The story behind Hollei Anne Design Co.
Have you ever wondered what it takes to turn a passion for design into a thriving business? As someone who's walked that path, I’m excited to share my journey with you. My name is Hollei Anne Hayes, and I’m the owner of Hollei Anne Design Co. I'd like to take you through my story, from childhood to my early days as a designer to the moment I decided to launch my own business. If you’re an aspiring surface designer or simply love hearing about turning passion into a career, I hope my experiences inspire you to follow your own creative dreams.
1990-2009
Born and raised in Lehigh Valley PA, my creative journey started as a little baby. Well as soon as I can remember! Around the age of 3 I started drawing and coloring. I remember my grandparents saving our local newspaper The Morning Call for me to color in the page they had that week for a chance to have your art shown in the paper. I always looked forward to it and my grandparents really encouraged creativity in me. I remember my Great Grandmother gifting me my first sewing kit, now a days you probably wouldn’t hand over a whole box of needles and pins to a 4 year old! I was so excited my Grammy and I were going to make a “quilt” which turned out to be a blanket for a Barbie. I always looked forward to Christmas when my family would stock me up with art supplies and craft kits. My favorite shows as a kid were Pappyland and The Carol Duvall show. Pappyland would show you how to draw and Carol Duvall would have a different craft each show.
Growing up I loved every art class, it was always an easy A and I couldn’t get enough! I remember one time my 4th grade teacher accidentally marked my grade as a D instead of a B. She made up for it by buying me a super nice art kit with all kinds of materials and a How To Draw Bambi book that I cherish to this day. In middle school I was granted a scholarship to attend the Baum School of Art in Allentown. I remember having to meet with the president to do a portfolio review. I was SUPER nervous when I walked in with my 8x8 Crayola mixed media sketchbook. I put sticky notes on the pages I wanted him to review which had some still life drawings I was proud of. I wanted to make sure he only stuck to those pages because in the back I had some embarrassing Neopets and Spongebob drawings. Dispite my best efforts at having him avoid the drawings in the back he still reviewed them and was quite impressed. I got into the Baum School of Art and cherished the class I took every week.
As I grew older and went to high school I still continued to be a creative girly but I took it less serious, I felt like an outsider since our school was very focused on sports. In my spare time I would design my Myspace Page with HTML and create animated GIFs for other people’s pages. My mom continued to encourage me and eventually I decided I should go to university for art.
2009-2013
I went to Kutztown University of Pennsylvania in 2009 as Undeclared. My mom really wanted me to be an Art Teacher but I wasn’t sure. I was so nervous and not confident about my skills or ability. I took my general electives and general art classes like Drawing 1, 3D sculpture, etc. Once I started to take a few art classes I really started to gain my confidence and thought, I CAN DO THIS! Because I was taking a bunch of general art classes I started to learn what other art majors Kutztown had to offer. I learned about Communication Design which was for Graphic, Web, Advertising and Illustration and I thought THIS IS WHAT I WANT TO DO. I still remember the day I told my mom I wanted to switch to Communication Design instead of doing Art Education. While trying to convince her of my decision I explained to her that Graphic Design was everywhere and asked her “Who do you think designed the Coca Cola can?”
Needless to say I got into the Communication Design program and absolutely thrived. While in school I got a job at Kutztown’s Office of Student Involvement where I created posters and promotional items like t-shirts and buttons for events going on at school. It was my first job where I had a brief and “clients” who were student presidents of university clubs. I loved that job, it was perfect for exploring techniques and working with people and deadlines. Later I got an internship at B. Braun where I designed educational and promotional assets for their medical equipment. And then right before graduating in 2013 I got a job at a local agency called Peer Pressure Creative. (Which by the way has the same logo and website I designed!) I felt so grateful for all of the opportunities I had at the time but then I saw a job posting for Toys R Us and applied, the only problem was that it was in New Jersey…
My first catalog!
2014
I applied for a Direct Mail job at Toys R Us and I remember thinking… I don’t want to design coupons all day but Toys R Us would be a dream to work for! I applied and quickly updated my portfolio site with some newer work. I heard back and was asked to do a test. The test was to create a Toys R Us big book of toys, I was so excited and nervous! I remember doing 1 concept with little penguins on an iceberg gathering up gifts and another with Geoffrey holding a bunch of gifts with “The Big Book of Toys” in the present boxes. I heard only a few days later that I got a second interview in New Jersey. I learned that the role I would be in would be under the Babies R Us Brand and I would have the opportunity to design catalogs, the Dream Registry Guide and more! I remember bringing in my sketches for the test and my physical portfolio which the Creative Manager at the time Mandy Floyd was SO EXCITED to share my printed portfolio (something people started to not do because of digital portfolios). Needless to say I landed the Graphic Design job, moved to Morris Plains NJ with Josh and worked my way up fast to Associate Creative Manager. That was a dream job. I learned SO MUCH about campaign concepting, honing in on your story and audience, the inner workings of buying teams and selling products. I am forever grateful for that opportunity.
2017
In 2017 I married my best friend on 9/30. Josh and I had met in college our freshmen year second semester. He helped encouraged me to make the transition to be a Communication Design Major at Kutztown University and was there with me through every up and down! He would even go with me to the computer lab when I couldn’t afford a Macbook to work late night hours on my design projects so I wouldn’t walk back in the dark alone. (He’s a keeper, am I right?!) And on 9/30 he supported me again by gifting me an iPad and Apple Pencil for our wedding. He knew I was dying to try my hand at drawing on the iPad. So I got my feet wet and dove in honing my skill and finding my style.
2018
We bought our first house a little cape cod in Lake Hopatcong, NJ. Josh and I flipped that house like we were the NJ version of Chip and Joanna Gaines. We loved that house so much and put so much thought and work into it. Quickly after we learned that I was going to lose my dream job at Toys R Us because they went out of business. And what does someone do when you lose your dream job and have to deal with that loss with all your coworkers that you now call friends? You buy a puppy and bring it to work! We adopted Scully (named after Dana Scully from the X-Files) our Mini Golden Doodle in May of 2018. I brought her into Toys R Us corporate and cheered everyone up with puppy kisses.
After looking around a bit I landed an opportunity to be a Senior Designer at Skip Hop in NYC. I always dreamed of working in the big city so I was super excited! Skip Hop is well known for beautifully designed baby and kids products. It was so cool to learn and work with the industrial designers there who had such a close relationship to the products that they developed. Finding ways to advertise their product was so easy because they were so innovative and cute. While I loved that experience, I quickly realized the commute to NYC was torture! At the time, working remote wasn’t really an option so I was stuck with figuring out a different option that would give me better work life balance…
2019
After surviving the commute of going into NYC I landed a job as a Senior Designer at Christmas Tree Shops and was reunited with some of my old coworkers including my Creative Director Cheryl Christofi from Toys R Us. I learned more about products working one on one with their small team of buyers and even sat across from their Surface and Product Design team. This is where I learned what Surface Design was. I started to explore Surface Design more in my free time, learning about Art Licensing and really trying to build up my portfolio to reflect that type of work. At that time I knew I wanted to do more illustration which is something that I’ve tried to incorporate my whole career. At Babies R Us I created emojis and icons for their brand, I always infused illustration into my designs at Skip Hop and I then created doodles for Christmas Tree Shops brand assets. Eventually I saw an opportunity to get into the Surface Design world, so I jumped on it!
2020
I accepted a Product Developer job at Horizon Group USA under their Target Bullseye Playground department a few weeks after the pandemic hit. Despite the pandemic being a major shift in team dynamics, this is where I fell in love with Surface Design. I learned all the ins and outs of how to pitch and sell products to big retailers. This was finally where I found my calling doing trend research, comp shopping, designing and developing products and creating style guides. At this time I started to take on some freelance work as a side hustle. After Toys R Us, I never quite felt like I fit into a corporate environment. At the time of leaving Toys R Us I was managing a team of 6 designers, I missed the art direction portion of that job but didn’t miss the corporate culture. I started to think, maybe I can do this on my own..
2021
Josh and I decided to start a family and were pregnant with our first child! Shortly after finding out the news, my position was eliminated at Horizon Group USA and I was in panic mode. I started to reach out to my network, continue to take on more freelance work and apply to new jobs. Eventually my freelance work took over into a full time salary. And I finally saw my art hit shelves in Target! I gained 4 steady clients with in a few months and before I knew it I was 36 weeks pregnant about to have my daughter…
2022
January 8th, 2022 at 36 weeks pregnant amidst my water breaking, I sent out 4 emails 1 to each client and uploaded any in progress work I had to dropbox at 12:30AM. I was going to have my baby 6 weeks earlier than planned. On January 9th, 2022 2:36PM I gave birth our beautiful baby girl Ella Jean. My whole mindset around being freelance full-time changed, this whole time I was back and forth on whether or not I wanted to try and do freelance full time or try and get a full time job. The answer was so clear now, I wanted to own my own business to give my daughter an example of what it means to be a boss b*tch and also have the flexibility to spend as much time with her as possible.
2023
After getting out of the mist of maternity leave, I was in full speed with my business. I gained 30+ new clients and in total created 1,500+ pieces of art and designs for stores like Target, Walmart, TJMaxx, Hallmark, Michaels and more! I started to take my business seriously and officially registered my business as Hollei Anne Design Co. I worked my butt off, with one of the busiest years yet and made my first 6+ figure year! When I look back I’m not quite sure how I did it. At the time Josh and I were still watching my daughter who was 1 years old. We would alternate shifts first half of the day I would work and Josh would watch Ella, 2nd half he would work and I watch Ella, we’d both work while she was napping. My mom was going through Chemo therapy so I’d take her to all her appointments. It was a very busy year to say the least but despite all of that was a super successful year for my business!
2024
And now here we are in 2024, at the start of the year I integrated a 4 day work week. I try to leave Friday’s for admin work and spending quality time with Ella. This year I attended my first coaching mastermind group where I learned so much about optimizing my business and ways to manage my cash flow and track leads. I also attended my first ICON Illustration conference where I connected with so many talented independent artists. And I started to pursue my calling as an educator by speaking at my former university, sharing my knowledge around Surface Design with fellow artists through guest hosting on podcasts and I even started my dream of creating workshops. I already hosted a few for my client Made For Retail!
As I look back through out the years I am truly proud of everything I’ve accomplished. I’ve learned so much and continue to take what I learn and contribute that to my business by helping my clients and now students. I’m super excited to continue to explore the educational aspect of my business and of course continue to collaborate with amazing brands to bring their products to life with beautiful art and designs.
If you made it to the end of this blog, THANK YOU!
Thank you for reading my story. I am truly grateful for all of the support I have around me. If you’re interested in joining my design journey by collaborating with me or just want connect feel free to reach out!
