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why, hello there!

You’ve stumbled upon our happy nook of the web.
Welcome here. Welcome home!

emma kate co. is

A travel-inspired stationery + lifestyle brand from Melbourne, Australia.
With simple brush strokes, fresh designs, and words to stir the soul,
we weave conscious, considered, generous details into every little thing we make.

Since our founding in 2015, we’ve established an inimitable creative presence and highly engaged, rapidly growing following with over 400 wholesale partners, customers in over 60 countries, and a community of huge hearts from every corner of the globe.

We’re here to inspire adventure and bring joy, to you and other humans across the world and just down the street.
In other words – making your day is our specialty.

 

we believe

In the power of delight.
In unbridled freedomand exploring every corner of our beautiful world.
In practising kindness… the backward-bending, over-delivering, always-there-for-you type.
In long-lasting, carefully selected partnerships, where joy is the foundation.
In creating any and all things with intention, precision and purpose.
In generosity… woven equally into our products, and in our relationships.
In sending out love freely with wild abandon.

 

but, we must warn you.

Our work inspires:
Sudden smiles.
Days, made.
Compassion, brought into sharp focus.
Long overdue, I-miss-you phone calls.

 

meet emma kate, our founder + chief wild heart

Front and centre of her brand, Emma Kate Codrington lives, breathes and travels the messages she writes. As a designer, travel writer, photographer and perpetual adventurer with an infectiously free approach to life, every word and work of Emma’s is rooted in creativity and authenticity.

When she’s not putting brush to paper, immersed in the design of a new collection, you might find Emma pouring her all into a brand campaign, jumping on a plane to capture a new destination, leading a workshop, speaking or consulting.

Emma Kate has collaborated with high-profile brands for international print circulations, digital campaigns and tactile projects alike, with recent partnerships including Cathay Pacific, Olympus, Visit Britain and Shangri-La Hotels. Her world is everything ethereal, punctuated with coffee. With mess, joy, love and adventure, she colours outside the lines – on purpose.

So come in! Do stay a while. We’ve got something special waiting.

how it all began

2010

At 21, our founder Emma graduated with her design degree and dipped her toes into freelance life. With another love nipping at her heels [travel], she jumped on a plane to explore the world solo.

Somewhere between Paris and Barcelona, she made an unassuming pit-stop in a mysterious sundrenched town – Montpellier, in the south of France. In a matter of months, she moved there.

2011

Laptop in tow, Emma lived life à la francaise and freelance-flitted her way around Europe. She hand-lettered beside the cobbled streets of Stockholm, designed for clients from cosy cafés in Florence, collected some big jars of creative inspiration / life experience, and fell head over heels, ridiculously in love with the world.

7 months on, Emma caught a plane back home (but left her heart behind.) She threw herself into work, but wanderlust still tugged at her. Hard.

2012

Emma bought a one-way ticket to London, and signed on as a designer for a big-time publisher, trying on a grown-up 9-5 on for size. Coffee to go. Rush hour madness… and paid holidays.

She Europe-hopped more weekends than not, and put every single cent (that didn’t go to rent) towards adventures. And became obsessed with capturing tiny beautiful moments on her camera (and Instagram feed).

2014

At 25, and almost two years deep into life as a Londoner, Emma’s semi-long term plan came to an abrupt halt. Hello, visa exile.

Emma moved hemispheres back to her hometown of Adelaide. Plucked out of one reality and thrown into another, entirely heartbroken – and with absolutely no plan B. With the roar of the engine, as her plane flew off into the Australian sun, she clicked over to exactly 5000 followers.

2015

Despite being almost entirely sure that no one would want to follow the girl
who moved back home, strangely enough – this is when Emma’s now-highly engaged, exceptionally loyal community started to discover her world.

Newly back in Adelaide, Emma found herself with a rare and perfect chance to run with opportunity. She jumped into building a little brand, Emma Kate Co. – entirely on her own terms. Night and day, she brush-lettered, illustrated, photographed and shared every step of her creative process.

Six months on, Emma launched her first stationery collection Wild Hearts, and debuted the line at Life InStyle. Overnight, her work was stocked in over 40 beautiful lifestyle stores around Australia + New Zealand.

Around the same time, some surreal invitations started to come her way, from brands, tourism boards and PR agencies. “Can we send you X, and if you like it, could you share it with your readers?” Can you fit in your schedule a 10-day, all expenses paid trip to Samoa? …Bali? …Morocco? …Victoria?” She said: YES and [oh-my-goodness-thank-you]. Life had opened up.

2016

After meeting her now-partner Charles [at her first trade show] and six months of long distance, Emma relocated to Melbourne.

A huge year of hustle, presence, and up levelling saw our brand more than triple its stockist base – and turnover.

In a beautiful kind of full-circle, Emma returned to London for our first international trade fair.

In October, we launched our first Kickstarter project, crowdfunding Emma’s long-held dream of designing a year planner. With high hopes and spirits soaring, we made 2000 planners – and you bought every – last – one.

2017

In one word, 2017 was BIG. Full of love, creativity, joy, wins, lessons, far-flung adventures and SO very much hard work.

It was a year of non-stop leap taking, from welcoming our first team member Zalie, to speaking on panels, to keynotes, co-hosting business workshops, growing our stockist base and online customer base hugely.

For our planner release, we went bigger, and did better. We refined the finer details, and after opening for pre-orders, sold out within a matter of weeks. Planners flew around the world and we could not keep up with demand.

2018

The first half of this year became another big growth point for us, as we took on the New York Stationery Show, debuting our brand to the United States and Canadian markets for the very first time.

We also welcomed our studio sunshine + warehouse operations manager Cindy, which brings us to the here and now… our brand’s third birthday, and the launch of our shiny new website.

Over the past three years, we have evolved Emma’s little leap into a multi-channel lifestyle brand, with our growing number of stationery collections, homeware and travel collections – all inspired by adventure. We currently stock our collections with over 400 wholesale partners, and have beautiful customers in over 60 countries.

We can’t wait to see where the rest of this year [and beyond] takes us!