Stories Founder Story Textiles · Atlanta, GA
She Built the Business Between Bedtime and Breakfast.
Three kids. One big idea. How Danielle Okafor turned a spare-bedroom sewing table into Marlowe & Co. Textiles — a linen brand now stocked in 40 stores.
The first order came in at 11:40 p.m. Danielle Okafor remembers the time because she was folding a load of toddler laundry when her phone lit up: one set of oatmeal-colored linen napkins, shipped to a stranger in Portland. “I sat on the floor of the laundry room and cried,” she says. “Then I got up and made them.”
That was four years ago. Marlowe & Co. Textiles — named for her eldest — now employs eleven people, ships to 40 stockists, and has outgrown two studios. It has also outgrown the spare bedroom where it started, the one that doubled as a nursery until her second child arrived and the sewing table moved into the hallway.
This is a story about building a company in the margins of a day. It is also, Danielle insists, not a story about balance.
The beginning
What made you decide to start Marlowe & Co.?
“Honestly? I couldn’t find napkins I liked that survived a toddler. Everything was either precious or plastic. I made a set for our own table, my sister-in-law asked for one, and then her friend did. I didn’t call it a business for a year. I called it ‘the napkin thing.’”
The early days
What did the earliest days actually look like?
“Cutting fabric on the floor after bedtime with a podcast on. I had a rule: sew until midnight, no later, because I had to be a person at 6 a.m. I broke the rule constantly. The first hundred orders were all made between 8 p.m. and midnight.”
Motherhood
How has motherhood changed the way you run the company?
“It made me ruthless about what matters. I have maybe five good hours a day where nobody needs me. I’m not going to spend one of them in a meeting that could be a text. My team knows that, and honestly they like working that way too.”
Harder than expected
What has been harder than you expected?
“Hiring. Letting someone else touch the thing you made at your kitchen table is terrifying. The first person I hired, I basically hovered over her for two months. She quit. I deserved that. The second hire, I handed her the keys and left for a week.”
The lesson
What have you learned about family and business?
“That my kids don’t need me to be balanced. They need me to be present when I’m there and honest when I’m not. ‘Mama has to work right now’ is a complete sentence. So is ‘I’m done for today.’”
I didn’t need more hours. I needed to stop apologizing for the ones I had.
Proud of
What are you most proud of?
“That eleven people get paid on the first and fifteenth because of napkins. And that three of them are moms who told me they’d never had a job that let them leave at 2:45 for pickup without a look.”
Advice
What would you tell another mom thinking about starting something?
“Start smaller than you think is respectable. One product. One table. Nobody is watching yet, which is the whole gift of the beginning.”
Pay it forward
Who is another Mama Makin’ Moves we should know about?
“Aisha Grant in Atlanta. She sold forty houses the year her twins were born and I still don’t understand how. Go find her.”
