When in 2017 they launched their own leather goods’ brand, married couple Kasia Gaborec and Brendan McEvoy had two objectives. The 1st one was to celebrate the work of Ted Carbery, Kasia’s grandfather, a maker of saddles that survived a terrible aneurysm that left him debilitated. The 2nd was to retail their Men’s collection in the high-end segment. That’s why there is a lot of Italy in the collections: the handbags are made in Italy with leather tanned in Tuscany. “It could take up to 16 hours to manufacture 1 piece – says Kasia Gaborec to Business Post -. We test each model for at least 6 months, before we put it into production. This is the only was we can guarantee quality and functionality”.
My Name is Ted
Ted, we were saying, suffered an aneurysm at 44. After the accident it learned to work with his left hand. If somebody was to ask the founders how they would describe their product they would say that it merges design and technology, describing them as functional and crossover. “Our brand was created from the idea that Ted was able to go from using his right hand to his left – explains Kasia Gaborec -. “When we started, we weren’t sure we wanted to focus on Women’s accessories, as the market is fairly saturated, but we conducted research and discovered that 65% of our clients are women”. So, our first collection for Women came out in 2019.
The startup’s future
My Name is Ted is distributed via pop-up stores and events. The brand has an e-commerce channel that, as it happened to most during the pandemic, proved to be the floating device needed during the lockdown. But the brand maintains the goal of opening physical stores: agreements are being struck to distribute, with this channel, in Ireland and the UK. “The online portion works, but our product is very high up in the price segment – she explains -. We want to have our own stores so that people are able to see the accessories before purchasing them”.
Image taken from mynameisted.ie
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