It all started with a leather bracelet. The simple clasp kind, etched with the name of the wearer or a loved one, that teenagers in the 80s brandished on their wrists as a right of adolescent passage.
Arts educator and muralist Denise Kerr, nostalgic for her own childhood bracelet, wanted to give her daughter, Danielle, her own token of initiation into young adulthood and decided to take up leather work. Roughly seven years later, the hobby has transformed into a successful business, Sweet Leather Goods, in the Circa 1857 complex in mid-city Baton Rouge.
The business is co-owned and operated by 50-year-old Denise and her daughter Danielle, now a 22-year-old senior in the University’s graphic design program.
The women’s labor of love emerged seemingly overnight through a combination of happenstance and gritty determination, the duo said. Sweet Leather initially operated as a booth at the Baton Rouge Arts Market in fall 2016, before a chance introduction led the mother-daughter duo to sign the lease for their current space in late November.
Once the wheels were in motion, progress came quickly, Danielle said. The newly-minted store operators spent Danielle’s Thanksgiving vacation tearing out walls, erecting shelving and painting murals for their new hub, and opened for business in early December, she said. They’ve barely stopped moving since.
Less than nine months in, the duo has already expanded their business, taking over the space behind their initial retail location in June and opening The Hive, a ceramic school and creative laboratory where the mother-daughter team hosts birthday parties, after school programs and Big Buddy outings.
In their backroom design studio, ideas fly across the room as the women chatter while studding leather satchels and developing promotional materials for the store’s upcoming events. Leather scraps, spare studs and work tools spill from drawers and shelving, while a natural sweetness wafts from the unfurled leather hides hanging from the backdoor.
The retail portion of the store is bursting with leather purses, clear insert pouches, earrings and keychains neatly grouped and hung on shelves and metal tables. The space is filled with natural elements, including potted plants and greenery, to evoke a boho paradise inspired by a family vacation to Bali, Danielle said.
A black, grey and white cubic design on the floor and hexagonal boxes mounted on the wall evoke the feeling of entering a bee hive. The bright, fun space is meant to be a favorite hangout for people who appreciate art and want to spend their afternoons browsing and making new friends, Denise said.
Though the store calls to mind reveries of a boho dreamscape, the journey to this point wasn’t always so idyllic.
Determined to prove her potential after negative experiences as a young teenager, a then 18-year-old Danielle tried to smother her artistic impulses and threw herself into engineering her freshman year at the University.
“Society’s view of art as a hobby made me think that I needed to be doing more to feel successful, to feel fulfilled,” Danielle said. “To me that meant I’m going to do a job that’s really hard that I hate and make a lot of money. It wasn’t until I finally matured and grew up enough to challenge that and say, maybe that isn’t what I should be searching for in all of this.”
Hating her school work and unsure of her next steps, Danielle dropped to part-time enrollment status in her second semester and decided it was time to return to her artistic roots. The change produced an immediate turnaround in her happiness and self-confidence, she said.
When you grow up around art it’s hard to ignore its draw, Denise said. When Danielle announced she was changing her major to graphic design, “I did the jig of happiness,” her mother said.
Artistry runs in the family. Denise’s grandmother, Hilda Borne, serves as the women’s artistic muse and is the inspiration behind the bee iconography that proliferates the store and the business’ branding. A real “Queen Bee,” according to Danielle, the British war bride introduced Denise to her passion for craftsmanship through crocheting and cooking.
Despite the idea of a queen bee at the heart of their business, both women are natural worker bees. The two are constantly bouncing ideas off one another and trying to refresh their offerings. If they’re not chattering across the room, they’re constantly texting ideas back and forth throughout the day, Denise said.
The two women bring varied skillsets to their business endeavor. Denise is the whimsical bohemian concocting hippie-inspired designs while Danielle’s more pared down, minimalist aesthetic helps her rein in her mother’s wilder ideas, she said.
Though clearly the elder in their mother-daughter relationship, Denise hands the business reins firmly to Danielle, she said.
“I always look at her as the leader, because even though I’m the mom figure she’s really the leader here. She knows what’s coming,” Denise said.
Danielle was also the one who initially pushed the pair to take the leap and open a storefront.
“I called her up, I sat her down on that front porch and I gave her a hell of a sales pitch. ‘You’ve got the product, we can do this, we can sell it,’” Danielle said. “She started out saying, ‘No, we’re not ready’ and by the end of my spiel she said, ‘Okay, if you think we can, let’s try.’”
While leading the business is a rewarding challenge, it can also be a point of acute stress and anxiety when coupled with school responsibilities and a social life, Danielle said. Eventually, she hit a wall and needed to talk to a therapist and explore anxiety medication, she said.
It’s something that’s stigmatized among young people, but as a hardworking and busy 22-year-old it’s just part of life, she said.
Danielle credits the success she’s enjoyed and the confidence she’s developed to a supportive village of friends and College of Art and Design mentors who have backed the young creative and her mother since the get-go.
The love and creativity stemming from the Baton Rouge arts community has also played a major role, she and Denise said. The duo moved frequently during Danielle’s childhood, living in five different states, before settling in Baton Rouge when Danielle made the college transition.
Baton Rouge’s sense of community and artistic creativity has been crucial to the development of the women’s business, Denise said. While it’s easy to envision a cool and funky business, it’s much different turning the dream into a reality in somewhere like Baton Rouge as opposed to their former home in Texas, she said.
“After only being here for four years, I’ve never rooted somewhere as quickly and never had somewhere feel like home like this does,” Danielle said.
Now at home in their hive, the women plan to keep taking the world by storm.
