May 12, 2020

Meet Jessica Havens, Owner & Designer of Core-azón Designs

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jessica Havens, Owner & Designer of Core-azón Designs.

Jessica, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
Our origin story is an interesting one with a few twists and turns. My professional background is actually in social justice education work from teaching both high school and college to facilitating trainings on diversity and inclusion. I’ve done that for over 15 years. It’s very powerful and vital work and I will forever identity as an educator. Much love to you educators out there! But honestly my heart hasn’t been in it for the past few years and I’ve felt a bit burnt-out. I’ve been ready to explore my creative and entrepreneurial talents, but wasn’t quite sure how.

And then from a personal lens, music and dance have always been an integral part of my life since I was a little white girl on the south side of Chicago, making up dance routines, aspiring to one day be a Fly Girl on In Living Color. I never trained as a dancer, but it was a core part of my life. And of course, I grew up on House music. House music and culture is almost impossible to describe in words if you didn’t grow up with it- but I think of it as this positive vibe, pro-queer, pro-Black, one love urban hippy music. Imagine vocals from a Dr. King speech or a sexy Sade sample mixed over some synthesized beats. From my perspective, EDM wouldn’t exist without house.

So…all of those influences bring us to the birth of Core-azón Designs. At the beginning of 2020 I was looking for a creative venture that would rejuvenate me. By mid-January, I had decided to follow a childhood dream and start an online t-shirt company, even though I had NO idea what that involved. I was focused on something that was sexy and fly that focused on positive consciousness; a shirt I might rock on the dancefloor or at a festival.

So, I did a ton of research, taught myself how to design t-shirts, how to do model mockups, run e-commerce and set up drop-shipping. And three weeks later, I launched Core-azón Designs on February 8, 2020. The timeline from idea to launch was so fast, that I had friends who had no idea I was starting a company when they received that first email from me!

So, we launch February 2020, and then literally a month later everything goes on lock-down! There was so much panic and uncertainty, that I had to take a complete “pandemic hiatus” from Core-azón Designs so I could focus on everything else. But we are back from hiatus and more excited than ever for our new collection and to spread the word about our company.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Well, we are still in the baby stages of our development so everything has been about celebrating the small wins and having faith in the process. One of the biggest struggles so far has been training myself to do almost EVERY part of the process. The actual design process is maybe 10% of my time, so the other 90% is website development, business administration and marketing, none of which I knew anything about previously! And then I’d say that the other struggle is doing your own marketing, especially if you weren’t that active on social media beforehand. I can’t wait until we have enough money to hire someone for that piece!

Please tell us about the company.
Core-azón Designs aims to be a conscious and fly apparel brand that lifts up the soulfulness and positivity of life, with love at the core of everything we do. We sell t-shirts, crop tops, tanks and hoodies for all genders. We aim to spread our messages of soulfulness and positivity through our shirts and we want them to be cute/dope enough that people wanna rock them everywhere! We want people to feel good about supporting Core-azón Designs and the culture we’re building around it. We’re just getting started. 🙂

So, what’s next? Any big plans?
Well, just like any company, we hope that we blow up! But first steps first. Our spring collection dropped last week and we’re really excited about it. Follow us on our IG page which is where a lot of the magic (& discounts) happens! Over the next year, our major goal is just becoming a viable apparel company. As for the future, I can see the Core-azón brand expanding to other areas- especially party and event hosting. But the big dream is to create a retreat/event center in nature to provide a sacred space for all the amazing healers, activists, artists, dancers we know. Maybe throw an underground party or two. 😉 Core-azón Designs is our first major step on that path. We’re dreaming big folks- get on board while we’re still small. 😉

Contact Info:

Website: www.coreazondesigns.com
Email: coreazondesigns@gmail.com
Instagram: @coreazondesigns
Facebook: Core-azón Designs

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