Lala Lets Go!
Welcome to Lala Letter land. Whatever brought you here today—maybe you’re simply browsing my portfolio, maybe you searched for www.lalaletter.com and now you’re here—I’m so glad you made it. Lala Letter is such a special entity that has been the sole focus of my life the past 3 years and deserves so much more than a project page on my personal website, but it’ll do for now.
In my efforts to keep this intro short let me briefly talk about Lala Letter the brand (though I could go on forever). Lala Letter was a day planner and stationery company focused on productivity and possibility with a special focus on sustainability and doing good for the world. It began as my senior thesis capstone project that evolved into a profitable business.
Over the course of three years, I created three collections of planners, sold to over 700 customers around the globe, generated over $50k in revenue and grants, gave over $2k to charity, set up 32 pop up shops around Mississippi and California, won two start-up competitions, selected as the student keynote speaker at an entrepreneurship conference with over 500 attendants, spoke to two women’s entrepreneurship groups, designed over 100 different products, built a robust and functional e-commerce website, and ultimately fulfilled a lifelong dream of creating a successful planner business.
In December 2020, I chose to gracefully shut down Lala Letter. I can’t even put into words how much this company has given me. I like to say I learned more in the first two years of Lala Letter than I did in my 5 years at university, and I still believe that to be true. I truly can’t put a value on the real-world lessons I learned, the hands on entrepreneurial experience I gained, the endless failures I experienced, the small wins I celebrated, and the opportunities I got to share this experience with others. I will forever love Lala Letter and though she can’t live on as she once was, she has changed my life for the better. Enjoy.
DATE
Fall 2017 - Dec 2020
CLIENT
Lala Letter
SERVICES
Product Design
Branding
Marketing
Naming
Copywriting
Packaging Design
Photography
Exhibition Design
Web Design
Social media
Illustration
Videography
Overseas Supply Chain
Assembly line work
SEO
Facebook ads
Google Adwords
Influencer Outreach
Financial Planning
Public speaking
Order Fulfillment
2020 LALA LETTER LINE—
The final year of Lala Letter, I decided to push the envelope on the branding. I used bolder colors and patterns, but kept the softness and playfulness that has been present sense the brand began.
Each design was named after a different admirable woman entrepreneur from history. Read about each below on the card that came with each respective planner purchase.
“Bella is such a sweet, genuine soul. All of her stuff is so precious and reasonable priced! I love supporting a small business! She’s worth it all. ”
2019 LALA LETTER LINE—
You can read more about Bella’s entrepreneurial experience from this year in this blog post.
BRAND STATEMENT— Planners; we are obsessed with them. They keep our lives in check, and we would truly be lost without them sometimes. Planners are more than a tool to help prioritize, they're like our very own personal companion. The best planners are the ones that we like to use—they reflect our style , encourage us, and keep us on track (#girlboss). But sometimes our planners fall short... What we need is a planner that's full of FUN art & quirky, encouraging notes, #tbh some sticky notes on every page would be FAB, and I mean why not make it using sustainable materials?.... pshh I wish there were a planner that had all of that. Enter The Lala Letter Planner.
Our planner incorporates all these things and more so that your planner reflects your *fresh* style while giving you so many organizational extras.
SO YEAH, we will take a sticky note stack with that, pls & thx.
“This planner is a unique weekly option with fun extras (sticky notes!). It is portable and cute without looking like it belongs to a 13-year-old girl–although I bet a 13-year-old girl would love it too.
I love the weekly horizontal spread–half lined and half dot grid is inspired. I also really like the color palette of this planner–I’m digging the retro meets millennial pink aesthetic! The paper is wonderful. Anything that can hold up to a Sharpie Permanent Marker is impressive in my book. I love the 2019 Let’s Go Madlib section at the beginning of your planner. So cute. I also love the dispersed notes pages throughout the planner–you’ll never lack for a place to write down a few things!”
Bella was chosen as the keynote student speaker at the Fall 2018 REDe Entrepreneurship Summit. Watch her whole speech here.
2018 LALA LETTER LINE—
In my senior year of undergraduate school, I was charged to complete a BFA Thesis Exhibition and Honors written thesis in order to gain dual Honors degrees in both Marketing & Graphic Design. While many students choose to take the traditional route to rebrand a company's 2D design, I had a serious passion to create something bigger, something lasting, something that was utterly mine.
Lala Letter was born from a lifelong obsession with day planners. I conceptualized, designed, manufactured, marketed, and sold all products in the Lala Letter collection on my own in a 3 month period from start to finish (yeah, I didn't sleep much). The products were made by hand, exhibited in Gallery 130 in Meek Hall at the University of Mississippi for one week, and sold in person and online. With a total of 40 SKU's and close to 300 physical products, Lala Letter generated over $4,000 in revenues in just 2 weeks of selling.
KICKSTARTER—
May 2018, Bella began a kickstarter campaign for Lala Letter. Unfortunately it was not successful, but here is some of the collateral she created for the campaign. You can still visit the kickstarter page here.
BUSINESS PLAN COMPETITION—
In April 2018, Bella competed in the Gillespie business plan competition at Ole Miss with her Lala Letter business plan (which you can read here) and pitch deck (which you can find below). She placed second and received $5k in grants from the Gillespie foundation. Realistically she should have placed first, since the winners didn’t even pursue their idea or collect the second half of their $10k winnings. But that’s a story for a blog post in the future.
PITCH DECK
