Created in Heaven
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Three years of personal development on a daily basis and we were finally ready to start working on the different aspects of our brand. By then, we were 15 years of age. We didn't have a brand name at that time as we wanted to focus more on getting inspiration and learning as much as we could about the fashion industry and the world of business.
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Created in Heaven is about that time period. It was extremely exciting. It gave us hope for the future and something to strive for. It gave us purpose. Mentally speaking, we were on cloud 9. We knew for certain what we wanted to do and it wasn't something our parents had pressured us into. It was going to be something that we would genuinely enjoy working on. We would be happy waking up every day knowing we had something new to look forward to.
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At school, recess and lunch would be spent in the library because we were so keen on what we were doing. Our friends, although supportive, likely didn't understand how serious we were. They would ask us to play basketball or soccer and some days we would, but we increasingly found ourselves occupying our time doing research and educating ourselves. Other peers told us it would be too hard as there's so much competition but we truly believed in ourselves and in our vision.
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Two months before we turned 16, we started a joint Instagram account that looked like it was to show some streetwear. In reality, it was to connect with like-minded people and find more mentors. We were taught that in order to receive better answers, we needed to ask better questions. We would message people who were successful in their field and ask them important questions pertaining to business or entrepreneurship, to which they actually responded! We wrote it all down in our notebooks.
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Soon after we started IG, we were noticed by a popular streetwear store who started following our account. That was thrilling for us! They gave us so much encouragement, they engaged with all of our IG stories and we even got invited to meet them at their headquarters interstate! Before leaving HQ that day, we were gifted with two of their branded notebooks which are not sold to the public. We still use them to this day. At their stores where we met other staff, we were fortunate enough to be given insider tips like what they seek in a label and about what customers look for and request. Those interactions helped us tremendously with Venedictus and we will always remember the amazing memories they gave us.
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Also during this period, like-minded individuals started to appear in our lives. We spent time with them, learning from them and sharing our stories and ambitions with each other. They shared mistakes they had made to prevent us from doing the same. The wealth of knowledge we obtained from these extraordinary humans far exceeds anything we learned at school about business. The great thing about these discussions is that we genuinely respected each other and wanted to see everyone succeed. There was no competition between us other than the competition we had with ourselves. This remains true even now. Vincent Lam and Connor McAuley, we'd especially like to thank both of you. We are inspired by you still and look forward to seeing all your upcoming creations.
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We learned that conversations have the ability to alter one's destiny (we will touch more on this in a future blog). Instead of talking about what others were doing, we started talking more about ideas. Once these type of conversations began, the creativity flowed naturally. When our friends would come over, they brainstormed with us and gave us constructive criticism. It was refreshing to see people feeling enthusiastic and uplifted during these exchanges. If only we could relay how exhilarated we felt every day.
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Little did we know how difficult things were about to get for us once other people found out that we were working on a brand label. We really thought we had done the mental preparations needed to deal with such individuals, but life decided to test us to see if we were really up for the blessings that life had lined up for us. It has been said that right before a breakthrough, is when the pressure will be the greatest. We were about to learn this from the very people that we least expected it from. We were about to step into Hell.