Welcome to my site
Hi, my name is Marlee Rabin and I’m an entrepreneur from Montreal, Canada. I created this website to serve as a portfolio of my work, but also to document the process of my journey so far — including my failures, lessons, and logic. Read on to learn more about my work.
What I’m Up To
Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer at PaperVine Group.
Amazon
Presently, I am focused on partnering with select brands to help them grow their businesses via the Amazon sales channel. My business partner & I buy branded inventory, resell these products on Amazon (under their brand name), and focus on optimizing their presence to grow their sales. We also help brands on a contract-basis.
Marketing
I also offer Marketing consulting services. I have a lot of experience leading Marketing departments & implementing strategies for some of Canada’s top fashion companies. I really enjoy helping brands design their internal marketing strategies based on their objectives.
Content Creation
I am a viral content creator, with over 15M views on my TikTok accounts (@mrsmarleerabin and @homiecollection). I specifically enjoy creating organizational content tips!
Interested in working together?
My previous businesses
In July 2021, I launched my second business: Homie Collection. This business was born during the Covid-19 global pandemic with a desire to launch an e-commerce business with high quality and affordable home organization products.
Homie sold a set of 4 of clear plastic storage bins, designed to help individuals keep an organized and aesthetically pleasing fridge and pantry.
What worked?
Created a Brand
Before I launched this product, I went through the process of having a brand deck and style guide created. I needed to design a logo, packaging & listing photos, and this style guide influenced and facilitated every design decision. For anyone launching an e-commerce brand or a product, please do not skip this step. End-to-end, it took me about a month to get it completed to my satisfaction.
Built an Audience
During the pandemic, I had a lot of success creating viral videos (15M+ views) on TikTok. I applied my knowledge and templates from my first successful account into creating a new account from scratch. Building this account was a lot of fun! My top performing content came from collaborating with Liz Cohene from Project Organize. I learned so many incredible tips from her (which I now live by in my day-to-day life). Also, this account was a fantastic testing ground for new content and product ideas.
What didn’t work?
This product sold well on Amazon.com. If I only cared about revenue, perhaps I’d still be selling this product! However, it cost too much money to sell this product effectively. This mainly has to do with the fact that the cost of business on Amazon is high, and this product is simply not unique enough to generate the results to be worth the while.
OCURENT
Photographed by: Katie Kowarsky
Genevieve Shemie (left) wearing a white Bec & Bridge racer-back mini dress, and Bianca Gerace (right) wearing a nude Parker beaded halter gown.
My first stab at entrepreneurship. I created Ocurent (pronounced as the French Au Courent) to help women access designer dresses for special occasions at affordable prices, in a truly sustainable manner.
I curated a selection of lightly (or never) worn designer evening dresses from women in Montreal. These dresses were rented out at 70% of the original retail price, and a 20% commission was provided to the dress owner. An ideal practice of a circular economy.
This business was born as a deliciously naive passion project. I built it from scratch; starting out by collecting dresses in my apartment (until it took over the entire space), and leveraging all of my friends as customers and models — to leasing a small showroom in Westmount, launching a website, and generating sales with 10% month-over-month growth.
Favourite Moments
Fashion photo shoots with incredibly talented, beautiful, and wonderful female human beings.
Actually making sales! This business generated sales on day 1 and grew each month. The fact that I actually had customers who were happy to exchange their money for my products and services was all of the validation I needed.
The dresses! I was extremely proud of the selection of high quality designer dresses, including Cinq a Sept, DVF, For Love and Lemons, Miu Miu, Missoni, and more, sizes 00-20.
Most importantly: the people. The women who trusted me with their dresses, those who trusted me to dress them, those who followed & supported my journey through social media, and the wonderfully generous ladies who worked with me to build this brainchild.
Right:
Photographed by: Zaki Hirji
Samantha Sagredo wearing a D&G leopard print knit dress, photographed at Laura Laoun’s apartment.
Below:
Photographed by: Katie Kowarsky
Laura Laoun (left) wearing an Alexis gold strapless pleated gown, me (right) in a hot pink strapless BCBG fitted gown.
Eyewear by: Georges Laoun Opticien
Biggest Mistakes
The name.
It sounded so cute in my head — but in reality, it’s hard to spell and pronounce, which means it’s hard to type and search. This is a lesson that I will never forget.Over-estimating the market size. Just because you know a lot of people — or think that everyone needs your service — does not mean you will have a large enough business that will be worth your while.
Taking on too much.
My strengths at the time were Marketing, Sales, Customer Service, Human Resources, and Strategy. Operations & Logistics, Accounting, and Financial Modeling were not my strongest skill set at the time. I made a lot of mistakes trying to do it all. There is no other way I could have known this, other than trying and falling flat on my face. I’ve learned that delegation is a lifeline.
CAREER PATH
Education
McGill University, Desautels Faculty of Management
Experience
Sales
In my teens, I spent many years working on retail floors. My first ‘office job’, was as a Sales Support at SeCe Apparel, the Canadian Distributor of contemporary designer brands including Eileen Fisher, Vince, UGG Australia, Rebecca Taylor, and more. I started off by steaming clothes and helping the sales team with their paperwork. I was so eager to start my career that I took this full-time position while completing my degree at night. Upon graduation, I was promoted to an Account Executive position for the Eileen Fisher brand. I had a lot of fun in this role. The foundation of my fashion business education came from working at SeCe Apparel. I was one of the sales representatives who sold the collections to boutiques and department stores across Canada. I loved being apart of this world, and enjoyed traveling to New York, Toronto, and Vancouver with my team.
Marketing
While I loved many elements of my job at SeCe Apparel, I was anxious to apply my Marketing degree in the field. Eager to learn something completely new, I took a job as a Marketing Coordinator at a cloud consulting company. I loved throwing myself into a completely new environment, but that excitement got old — fast. This job was NOT for me. My lack of enthusiasm for the work absolutely showed up in my results. Needless to say, this was the first (and hopefully last) time that I got fired!
This experience taught me that I am someone who needs to do work that I love, in order to perform to the best of my ability. And so, I decided to jump back into the fashion industry. I joined an inclusive womenswear company, called Laura Canada, owned and operated by the lovely Fisher family. I was very fortunate to have an opportunity to lead a Marketing team and get direct access to the leadership team. I basically learned how to run a Marketing department from this position, and I am eternally grateful for this knowledge.
After Laura Canada, I worked for a luxury outerwear company called Rudsak. I began in PR & Social Media and worked my way up to a Senior Marketing Manager position. In this role, I had the privilege of leading a team and exciting international projects, including an activation at the Sundance Film Festival, a fashion show for Toronto Fashion Week, and marketing their first New York store at Hudson Yards. After Rudsak, I felt ready to dive into my first solo business.
Leadership
My passion for leadership began when I was selected to be an ‘Organizational Behaviour Course Counsellor’, teaching a small interactive class at McGill University. In my working experience, I always enjoyed learning how to effectively manage and lead teams. Today, I actively take on mentees, as I greatly enjoy imparting my learnings to those who can benefit from it.