Today we’d like to introduce you to Louisa Jane.
Louisa, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
Janet Rocke grew up in Tremont, Illinois, in a home of “diy’ers” – that is, they did everything themselves. Janet’s dad had a woodshop and Janet spent hours in there working alongside her father. Janet remembers going to junk stores with mom (literally). They would go junking and garage-saling and then turn around and make the old junk, new. Her grandparents also had a strong influence on Janet and her siblings – whenever they went to their grandparents they were either helping their grandpa do woodworking or helping their grandma sew. All the kids wanted their own toolbox – even Janet and Brenda, Janet’s sister. Drills, screwdrivers, hammers, you name it. To this day, Janet has two or three in her purse at any given time. Her motto is that every girl should have power tools.
Janet’s dream job was to be a designer and was continually talked out of it because design jobs happened in big cities. In high school, Janet worked at Caterpillar writing service manuals for tractors, and in college, got hired on full-time to draw floor plans for all the distribution centers worldwide. Meanwhile, she worked at a local flower shop, rearranging flowers. Both the flowers and the time spent drawing floor plans, once again sparked her love for design. When her boss at Caterpillar got engaged, she joked with him and offered to do his flowers for the wedding. He actually took her seriously and she ended up not only doing the flowers for his wedding but two of her friends’ weddings soon after. She was offered a partnership at the flower shop, quit college and her job at Caterpillar, and bought into the flower shop.
One month later, her dad died, and Janet experienced a whole new life change. She was partners in the flower shop from 2000 to 2004 and then sold her part to go into a freelance design – furniture and custom bedding. She soon got into kitchen and bath design with a local business and loved it.
Five years later, she went through her dad’s woodshop and tools, and renewed by her findings, started painting furniture for her own house on the side. When her friends saw the furniture she had “made new”, they asked her why she wasn’t selling furniture! Soon after, Janet and her friend Dawn were driving around town and saw a “For rent” sign on a warehouse, called the number, and rented it to get all of her furniture and tools out of her garage. By chance, the warehouse already had a paint booth in it!
At a leap of faith, she quit her design job at the end of 2014 and decided to start Louisa Jane! Janet and Dawn found old furniture, refurbished it, and set the date for their first tent sale – November 2015, in the parking lot of their warehouse. God was good, and the tent sale exploded – in one day they sold all of their inventory. In June 2016, they had their second tent sale, and soon after Darrel and Brenda Ehnle, Janet’s sister joined the LJ team. They decided to be ambitious and host a tent sale every month for a year, and each month sold out completely and had to scramble to figure out the next month’s sale. LJ home design began in the middle of all of this, and Dawn got married and left the team. Everything was happening at once, and then a photographer who had her studio in Tremont, asked Janet if Louisa Jane wanted her studio space. Janet gladly took her up on her offer, and Louisa Jane opened the studio in April 2017. They had already inquired the office across the street from the studio in January of 2016 and started to build the kitchen and bath showroom in the office in 2017 as well. Today, Louisa Jane has their warehouse location, office location, and studio location all in Tremont, and the design business continues to grow under big dreams and lots of prayers.
Has it been a smooth road?
Has it been a smooth road? Not exactly – but it HAS been full of fast-growth, many lessons, and lots of changes. As a company, we have had to do a lot of adapting and tweaking, as growth leads to other challenges. At the beginning of the journey, the interest was so high that the demand was more than what we could keep up with by ourselves. The future of the business was a little uncertain as Janet and Brenda considered who to hire, what services to offer and how to juggle those services, and how all of this would affect their personal lives as well. The high demand and interest from the community was both a blessing and a stress. If Louisa Jane was to give advice to young women starting off in their dreams, it would be to continue to go for it and not become discouraged when setbacks occur and to surround yourselves with great mentors to push you along.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with Louisa Jane Inc. – tell our readers more, for example, what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
We exist for home revival. To revamp your living space in a way that guests can only stare in wonder.
A full-service Interior Design Firm specializing in kitchen and bath design, home furnishings, custom furniture painting, and decor for your home. Our passion is to build a relationship with each client and to create designs that fit them, and in turn, design a home they love. We love what we do as a team, and this reflects in our work and our interactions with our clients.
Are there any apps, books, podcasts or other resources that you’ve benefited from using?
We are huge users of Pinterest and Houzz, as well as a wide variety of home improvement, decor, and life magazines.
Contact Info:
- Address: 206 S Sampson St. Tremont, IL 61568
- Website: www.louisajaneinc.com
- Phone: 309-929-7045
- Email: LJteam@louisajaneinc.com
- Instagram: @louisajaneinc
- Facebook: facebook.com/louisajaneinc
Image Credit:
Danielle Stewart Photography
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