This year, we’ve partnered up with Destination TO to bring their holiday activation to life. We are running our pop-up, Shop the Block, at Stackt Market, in the heart of Toronto. “We’re so excited to be popping up this holiday season in our Toronto! We’ve curated a diverse assortment of brands from different neighbourhoods of Toronto. From home decor to holiday gifts to the newest in fashion, beauty, and jewelry we have something for the locals and tourists alike!” says Editor-in-Chief of STYLE Canada, Elise Gasbarrino.
Shop the Block will feature goods from local Toronto businesses. Our Shop the Block: Behind the Brands series will take a deeper look at the founders of our participating vendors and their stories. This article features Diosa Designs Inc. with
Kim Hickman; Co-Founder of Diosa Designs
Website: www.diosadesigns.com
Instagram: @diosadesignsinc
Source: Diosa
SC: Tell us a bit about yourself!
KH: We’re Kim Hickman and Katie Thompson, the Mother-Daughter duo and the Co-Founders of DIOSA designs. We are originally from St. John’s, Newfoundland and love travelling and visiting other places around the world.
Working with each other is great simply because we get to talk every single day about some really cool things that we both feel passionate about.
Sharing and experiencing moments of laughter and tears along the way, we have this great relationship that’s also a friendship and through our journey of creating the ultimate women’s carry-all backpack, it really gleamed through that we carry each other.
Source: Diosa Designs
SC: Tell us the story behind your brand!
KH: In 2017, we saw that there was a gap in the market when it came to a sleek, professional, functional backpack for women and we immediately got to work. After surveying over 400 women both online and in our home about what makes a ‘perfect backpack’, calling these conversations ‘backpack yaks’, we wanted to create a stylish carry-all bag that would easily transform to carry them throughout their day focusing on a few key qualities that were repeatedly mentioned: versatility, functionality, fashion and professionality.
Thus, we developed the idea of the ultimate women’s backpack – The Maya Backpack and created this brand because we believe that we can empower women through down-to-earth, sustainable fashion.
Source: Diosa Designs
SC: What inspires you?
KH: DIOSA is inspired by the idea of women empowering women which stems from their travels and work with the women of Guatemala. In fact, DIOSA pronounced “dee-o-sa”, is Spanish for Goddess!
We feel that the everyday women around the world carry a lot, in every sense of the word! Designing great carry-all bags and committing to 1% of sales back to Women centered initiatives, was the best support we could give.
Source: Diosa Designs
SC: What does 2022 hold for you?
KH: As we mentioned, DIOSA has been built off of the foundation of women supporting and empowering other women. Although we are already in September of 2022 – we can confidently say, the best is yet to come this year!
We are currently working on an exciting product (coming very soon) that not only supports an amazing cause but pushes to empower women to embrace who they are and celebrate the brave and incredible things they do each and every day.
Although we can’t say too much about said product yet, we can say that we are partnering up with a Canadian organization that has done wonderful things for this particular community and we can’t wait to share it with you.
Source: Diosa Designs
