The Quality Makers: Angela O'Brien of Cleobella

How would you describe Cleobella? I'd love to hear about the name as well. 

AO: “Cleobella is a globally inspired, ethically handmade brand. Cleobelle is actually my mother and my great grandmother's name. My mother was born in Northern Ireland and my great grandmother was from Nebraska. I've always called my mom Bella. She's a beautiful, inspiring woman, and I like to think that I'm designing for a woman like my mother.”

What sparked your interest in starting this space? What’s the story of Cleobella?

AO: “I started this line of work in my early 20s, and now I'm in my early 40s, so it’s been a while. I was quite young and naive at the beginning – leading from intuition and the belief that I could build any world I dreamed of. As a young girl, I got into modeling, which opened my smaller world into a bigger world of travel and meeting all types of unique creatives and inspiring people. And although I was a terrible model, shy and lacking all the right proportions, that experience taught me resilience. It helped me become an entrepreneur and grow a fashion brand with very little knowledge of the industry. After I graduated from college with a degree in Marketing and PR, I thought that was the way to go. But my husband and I wanted to travel, so we saved up and did a trip around the world for a year. When I was in India, I found these wrap skirts that were made from recycled saris, and when I was in Bali, I designed some leather handbags. I remember thinking to myself: when I come back to the States, I could start a little business. So with very little investment, I started Cleobella by selling my designs at weekend/flea markets in Hawaii, because we were living in Maui. I built a website and ended up selling my stuff at the local stores as well. Step by step, I launched a collection of handbags in 2008 at LA Fashion Week. 

In the beginning my family and I would spend 5 months out of the year in Bali – we have a home there. My time was spent designing, creating, working with our artists and partners, and when I’d come back to LA, I would sell the products at trade shows. I would collect orders and ship them to all of our customers – that went on for many years, mostly for our accessory lines. But in 2014, I gave birth to Cleobella's clothing collection as well as to my daughter. And that’s how clothing really became the bread and butter of our business. 

The biggest learning curve in growing your business is nurturing a healthy work environment and a huge part of that is building a team. We now have a team in our Orange County office, of about 40 people that work on shipping the products, marketing the products, selling the products, etc. I'm still heavily involved in the creative process, in fact, that's my favorite part of the business but I also have a design team of about 9 people that work very closely with us. Then we have a headquarters in India, who manage the different artists and partners in the factories that we work with over there. They’ve all played a huge part in the success and growth of Cleobella over the years, and we still go back to Bali and India every year. Continuing to create sustainable income for our partners,  having consistent work for them, is something that's very important to me. We're really proud of the team we have and we’ll take every chance we can get to celebrate how well we work together to bring joy to our customers. I’ll never stop highlighting the artisanal crafts that we incorporate into the designs of Cleobella.”

Tell me how you found your artisanal partners and how you give back to the communities that you borrow from.

AO: “A lot of it has been organic. Our first partner was Yanti. She works and supports a lot of the women living in her village in Bali. The Balinese are the most incredible artisans in the world and it’s been such a blessing to work with Yanti and her family over the last decade. In 2006, we started with the Littles collection, which was a really fun Mommy and Me capsule. And we have a beautiful Linen Edit that just launched as well. I then met Yenni over the years, who's this wonderful woman who lives in the Denpasar area of Bali. She runs a factory of mostly men who make a lot of our leather handbags, so we have our signature Mexicana Clutch ($207), our Weekender ($398) and we do a lot of woven bags as well. 

Because I'm so invested in the community there, it's more than just making products, it's a heart connection to the people and recognizing that they've grown with us. We built our infrastructures together and we’re constantly learning from each other. As the company has scaled, we're doing a lot more work in India. I’ve been lucky enough to find inspiring women working in factories there too, especially ones that are also passionate about using sustainable fibers and materials. I’ve built many meaningful friendships along the way – we continue to help and nurture each other. Every trip I think about how lucky I am to experience such unique and rich cultures, especially through such wonderful people.”