Hello Petricor

This is me, Janina, 28 years old and I founded Petricor in 2018. I have been working full time in self-employment for a few years now and I am incredibly happy about it. I love my everyday life in the studio and on my work days I sometimes remember my childhood, when I often listened to “Five Friends” or “The Three ???” for hours and painted at the same time. My days often look similar to that today. While I am sewing, I listen to one audiobook, radio play, or podcast after another, and I still can’t get enough of these days. Of course, not every day looks like this and most of the time there are a thousand other things on the agenda besides sewing. Creative things have always played a big role in my life and after graduating from high school, I didn’t know if I wanted to study art, fashion design or communication design. I then decided on the latter, since communication design covers several areas of design and I could thus try out more. It quickly became clear to me that I didn’t want to start my own business as a designer or work in an agency. I often missed the meaning behind many jobs and always wanted to start something of my own. In the fabric warehouse of an upholstery factory, I often looked for scraps of fabric to sew and one day discovered pieces of leather. Many broken sewing needles later, I had sewn my first leather bag and relatively quickly it was clear to me that I wanted to establish my own bag label. I bought a used industrial sewing machine and by using small leather scraps, I developed the patchwork look I have today with stripes and triangles. I was able to use my bachelor thesis to start my label in theory. It was during this time that I encountered the word “Petricor” and since then it has become my constant companion. After graduating, I registered my business, went to design markets, established my online shop and developed bag models. Three years later, I am now sitting here in my own studio. I still had a part-time job for a long time during my start-up and even though this time was very exhausting, it always gave me the security of a regular income in addition to the beginning self-employment. So I had less pressure and could let Petricor grow very slowly and at my own pace. Looking back, I always progressed by achieving small targets, and that was just the right thing for me. I didn’t initially set out to make Petricor a big brand. I remember thinking to myself at the very beginning of the start-up that I would be perfectly happy if, by being self-employed, I only needed a part-time job on the side at some point. Whether out of fear of setting myself too high “unrealistic” targets or whether it was really my wish at the time, I don’t remember. But once I achieved that goal, I wanted nothing more than to be able to be completely independent.
  
In the future, I will tell you more about my foundation, the ups and downs of self-employment, how the name “Petricor” came about, and what it means to me, about leather and artificial leather and anything else that concerns you and I. I’m looking forward to it! 
Your Janina