November 6, 2019 – Entrepreneur – In 2008, two things happened at the same time that put architectural designer Paige Lauren on a career path she couldn’t have predicted: 1. The Great Recession and 2. One of her friends had a baby.

“I did a lot of design work for residential homes and no one was spending any money at that time,” Lauren told Entrepreneur. She was starting to think about making a move to do something else but wasn’t sure what that would be. Then while on a shopping trip to for a friend’s newborn, Lauren couldn’t find anything that lined up with her design aesthetic. “Everything had hearts and duckies and cutesy stuff on it, and my tastes are more modern and simple.”

On that frustrating shopping trip, an idea was born: “I thought that if nothing was going on with the home architectural world, I’d start designing baby clothes instead.”  She had virtually no experience designing and manufacturing clothes, but that didn’t deter her. “When I decide to do something, I go all in,” she explains. “I love design work and being creative, and I think as long as you are doing something you have passion for, you will find happiness and success.”

The Paige Lauren line of super-soft, American-made baby clothes instantly took off, quickly finding its way into boutiques across the country and onto the shelves of Neiman Marcus department stores. But that wasn’t the end of Lauren’s journey, not by a long shot. Entrepreneur spoke with the designer about the mindset it took to start her dream business, to press pause on it to take time off for her newborn son and then to re-launch in a dramatically different sales universe.

Read more at Entrepreneur.