Meet Carrie Schepke and Patti Sload of Melt Down Co. in Evanston

Today we’d like to introduce you to Carrie Schepke and Patti Sload.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Carrie and Patti. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
Well it all started about a year ago…we had been friends and neighbors for years and started feeling like we both wanted to do more now that our kids were getting older. One thing quickly led to another and we launched melt down co in early May of 2018. Together, we are the heart and soul of melt down co. Pulling from our combined decades of marketing and operational experiences, coupled with our passion for amazing products and beautiful gifts, we set out to create experiences that people would cherish. There’s nothing better than sending a beautiful gift to someone to brighten their day and there’s something special about receiving a beautiful gift as well.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Being an entrepreneur is both exciting and demanding. The beauty is that you are responsible for everything…the challenge is that you are responsible for everything. Remaining flexible while always being true to our core competencies has been a valuable guiding principle. We quickly learned that we couldn’t do everything. We have had the privilege of partnering with various other entrepreneurs to help in areas such as accounting, photography, and logistics. This has allowed us to meet other like-minded professionals as well as free up some valuable time to focus on our favorite things…our customers, our brand, our signature product line and our collaborations with other small-batch goods artisans.

Please tell us about melt down co.
melt down co is a small batch goods gifting company offering lovely, curated gifts for friends, loved ones, special events, corporate, holiday or yourself.  Our signature line of small batch goods include beautiful hand poured soy | coconut candles, diffusers, room | linen sprays, all-natural balms, salves, scrubs and much more. We also love to partner with other like-minded brands we adore. Together, the collection provides for an array of wonderful gifts. We know you’re busy and besides, we love all the details. We’re happy to handle everything from creation to shipping so you can relax and celebrate in a unique, thoughtful way.

How do you measure success?
We measure our success in a very non-traditional way. We created this brand with a basic framework in place. Of course, it has to make business sense and our numbers have to be in line for it to exist, but once that’s achieved, success is measured primarily through levels of happiness. We love to have happy customers. We love to be happy ourselves. And with a big component of our brand focusing on gifting, we love to hear about happy recipients.

Our brand is melt down co and our tagline is live, laugh, lighten up. This is truly what we believe in… life gets crazy and it’s critical to take a few minutes for yourself to relax… melt down a bit if you will. Taking a deep breath and enjoying things along the way is so important. We have created a product line that we hope results in a few minutes for yourself… providing that temporary escape from the day-to-day chaos of life.

We have had a great deal of fun creating this brand. We try not to take ourselves too seriously. We try to share our product line with others and learn from as many people as we can that are out there fighting the good fight. These relationships are truly what makes it exciting for us and having a ton of fun along the way is what keeps us going. We are grateful for our success to date and are so excited to see where the future takes us.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.meltdownco.com
• Phone: 312-802-2030
• Email: meltdowncompany@gmail.com
• Instagram: meltdowncompany
• Facebook: meltdowncompany

 
Image Credit:
Photography by Steph Wilkins and Katie Barthelemy

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