March 28, 2018

Meet Natalie Knowlton, Sarah Knowlton of WE THE BIRDS in Old East Dallas

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Natalie Knowlton, Sarah Knowlton.

Natalie, Sarah, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
The story of WE THE BIRDS starts at the beginning of our lives. Sarah and I were born two years apart in New Orleans, Louisiana. Our lives quickly took flight because of our dad’s career. Before the age of 13, we lived in Maracaibo, Venezuela, Houston, TX, Perth and Darwin, Australia, Dallas, TX and Lafayette, LA. We then moved to Southeast Asia and spent our formative years in Singapore as teenagers. We were truly fortunate to have the opportunity to travel across the world before college. Sarah went on to study Art & French on the East Coast and abroad in France and Australia, while Natalie studied International Business & Asian Studies on the West Coast and abroad in Thailand and Cambodia.

At this point in our lives, we knew two things to be constant: 1. change 2. we were birds of feather

It wasn’t until we both found ourselves working corporate jobs and living in Dallas in 2015, that we decided to set some digital roots and form our blog “WE THE BIRDS.” What started as a creative outlet to share fashion and inspirational content, has blossomed and grown into a full-time lifestyle brand and custom macaron business.

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?
We always say, nothing great happens overnight and nothing great happens without a ton of hard work.

Both have been true for WE THE BIRDS. While some blogs seemingly gain overnight success in terms of followers and partnerships, our growth has been pretty slow and steady. Going into this industry, we knew we would have to stand out among the masses of influencers. Sarah carefully created our brand to make it something unique. With that, a lot of behind the scenes work goes into creating good content and maintaining our brand integrity. We can’t just crank out an Instagram post in an a few hours or blog post in a day. We set ourselves up for this challenge, but it’s been an uphill battle trying to keep up with demand, build efficiencies, train our in-house team, and deliver exceptional content to partners and followers consistently.

Scaling our blog and macaron business has been the toughest challenge. Working from home was an amazing way to start our custom macaron business and run our blog… but we quickly realized we couldn’t keep up with the demand. Our solution was to build a WTB HQ and commercial kitchen to allow our business to grow long-term without constraints. We’ve spent the past year working with a slew of contractors and consultants.
Admittedly, we thought this process would only take a few months, but great things happen in due time. This May, we will finally be able to spread our wings in our newly constructed 2000sf We the Birds HQ.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the WE THE BIRDS story. Tell us more about the business.
WE THE BIRDS is a lifestyle brand specializing in content creation, digital influence and custom French macarons.

WE THE BIRDS offers services akin to hiring a boutique creative agency to create one-of-a-kind editorial content. We also offer our partners the ability to leverage our reach and influence to promote their brand on our established platform(s).

We focus on fashion, design, beauty, travel and of course, French macarons,

As a brand, we are most proud of having positioned ourselves as a resource for inspiring content.

Our international upbringing and combined skill sets and professional backgrounds sets us apart from our competitors. Though based in Dallas, our brand represents a global perspective and aesthetic.

Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
We don’t focus on good or bad luck in our personal lives or business.

We don’t have any control over the hand that life deals us – whether it’s lucky or unlucky. What we believe in is what we do with the hand that’s dealt to us.

If we’re talking about being lucky or unlucky, then we are no strangers to “unluckiness”…. repeatedly being the new kid every year of our life was close to torture… Moving halfway across the world to an island in Asia was devastating for our 13 and 15-year-old selves….. but now, in retrospect, we know that those moves brought us closer together as a family and those years in Singapore were life-changing. So yeah, we don’t focus much on luck in life or business – but we try to focus on how we handle the “luck” life throws at us.

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