As a small-business owner, your phone is your life. But sometimes, that lifeline only goes as far as the three-and-a-half foot leash from the outlet to the end of your USB cable. When your business requires a life on-the-go, being limited by a battery constantly in the red is not an option.
This is a scenario that Loni Edwards was all too familiar with.
“While I was working, I was running around, and my phone was always dying,” she says. “It’s the most frustrating thing when you’re trying to run a business and your link to the world is dead.”
Carrying her phone charger everywhere she went, Loni would capitalize on every opportunity to juice up her phone. She later found that the perfect solution had been in her possession the entire time.
Growing up in upstate New York, Loni had her sights set on law. After finishing her undergraduate degree, she headed to Massachusetts to study at Harvard Law School and eventually begin a career in intellectual property law.
“My whole life, it was my goal to get into Harvard Law School, get to this top firm, and focus on intellectual property,” Loni says. “But after being there for a little bit, I didn’t feel fulfilled – I felt like I wasn’t really enjoying life as much.”
With close friends in the startup world, Loni had seen the exciting, eventful life of an entrepreneur, and she wanted to be a part of it. She took the leap, moved back to New York, and threw herself in the entrepreneurial life. Her first idea, a travel startup that she worked on with a close friend, never made it to the launch stage. Admitting that she had a lot to learn, she didn’t let the fear of failure stop her from launching another startup soon after: The Stitch Collective.
As she was growing the interactive fashion line, Loni found herself running all over Manhattan. And with her phone’s inconvenient tendency to die, she began working toward a solution to charge her phone in her purse.
“I set out designing something that would seamlessly charge my phone, that wasn’t in the way, but was getting me through the day without sacrificing style or adding bulk,” she says.
The leather bag, equipped with a built-in power source, became the perfect accessory.
Instead of leaving her phone with the hostess to charge during business lunches, Loni would pop her phone into her purse and continue on with her day uninterrupted. It wasn’t long before her handbag-turned-charging-station really began to turn heads.
“Someone wanted to put it in InStyle Magazine,” Loni says. “I had one prototype – the one that I had been wearing – and they had it in their possession. Luckily the editorial calendar is a very long process, so I had three months to get my stuff together. I set up a website, made the first production run, and launched the site on January 28 of this year.”
Within 48 hours of launching the site, the first 200 units were sold out.
Thus, emPOWERED was born. The stylish line of leather bags with built-in technology now includes three different styles that Loni says she designed based on feedback from her customers. There’s a large leather tote; the “All in One” handbag with detachable, adjustable straps; and a wristlet.
“With The Stitch Collective, I learned how important it is to interact with your customers and get that feedback,” she says. “People give a lot of feedback, and we had a lot of customers who loved the all-in-one style, and they wanted a larger version that they could carry their laptop and everything they need throughout the day.”
The wristlet was also a product of feedback from customers who wanted all of the benefits of emPOWERED but didn’t want to give up their statement bag, Loni says.
So, how does it work? The bags are all equipped with a power source that is built into the lining, specifically designed not to take up any additional space. The bag comes with a USB cord that charges the phone as well as the bag. Inside, each bag also contains a built-in wallet with slits for credit cards or your ID for easy access on a night out.
Even with all of emPOWERED’s success, Loni is not quick to forget what she learned during her first two startup ventures.
“Make sure that there’s interest and demand in what you’re creating before you invest a lot of time and money,” Loni says. “That’s part of the reason emPOWERED has done so much better than my previous companies. It became a company only after there was this huge demand and we had magazine editors saying they have customers wanting to purchase it even before we had a site up. Doing that work beforehand and testing out your concept before that initial investment is really important.”
Photographs by Lauren Kallen