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You built something you're proud of.
You poured everything into creating a product that matters — something that makes people feel something. And now you want to get it into the hands of more people, in more stores, in more cities. You know your product deserves to be on more shelves.
You just need someone who sees that too.
I know what that feels like — because I've been exactly where you are.
I built a product business from scratch. I designed the products, sourced factories and seamstresses, developed packaging that I obsessed over — because I understood that how a product looks on a shelf is what makes someone pick it up. I wasn't a hobby seller. I was building a brand.
And the products were doing well in a handful of stores. I knew I had something special. I could feel it. But I wanted to be in hundreds of stores, not just a few. I just needed to figure out how to get there.
Then one day I was travelling in Europe and I noticed headbands were everywhere — on runways, at fashion shows, at Coachella. But nobody was talking about them. Everyone was focused on the outfits, and the headbands were just... there.
I decided to do something about it. I knew retailers cared about trends. So I built an entire marketing campaign around the idea that headbands were the next big trend — and I brought that story directly to buyers.
It worked. That campaign is what got my products into hundreds of stores. The business took off. I ended up winning Small Supplier of the Year from the Canadian Gift Association — a Canada-wide award. The products were featured across media. And within two years, I was in over 600 stores.
But here's the part that mattered most: once the products were on shelves, I listened. Buyers would tell me what they loved about the line, why they chose to carry it, what their customers were saying. And I took those words and used them to sell to the next retailer. I let the buyers tell me how to talk to other buyers.
That's exactly what I do now. I just do it on Faire.
There's a moment that changed how I see all of this.
A woman reached out to me and told me she'd been in a major car accident. She was helicoptered to the hospital. She almost didn't make it. She had a serious head injury, and for years afterward, she couldn't wear anything on her head — everything caused pain.
Then someone bought her one of my headbands. And for the first time, she could wear it without a headache, without pain, without anything.
She took the time to write me that email. And until that moment, I loved my business and I loved my products — but I didn't realize they could connect with someone like that.
Products aren't just things. They impact lives. They make people feel something. And the only way they reach the right person is if a retailer discovers them, believes in them, and puts them on their shelf.
The Path to Koopslie
I sold my business in January 2020 and started Koopslie in February — right before the world shut down. I spent the first few years working with brands on their wholesale strategy and even built out a full course on how to sell products to independent retailers.
Then I hit a wall. Long COVID left me not feeling well, and I took on part-time work at an Amazon agency while I figured out what was next. I ended up working as a creative director with 7- and 8-figure brands — and that's where I learned marketplace optimization. How search works, how listings convert, how to use a platform's algorithm to drive sales.
But something else happened at that agency. I fell back in love with products. I worked on a fragrance for Natalie Fragrance — a brand created by Natalie Wood's daughter as an homage to her mother. Working on that project, and others, reminded me why I do this. I genuinely connect to products. I see ideas in them. I want to understand what the brand sees and find a way to share that with the world.
One thing that was missing for me was we never got the product in hand. We optimized listings from a screen. I learned that I struggle to do that. At Koopslie, I never work on a product without holding it, using it, experiencing it. I need to feel what the brand feels before I can tell their story to retailers.
Faire sits at this unique intersection of indie wholesale and e-commerce. It's a marketplace — but the buyer isn't a consumer. It's a retailer. And almost nobody understands both sides of that equation.
I do. Because I spent 10 years selling to indie retailers. I learned what makes them say yes, what makes them reorder, what makes them champion a product to their customers. Then I learned how to optimize a marketplace — search, keywords, listings, conversion. And I brought all of it to Faire.
I also spent a decade before all of that as a senior IT project manager — starting with General Electric's leadership program in Europe, then running multi-million dollar projects across North America. That corporate experience is why our delivery process works the way it does. It's structured, it's efficient, and it doesn't create extra work for you.
You hand us the keys. We deliver.
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When I'm not deep in a Faire store, you'll find me in Edmonton, Canada — [Moni to add personal details here]