The drudgery of working nine to five was starting to grate on Jennifer Groen. So she got busy in her spare time and opened an Etsy shop. A great idea, as it turned out!
Tell us a little about yourself?
“I live in Hoorn with my boyfriend and my son and I was brought up on DIY. My mum was, and is, always making stuff. In the end I went to a fashion school, but as it turned out, it wasn’t my thing. I trained as an all round stylist at Akademie Vogue, traveled a lot and worked as an interior decorator for the TV show ‘In Holland staat een huis’ (‘There’s a house in Holland’, a home makeover show). In an economically difficult period (when I was living in the UK) I got into ICT and I kinda stayed there afterwards. Security and decent pay were rather nice after all. It just didn’t fulfill me in the end.”
What got you thinking of an Etsy shop?
“I was stuck in a rut of working an office job and running a family and I’d simply lost part of myself. I just needed to find a creative splurge. By getting back into design and making pretty things it seemed like I was able to breathe again. Wonderful! I kept coming across Etsy and once I’d been at an Etsy Lab I decided on Heedopter.etsy.com.”
Do you still hold down a job as well?
“Yep, 32 hours in four days. Pretty full-on in combination with a family and an Etsy shop.”
So what does the name Heedopter mean?
“Funny you should ask that, as nobody ever does, and I’d really expected them to. It’s kind of a cute story: my little boy loves anything that drives, flies or sails. Heedopter is his word for ‘helicopter’ and the first three-syllable word he could pronounce.”
