Natacha Charles, Making Life Cozy With Mimi Mesh

Natacha Charles, Making Life Cozy With Mimi Mesh

What happens when life's unexpected challenges become the catalyst for pursuing a long-held dream? This episode of the Good Neighbor Podcast guest Natacha Charles, founder of Mimi Mesh, answers that question and takes us on her remarkable journey from Human Resources Director to full-time e-commerce entrepreneur in this captivating conversation.

When the pandemic upended her career, Natacha didn't see it as a setback but as an opportunity to reimagine her future. Drawing on her creative background as a freelance floral designer, she initially crafted face masks and scrubs for healthcare workers, adding her distinctive Delco style. What began as a way to stay busy and support essential workers evolved into a thriving online business selling cozy home products that now supports her entire family.

The name "Mimi Mesh" tells a story itself – Mimi being Natacha's childhood nickname given by her grandmother, and "mesh" representing the beautiful blend of special threads, yarns and scents in her curated product line. Her most popular offerings include luxuriously soft chunky blankets, atmospheric scented candles and handcrafted essential oil soaps specifically formulated for sensitive skin. Each item reflects Natacha's personal touch and commitment to creating products that make homes feel more inviting.

Listen as Good Neighbor Podcast Host, Bob Blaisse, interviews Natacha about her story and her inspiring philosophy on risk-taking, giving herself two years to make her business succeed, and how that leap of faith paid off beautifully.

Ready to experience the warmth and quality of Mimi Mesh products for yourself?  Listen and get cozy. 

Mimi Mesh
www.MimiMesh.com
484-609-1702

--- About The Show--- Good Neighbor Podcast is a spotlight on local businesses in and around Delaware County, PA (“Delco” ) and Beyond... The executive producer and host, Bob Blaisse, is a community sponsorship advocate, business branding specialist, and publisher of several hometown magazines, including: Newtown Square Friends & Neighbors, Marple Friends & Neighbors and Newtown Edgmont Friends & Neighbors, mailed monthly to more than 12,000 homes in Western Delaware County, PA, and also available for reading online.

Transcript

Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast

Speaker 1 0:00

Hello, delco. This is Michael Barkan, welcoming you to the Good Neighbor Podcast, where fans of local businesses and their neighbors come together. It's my pleasure once again to introduce my friend and neighbor, our host Bob Lacey.

Speaker 2 0:18

Thank you, michael Barkan, for that introduction and everybody, welcome again to another episode of the Good Neighbor podcast coming to you from Delaware County, pennsylvania, and if you've listened before, you know that we shorten that we call it Delco here it's a well-known term. Google that Delco. You'll find there's a real Delco vibe that we're all proud of, and this podcast is not only proud of Delco but we're proud of our Delco, delaware County, pennsylvania and beyond businesses that we want to promote here on the Good Neighbor podcast because those businesses are good neighbors and so you know I've had some questions come to me, bob. Why are all the businesses all big, local retail, you know, well-known businesses where's the online community that comes out of Delco? And I thought, hey, no better time than now to be able to start with one of our first really Good Neighbor podcast episodes highlighting an online business. So it's my pleasure to introduce and bring to the stage Natasha Charles. Natasha, welcome to the Good Neighbor podcast.

Speaker 3 1:21

Hi Bob, how are you Happy to be here.

Introducing Mimi Mesh Online Store

Speaker 2 1:23

Oh, it's great and it's great to have you, natasha, because, as I just mentioned, people will recognize some of these business names in Delco because they're big and we drive past them. But at first, the only people that will recognize your business name are your current online customers, and that's a good thing. But it'll be a better thing if we can get more online customers to go and visit your website and to find out just exactly what you do. So give me the pleasure, if you don't mind, of saying that Natasha Charles is really the founder, the owner, the operating executive of a web property, an e-commerce web store called Mimi Mesh. Now, that's interesting. It's an M-I-M-I and then another word, m-e-s-h. So we're going to find out. What do they do? It's a brand name, for sure, natasha. I have to ask first where's Mimi come from and Mimi Mesh, what's the combination? And what do you sell online?

Speaker 3 2:20

Happy that you asked that. Well, Mimi is a nickname that my family gave to me, specifically my grandmom before she passed away. Everyone knew me as Mimi. I've been called Mimi since I was tiny and it just stuck. And I've always I've always had that name. It's just something that I always felt comfortable hearing every time a family member came around.

Speaker 3 2:46

What does the mesh part of Mimi Mesh and the website've put together a multitude of special threads and yarns in a lot of my products, as well as a lot of specific and special scents in my soaps and candles. So it's just a mesh. So are we talking about home products and home decor? Home products and home decor? It's just a mesh of everything that you would find at home that is scented, cozy, something just to give you a nesting vibe to it.

Speaker 2 3:57

Well, let me ask then, because, as I'm hearing this, such a wide, wide, wide category, but you've branded it with your name, so I'm imagining what we're really implicitly understanding is that Mimi has curated a certain mesh of home decor products that you think are attractive enough to market store, or something that I find cozy for myself that I feel that other people would feel the same way about.

Speaker 2 4:43

So give us the top five. It doesn't have to be the exact top five, but tell me what would be like. Oh, if you know Mimi Mesh, have you gotten there? You know that kind of thing. What would be an example of some of the more frequently sold products from your website?

Speaker 3 4:58

Well, that would be three items specifically. I'm well known for my chunky blankets. They're really soft, well-curated blankets for the winter. That just keeps a warm, inviting feel to it. The second one would be my scented candles. And then I also have handcrafted essential oil soaps specifically for people with acne or sensitive skin.

Natasha's Entrepreneurial Journey

Speaker 2 5:25

Wow. So you know wide category there. But again, I think the curated part is what's important. I have to believe that the harder part is actually choosing, because you can't sell everything. And then yet the easier part might be I don't want to sell that because you've already seen it, tested it. You have your regular suppliers of certain products and seasonally they're coming to tell you that there's new products and maybe you're testing them and would this be worth selling, testing them and would this be worth selling? I have to kind of put that whole arena of products on hold for a minute. We want to go back to it, but I think, for the listeners to really get an appreciation of what Natasha Charles, our founder of Mimi Mesh, is talking about, we need to know a little bit more about Mimi. We need to know about Natasha. Tell us, natasha, was this something that you always dreamed of? Having an online business? Did you go to school for this? Are you in a second or third career in doing this? Are you fully doing this? Are you self-employed? That kind of thing?

Speaker 3 6:22

A little bit of all of the above. I have always been an entrepreneur. I've always been a creative person. I started my career out of high school, you know, making things as a freelancer. I was a freelance floral designer for some time. I opened up, I curated a lot of floral arrangements for weddings and parties.

Speaker 3 6:49

That was my first stage. And then somewhere along the line, that was my first stage. And then somewhere along the line, I was told that I needed to get a real job. And so I just needed to grow up and get a real job is what I was told. So that led me to a career in human resources. So for a decade I was here in the human resource field, worked up the ladder to a director, and then COVID came along and it just kind of ripped the rug out of below me and I decided that I needed to find something that would sustain my family while everything was shut down. And then I started pretty much making things just to keep myself busy for the health community face masks, scrubs, just to create something, just to give the nurses a lift up from the ordeal that they were going through.

Speaker 2 7:47

With a little bit of fashion thrown in, and that led to more fashion.

Speaker 3 7:49

With a little fashion thrown in, a little you know Delco style and you know, once everything kind of settled down, I decided to keep it going because I got a lot of good feedback about where you know my face mask can be found, where you know a lot of the products that I was making at the time could be found. The idea of selling it online was not anything that came you know, came to you know the it didn't have to be an online business at first.

Speaker 2 8:18

You were selling it personally.

Speaker 3 8:19

Actually, it wasn't an online business at first. It was a lot of you know deliveries, you know to local hospitals and to friends' homes of you know deliveries you know to local hospitals and to friends' homes and you know people were asking oh, I saw somebody wear this. You know where did they get it. So when COVID?

Speaker 2 8:35

ended. You wanted to stay in the world of products, but you kind of shifted a bit from, you know, a little bit of a COVID-ish or medical-ish kind of nursing help to really more wider reach to home decor and kind of spread it around a little bit. And that's really, I guess, where the wider market and then certainly the wider outreach via a website and e-commerce. You know, I think what we have here is an American dreams kind of story. We have a woman in business who founded her own company and had to teach herself online commerce after already kind of having a dream, kind of percolating, about having her own business. Hey, the listeners right now are thinking is this your full-time work, Natasha?

Speaker 3 9:20

Is this now your career? This is now my sole income. This is how I provide for my family. Yes, you know, I chose to do this because, if not now, when I basically said to myself that you know, the biggest risk that I can, the biggest risk that I could have, is not taking a risk. Biggest risk that I could have is not taking a risk. So I had to take a leap forward and see if this would work. I gave myself two years to make something of it and if it didn't, I'd go back to HR and, lucky for me, it's just been working great.

Speaker 2 9:59

Right and I can see why You're lovely to listen to and to hear your entrepreneurial story. Um, I, even I looked at the website while you were chatting and to just the pictures of some of these wonderful curated products. You know, gift baskets, scented gifts, there's. There's handmade soaps and blankets and, like you talked about, I, I love that chunky blanket. I get it now, looking at it online listeners, you should go there. It's, it's, the website is website is just simply mimimeshcom, and we're talking to the founder and owner of an online commerce store that not only is accessible by the internet now, with photos and you can buy online, but I have to ask you, natasha, it's hard these days to have a relationship with an online commerce store. Are you accessible, even by telephone?

Speaker 3 10:50

I am. You can reach me via email, by phone. I also do local craft events throughout the Delco area. So during the holiday season you'll always find my tent at one of the local events. We don't do events in the summertime because it's a little difficult to sell chunky blankets in the heat of the summer.

Speaker 2 11:16

Yes, and candles right and candles right. The telephone number where you're able to be reached and your email address, if you'd like.

Speaker 3 11:24

Sure, I can be reached at 48 email address if you'd like. Sure, I can be reached at 484-609-1702. And my email is shopmememesh at gmailcom If you have any questions. If you have a specific order, we do custom orders. If you have a color theme in mind for your home, just reach out to us and let us know what the occasion is, what you're looking for and the colors, and we will put something together for you.

Custom Orders and Contact Information

Closing Thoughts and Invitation

Speaker 2 11:59

How wonderful, what a great story of commerce coming out of Delaware County, pennsylvania, but really now commerce to the world because of the internet, and founded by a businesswoman who had a dream and conquered it and now has the opportunity to help others by serving them with products that she's curating and believing are the very products that you would be interested in gaining. The company is called Mimi Mesh and Natasha Charles is the owner and the founder, who's accessible, I think, not only for a conversation about her products, but really, ladies, a conversation about a woman-owned business, a woman that had a dream, a woman that started a business in her hometown, delaware County, pennsylvania. We call it Delco, but there's a real vibe here and we got a piece of that vibe today here with our guest, natasha Charles. Natasha, you definitely have created an online business that is still local and really a good neighbor business, not just to the Delaware County community and beyond, but a good neighbor business really to the world thanks to the internet. Thank you for being a guest today on the Good Neighbor Podcast.

Speaker 3 13:05

Thank you so much for having me, Bob. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 1 13:08

Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast hosted by Bob Lacey. This is Michael Barkan inviting everyone to get on the Good Neighbor team. Nominate your favorite local business to be featured on an upcoming episode by going to gnpdelcocom or by calling Bob at 610-557-3745.