickly approaching, the timing couldn't be better!

Five years ago, Sarah started the business making bags all by herself! Being a self-confessed workaholic as the COO of the UK's largest cloud computing company, one day Sarah realised she never spent any time enjoying herself and relaxing away from work. It was then that she had her lightbulb moment, that she needed a hobby to help her switch off, so she started making handbags. The hobby quickly turned into a passion, and Sarah took classes from the Creative Director of Mulberry who taught her the ropes on handbag design! It wasn't long before Sarah realised her passion could become her profession. She took a huge risk and quit her high-flying job in IT to found Sarah Haran, and the rest is history!

With a growing demand, Sarah knew she couldn't continue making the handbags herself while also running the business side of things. Preferring family-run businesses, rather than big, faceless factories, Sarah travelled around Europe and found small Ateliers in England, and Turkey. Their skilled craftmanship allowed Sarah to focus on growing Joy HQ.

Two years into her venture, Sarah was joined by Martina as her first full time member of staff. The pair contended with unprecedented circumstances when Covid struck, and in the middle of a global pandemic, realised that our handbags could bring some joy to women in dark times. That's when our SHamazing Bags of Joy club was born. Since then, we have been blessed with a truly wonderful community of women sharing their joy with us everyday, and we couldn't have made any of this possible without them!

Now, there's 6 of us at Joy HQ, Sarah, Martina, Lesley, Bryony, Jennifer and Megan! It's beginning to get a little crowded in the Haran home, and we think Mr Haran might like to get his house back!

The move will see us setting up in Paisley, a mill town known globally for its contribution to the textile and fashion industries! Often referred to as the town that thread built, the iconic Paisley pattern, favoured by the Queen herself, was born right in this very town! Just a quick walk around will see you looking at Silk Street, Cotton Street and Gauze Street. With textiles woven into the very fabric of the town, we know our handbags will fit right in!

In fact, our offices themselves are in an old mill building! Named after Sir James Clark- the man credited with the creation of the bobbin- we just knew it was the perfect building for Joy HQ to set up in. It's still a bit of a building site just now, but with high ceilings and skylights that make our handbags shine that bit brighter, we can't wait to show you all the beautiful interior once the workmen are all finished. 

We couldn't have done any of it without our amazing SH ladies. Our loyal customers are the reason we are able to expand the business and bring our joy to Paisley! Many of you have been collating your collections for years, while others have just started, we're so pleased to have such a wonderful community- seeing all of your lovely faces in the Bags of Joy club makes our days in the office even better. And hopefully many of you will be able to come and visit us in our new space once we have settled in.

With all the additional space in our new offices, we can't wait to see all of the lovely new handbags and accessories we will be able to stock too. As always, we have lots of SHurprises up our sleeves and we can't wait to see what the next 5 years have in store for us all.