When nothing is certain, anything is possible.
For those who don't know us or our story a quick summary.. I'm Naomi...quiet, country loving and pocket sized. Along for the journey is James my partner who's devotedly loyal, a great methodical thinker and my very best friend. Of course we can't forget our little fur member Nala, a year old Cavapoo who's deviously cheeky whilst retaining every ounce of cuteness to avoid being told off.
So my life before lockdown was.. going a million miles an hour, working too much, maintaining a poor diet and not living in the moment, just existing and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one!
So how did it change? After working in a car dealership for 7 years (the service department, far less glamorous) and being furloughed for 6 months, the reality of how fulfilling life could be was becoming clearer. By enjoying the most simple of life's pleasures like working out in the morning outside to listen to the birdsong, spending time walking across our beautiful South Downs and cooking which is quickly becoming a new passion.
So the August of 2020 after a few weeks of being back in work and hating every minute.. I parted ways onto a new path of working at home with James doing the admin work for his construction company.
Life felt so balanced, waking up early (because I wanted to not had to)!, working out in the garden, home cooked food everyday and the simple pleasure of wearing whatever I wanted and not workwear. However, suddenly going from 70 hour + weeks to a much more favourable but slower pace left me feeling unproductive and slightly lost.
After an evening with James’s nephews and a delicious roast dinner the car journey on the way home went something like “shall we just do it, set up an online business?”…there was probably more to it than that but the principle remains the same. After weeks of research, product sourcing and number crunching we went for it!
James is a get up and goer once he has the idea and literally overnight the reality of my love of art, creativity and interiors became a business. But what do we call it? It has to be something we thought anyway to do with us and being called Naomi never resulted in actually being called Naomi it was always Nom, Nomi, Nay.. all sorts. Anyway, Arthur James’ nephew calls me Nomi and after playing around with words A Touch Of Nom was created with the thinking of ‘ A Touch Of My Style In Their Home’.
In hindsight I wish we had thought this out more for a long term definitive brand but it meant something to us and we understood the name so didn’t really think about it. After a year or so and various feedback asking what the company name meant we decided we needed it to change, not ideal but growth only comes from lessons learnt right?
More brainstorming.. and asking opinions from almost everyone we saw we settled on Habitual Home. The meaning behind this is, home is your habitat and our mission it to source timeless products. Habitual Home means to us a place of regularity in your habitat. By having products which all work amongst each other or on their own and recognisable in anyones home make them truly timeless.
Launching the new name has to be the best decision we've ever made! Our brand is really starting to form shape now. The lessons we’ve learnt and beautiful independent makers we’ve met along the way has begun to shape our future.
The best part about my job? Effectively being paid to shop? Sourcing beautiful products and creating lifestyle images which means you can hopefully visualise them in your home too.
The less favourable part I have to say is packing! Spending days catching up from the weekend’s orders that my hands literally have blisters from the tape dispenser but amongst the pain from blisters and going up and down the stairs in the warehouse over 100 times (which isn’t a bad thing either, my thighs have never looked so good) is a huge grateful heart. To know that my vision is coming to life literally before my eyes is an incredible feeling and slightly surreal? How did we end up here? Without all your lovely orders we wouldn’t be here, but how did you get here? How did you find us and what made you want to buy from us?
Finding a pathway which works for us through the challenges of marketing, social media and it’s forever changing algorithms which single handidly have made us question the whole thing. But almost 2 years in and still so much to learn but having a supportive partner who just gets you and gets the world of being self employed as that’s all he’s ever known means he totally gets staying up until 3am setting up the new products launching and there's no question of support if there's hundreds of orders to pack in the space of a few hours before the DPD van turns up he's there.. along with Nala usually chewing a stick for moral support.
Lockdown for us has been a blessing in disguise, through the horror of what was going on in the world and partly still is, our little world which is us and our home is now shaping the rest of our lives.
It’s also taught us if there’s ever a time in your life where your direction is lost, going back to basics and slowing down soon shows you the way.
Our plans for the future are to continue to grow, learn and create a recognisable and popular brand amongst the big players of the homeware sector and it seems to have become a flooded market with every corner of instagram a new small homeware shop is launching so we certainly have some hard work to do! Moral of the story is, “do more of what you truly love and everything else will follow”. What started as a ‘side hustle’ from a passion for interiors has quickly grown into a flourishing business and we’re looking forward to expanding what we offer, the team and warehouse to fit all the gorgeous products into your gorgeous homes!
As a thank you for reading and hopefully I've not bored you? we’d love to offer you 15% off Garden, Kitchen & Dining and Floristry using BLOG15 - valid until Wednesday 1st to get any last minute bits for your jubilee celebrations.
Naomi x