Meet Angela Wang of Origamei in Downtown LA

Today we’d like to introduce you to Angela Wang.

Angela, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
When I was a freshman in college, I was an art major, but what I truly wanted to do was to change the world in a very impactful way by creating solutions to everyday problems.

One day, as I was dining with a friend, he picked up a ketchup bottle and told me that someone had designed this. It was a simple bottle, yet design-wise, it was complicated and each groove meant something to the overall structure of the bottle and how the product was dispensed; it was simply amazing. This sparked my interest into the art of engineering, hence my career in industrial design.

In 2007, industrial design was an extremely male-dominated field. At Cal State Long Beach, I was accepted into the Industrial Design program of 24 students, four of whom were female. That pushed me even harder to break the gender barrier in the industry. From then on, I’ve dedicated my career and business to empowering women to break social norms and push boundaries to make changes in bettering this world.

Fast forward to 2015, when I had a very active, on-the-go lifestyle. I was commuting to work from Los Angeles County to Huntington Beach in Orange County, always at the gym, working, attending professional events, all the while, being stuck in traffic. Because of this, I was forced to pack multiple outfits in the trunk of my car to change into the multiple different social and professional events. As you may have guessed, many of these skirts, dresses and blouses wrinkled immediately and were also tough and too hefty to pack.

In an attempt to simplify my life, I set out to design the perfect wrinkle-resistant, packable travel dress for women who were also “on-the-go.” I sketched and prototyped for months trying to create the perfect design and folding patterns, and eventually, created a dress that was well-received in my inner circle. Was I a fashion designer? No. Was I a problem solver? Yes; and I needed to create this solution to a problem I believe most women have. Since then, I’ve I created a team and launched a crowdfunding campaign in the Summer of 2018, to help fund the Origamei Dress Collection, a dress line dedicated to help women simplify their lives so we can focus more on creating a greater impact on this world. And we are here to do exactly that, despite all the obstacles we’ve had to face along the way.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I definitely had to face many challenges in all stages of creating the Origamei Dress Collection. The hardest one was sourcing the perfect wrinkle-resistant, four-way stretch, easy-care fabric for our line. Even after finding the perfect fabric, the next step was finding the perfect manufacturer to do the job while meeting the timeline, and even that had some of its struggles. Lastly, was how to create the perfect team to do the job. All these challenges were critical to making Origamei what it is today. I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Now, I am more prepared and knowledgeable to push more limits.

Please tell us about Origamei.
Origamei was created to empower women. Women who are passionate and live life on the go in order to follow their true passion. The “Mei” in Origa(mei) comes from the Chinese/Japanese character “美”, pronounced “mei” or “māy” in Chinese and “kirei” in Japanese, both defined as “beauty” to correlate to the inner beauty every woman encompasses. For strong beautiful women who do not need the most recent trend to feel beautiful. To us, practical living and the process of following your dream is the fundamental way to happiness, not what you’re wearing the next day. It’s about living in the moment, exploring, and truly being free. It’s the woman inside the dress that truly defines herself. Origamei wants to help empower on the go women to live a more minimal and fulfilling life.

At Origamei, I am the founder and CEO. I run and manage everything from design, marketing, sales, and I hired a strong team to help our vision grow into fruition. I am most proud of creating such a successful team which helped grow a strong family of support from our initial supporters through our crowdfunding campaign, our Origamei Family.

Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
When I was young, I loved to fold Origami! I would save up in order to buy more books to learn and gain more knowledge on what else I could possibly fold out of a square sheet of paper. I was determined to finish all my homework every night in order to get back to fold more and more. I learned how to fold cranes, flowers, animals, shapes, and the list kept growing. It was my obsession and I suppose that is how it translated into the art of folding clothing, which is how Origamei Foldwear was born.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.origamei.com
• Email: hello@origamei.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/theorigamei
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/theorigamei
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/theorigamei
• Other: https://youtu.be/sMuMnM2DB8E

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