We have learned some valuable lessons about love, life and business on our journey. We have been humbled by the guidance and inspiration we have been given from so many incredible people along the way. Our end game now is about inspiring and motivating others.
DQ&Co is a Happiness Project. We believe that if everyday, in our small way, we can positively touch the hearts of a few souls, then that is a day well lived. This is what gets us up each morning.
We do what we love to do because life really is short. We don’t want to waste a moment of it so we do it now. At DQ&Co staying true to our passion is key. We dream it, try it, believe it and never give up.
We strive to stimulate and grow minds. We value the potential of every individual. We can all create our own destiny. Where there is a will there is a way. We continually celebrate this gift called life and give back to it as much as we can. We aim to make each day a happiness project. We laugh often and say thank you more.
Being raised in a Buddhist temple in Malaysia, by both my Grandmother and Aunty was a very different way to come up in the world. Equal parts tough and loving, these two ladies empowered me with a rare resilience, spiritual wisdom and a lust for life. In a household where money was short and food was even scarcer everybody had a part to play. You could say necessity bred business acumen. I was selling soda from a street stall at age seven. In my teens I paid for my secondary education by tutoring younger pupils.
“In life,” Aunty said, “don’t lie, don’t cheat and earn an honest living.” I was taught if you fall you must get up. It was tough love but there was so much love.
I am passionate about art and painting it informs every DQ&Co design. I am self-taught but I have always been creative. From an early age when there was no money for toys, we had to use our minds to conjure things. If you wanted an ice cream, you channeled an ice cream and you could taste it in your mouth. I love the fact that I can still close my eyes to see, feel and create things.
Life at the Buddhist temple gave me an understanding of impermanence. The universe is bigger than me and I am only here for a little while and while I’m here I’m going to do the best I can. I’m going to do good.
I learnt early that happiness is not something out there to strive for, it is within. Happiness is in the little things like my first coffee of the day. Now that is happiness!
I’m not the perfect person I’m a human being. My intention though is to be good and I believe DQ&Co’s intention is to be good too.
When we first launched DQ&Co in 2003 we started from zero with only a dream to follow. Some thought it was naïve. We think it was a calling. We wanted to help to make the world a better place.
We believe now as we did then, in celebrating life’s simple pleasures and leaving a trail of joy in our wake. We chose the name ‘Drama Queens (DQ),’ as we ourselves had experienced more than our fair share of ups and downs. But we were never going to be defined by personal crisis, we were taught to never give up.
We wanted to share our passion so we began designing a cool, cute and unique range of inspirational gifts to spread a little love and happiness.
While our products proved popular, our first baby steps into business were not without some tumbles, but we picked ourselves up and successfully moved on. We quickly recognized so many other opportunities in the marketplace for us to add our funky flavours and offbeat designs. So we went out and created our own exclusive range of travel accessories & souvenirs. You could say after that, we really took off. DQ&Co went international.
Starting a business on passion alone might not be the most prudent thing to do but we stuck to our knitting and remained true to our vision. We feel blessed that now there are so many people who believe in and support what we do.
