Josh and Jules are the dynamic duo behind Love Jules Leather, a custom made-for-order label that has developed a highly niche, loyal clientele since its inception in 2009. After a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign (they reached their goal in less than 24 hours), the brand has become coveted by fashionistas around the globe. We recently caught up with Josh, one half of the brand, to pick his brain on how the company got its start, and where they see themselves going from here. How did the business get started? Technically in the Spring 2009. Jules started full time and quit her day job. I started a year later, after the Olympics and that’s when we started full time together. We started in Whistler then moved to the Chinatown location two years ago, and were there for a year. Then moved into here last year. It started out with leather accessories at first, like wallets and key chains. Jules was at art school in Halifax on the East Coast. In her last year at school she worked with a leathersmith to help pay her rent and she really enjoyed getting to work with her hands. Once she graduated she returned to Whistler (where she is originally from), and started combining her passion of drawing and leather crafting as a hobby. She started making belts and other items, it was more art than craft at that point but it evolved from there. We didn’t start doing shoes until three and a half years ago. More and more people started to appreciate the shoemaking which gave us the opportunity to learn how to really make shoes. Jules is completely self taught and we just have evolved over time. 
How did you come into the picture? My background is more of the business side. I am a chartered accountant, I went to business school and articled. I’m from Ontario originally. I worked in Downtown Toronto, but I wanted a change of scenery so I packed up my car and moved out west to a ski town that is Whistler, which is where I met Jules. What do you love about being in this location? We love the juxtaposition between the residential east van and the commercial side where we feel like we fit right in because we’re playing both sides of the fence right now. I just like the neighbourhood and the creative community we’ve surrounded ourselves with. It’s an inspiring place to be. I feel like we were accepted since day one. And for this building in particular, we have been able to build up this location from the ground up. There are so many people from businesses around here that have lent a helping hand. What do you love about your job? We both left previous jobs for this lifestyle. It’s pretty intense and full on, but just the fact that we can be creative day in and day out and that we get to work together. It is a constant growth and learning experience. We feel like we’ve grown a lot over the past couple of years. Endless opportunity to grow as people and as business owners. 
Tell us about your social media success. It just kinda happened. When we first started Facebook was a new thing and insty didn’t exist. We first started selling through Etsy, but we have just been riding the wave since then. At the beginning we were based out of whistler off the beaten path in Alpine Meadows based out of garage. There was no foot traffic. We had to cast the net wider, to get our clientele. But at a point we were the featured artist on etsy years go, which opened up pockets of clientele in LA, San Fran, New York, London and Paris. Those are the ones that wanted something a little different than everyone else, so we just started shipping product everywhere. Whereas people in whistler had no idea what we did, they just would see us walking on the hill and escape to our garage. Social media really enabled us to do what we do. We also have some successful friends that have a large following on social media promote us through their channels, which helped us grow. Any new products to share? Baby shoes are the new thing. Long story short, the custom shoes that we do are all made by hand and are very custom and personal and time intensive. We had to come up with something a little more production friendly and to scale. They are like a version of our high top boat shoes. We can continue to grow with this, whereas we are still trying to figure out how to make our customizable shoes grow. For more info, visit the Love Jules Leather website, and stay social on Instagram and Twitter.