Freya Mauger

Hand Made By Freya × Ranui Essentials

The little bees that started a business.

Hand Made By Freya began with a hook, a ball of yarn, and a market stall. It grew into a real brand — and a genuine stockist relationship with Ranui Essentials, the award-winning lavender farm in Martinborough, which kindly sells my crochet creations in their farm shop.

My signature product is the lavender bee — a little chenille bumblebee, right on theme for a lavender farm — made in batches in soft purples, alongside crocheted lavender stems. I even made a giant display bee to watch over all the little ones.

This is the project where I learned to make, market and sell regularly: pricing, stock, presentation, and looking after a stockist.

Chief Executive Officer · Saltwater Scraps

Leading a sustainable label.

As CEO, I lead a team of five Onslow College students turning rescued op-shop fabric into one-of-a-kind tote bags — each celebrating the marine life of Aotearoa. Every scrap tells a story. Every bag protects a shore.

We've designed 16 original sea-life prints across four craft techniques, and donate 15% of profits to Forest & Bird. It's my first taste of running a company: brand, product range, pricing and purpose.

At our very first public market — Harbourside Market in Wellington — we sold out every single tote bag at full price, and customers even asked to buy the crochet table decorations off our stall. For the second market we had to make a fresh batch of totes at short notice, which turned out to be a real lesson in teamwork under pressure.

We also turned our mascot, Rob the Lobster, into a proper product line, tested how sensitive customers were to price, and experimented with different marketing techniques along the way — all good foundational skills for a team of young entrepreneurs.