iMADE
The story behind iMADE
In 2017, an osteoarthritis diagnosis changed my life. I was working full time as an ophthalmic diagnostic tech at the hospital and working my side hustle on weekends at markets. My side hustle was an outlet for me, both mentally and creatively. Because of my new health issue, I had to make the hard decision to step away from it as it became too physically painful to make things. However, there was a desire to stay within the creative community somehow. This was when iMADE was born.
I grew up in beautiful Antigonish, Nova Scotia, where our mom was a circuit Art teacher. She taught grades 1 through 6 and traveled to over six different schools, which equaled to teaching over a thousand children a week. She was a mobile classroom teaching fun art.
My baby sister and I would go with mom to the local craft fairs to sell her creations at Christmas at the local Legion in town. She would take us everywhere, even to pick pine cones off the lawn of our Church for these creations of hers. If she had a creation to make and needed her supplies, my sister and I were the perfect little helpers. Sadly, in 1988, we lost her to liver cancer after a very short eight-month battle. She was 48 I was 15. Ten years after losing mom, we lost our dad to prostate cancer. He was 58. I was 25 and had lost the two most important people in my life. Thankfully, my parents set me up with good values at a very young age, and I learned survival skills early in life.
To this day, my sister, who still lives in our hometown, people who were students of my mom's, will come to her place of work and re-gift her things they made in our mom's art class. Even people who purchased items from these very craft fairs she attended bring these back as gifts to us.
The iMADE brand is a celebration of my mother's legacy. When you support iMADE, her spirit lives on. I'm so touched by how the brand has grown organically to date. Mom would be proud of all of us and the culture we've created at iMADE. Today, the brand has a successful local pop-up market series that had pivoted to an online market series because of the pandemic, plus we added the iMADE Subscription Box to our arsenal. The growth continues, and I'm excited to see what's next.
In loving memory of Mrs. MacPherson, Art teacher and my mom
To read more about iMADE, click below;
https://gosolo.subkit.com/dani-macpherson/