I'm Karine, French and the "Fou" part of BODIE and FOU. My sister Elodie is the other part of our brand name. For the little story, Bodie has been Elodie's nickname since she was little and Fou (which means mad in French) was the nickname that Steve, my partner (a kiwi so not quite fluent in French), gave me when we met because he thought I was mad......
Given that we launched BODIE and FOU two weeks before I gave birth while relocating to Bristol and renovating a house in France, I guess he wasn't far from the truth....
Bodie and I were raised in the South West of France, amongst the beauty, sobriety and monochromatic landscape of the Atlantic Coast. Our family life involved travelling round the region with our rugby playing father and our mum who would use each trip to indulge her love of flea markets, gradually accumulating huge heaps of finds as dad scored tries.
Small wonder then that as little Bodie and I grew up among the stacks of interiors magazines and flea market finds, we developed a shared passion for simple, contemporary living while nurturing the idea of working together and creating a great little company!
This passion grew when Elodie joined me in London and we came to decorate our shared flat. We found that the home accessories available in high street shops were a bit too formulaic. As pro-activity runs strongly in our blood, it was no time until our third 'baby' - the BODIE and FOU brand - was born and is now the online European designer home accessories shop you enjoy.
We source each piece from European designers or stylish brand names to create an unusual and chic range of clean-cut contemporary designs capable of transforming a soulless room into a sensual, casual living space. We happily mix gentle and comforting hues of beige, white, grey, chocolate and naturally materials such as airy cotton, fresh linen and textured wood with brightful colours to create a home not a museum.
In the two years since we launched BODIE and FOU (pronounce BODEE and FU), we have seen our take on French lifestyle and contemporary modern living go from strength to strength. Since the beginning, we've been extremely lucky to have the regular support of most major interiors magazines including Living Etc, Elle Decoration, Ideal Home, BBC Homes & Antique, The Saturday Telegraph, Easy Living and many more.
A year after we launched BODIE and FOU, we acquired WhereDidYouBuyThat.com a fabulous website featuring desirable designer homewares including Oliver Hemming, Nigella Lawson, Normann Copenhagen, Jerome Olivet, Harry Allen, Fatboy and the famous and widely acclaimed Armadillo breadbin to name a few. WDYBT.COM was launched in 2000 and voted Best Website by The Independent newspaper. It had already a strong reputation of retail gem and was stocking quality homeware and accessories at great value prices, so for us, it was incredibly exciting to be able to join forces with such a visionary design site. We also felt that the fabulous worldwide mainstream designs available on WhereDidYouBuyThat.com complimented perfectly the elegant mix of French lifestyle and luxurious, stylish, European designer home accessories available on Bodie and Fou so after a split second (just enough to think that we were completely mad), we jumped on the opportunity and it turned out to be the best decision we made for the business!
WDYBT.com was founded by Di Overton who now writes the fantastic Designer's Block blog and is about to launch her genuine eco-chic range of furniture. Di was also named as one of the top 100 individuals to influence UK e-commerce over the past 10 years along Brent Hoberman from Lastminute.com, Peter Gabriel, Stelios of Easyjet and many other famous names. Although, this is still a family-run business, we have now a small but incredibly fabulous team of dedicated people who makes our days more enjoyable. The same team takes the mic out of me when I say we are blessed....but it's true. Although I believe we are where we are because of our hard work & commitment to provide a fantastic online shopping experience, excellent customer service and quality designs, I'm also very grateful to Steve, my partner for being incredibly supportive and to all the friends, customers, journalitsts, brands & designers who have helped, purchased from us, featured us and trusted us as they all made BODIE and FOU a dream come true and I sincerely hope you will enjoy buying more from us in the future so we can keep growing and spotlighting talented designers such as Flavia del Pra, Paulo Mendes da Rocha and Love is Blind.
So that's us in a 'large nutshell'...We will regularly post some news, so come back or write to us and I promise future postings won't be as long!
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