sooo as y’all know, i had to do a major rebranding of not only my blogger persona, but my company too.

i have a video where i talk about the company rebranding and what led to it but here, i’m gonna focus on my creator brand, ellecommawoods, and how being forced to “pivot” was truly one of the best things to happen to me.

for those of you who don’t know, my full first name is chantelle, and i go by elle for short. i started going by ellecommawoods on social media around 2011-2012. it started out as both a joke and a homage to one of my favorite movies, legally blonde + characters, elle woods. one day, i was chatting with a friend of mine and saying that i wanted to change my social media handles [before ellecommawoods my handle was king stush — long story, don’t ask lol] but couldn’t think of a name; my friend jokingly said to me “since your name is elle and you wanna go to law school too, why don’t you just change it to ‘elle woods’ or ‘black elle woods’?”  ironically, i was watching the movie at the exact same time [specifically, the scene where the movie elle woods was checking in for her first day at harvard law & she says “woods, [comma] elle” and she asks if warner had checked into school yet] and i said “you know what? that would be funny cause it’s so true!” i noticed that a bunch of people had “elle woods” or “black elle woods as their handles” so i came up with “ellecommawoods” and boom, we had a new social media name! 

fast forward to 2019 — i was in the middle of my llm program + at this point, i had been going by ellecommawoods for 7 or 8 years. i decided to start a legal themed jewelry company because i loveeeeeeee jewelry & couldn’t really find many cute, law related jewelry pieces online [and by cute, i mean not tacky or generic looking lol]. i did some research, found a manufacturer and other vendors, and ordered 3 sample necklaces just to see if what i saw in my head could be translated into something tangible [cause sometimes, sh*t that makes sense in your head makes absolutely no sense in real life lol]. i loved the samples and although I couldn’t think of what to name the company, i was soooooo excited to start so i just said f*ck it, ima call it shop ellecommawoods for now and i can always change it later. then on october 10, 2019, shop ellecommawoods was born.

in 2020, rona hit the us and by march 2020, the country was on lockdown; on one hand, i was cool with quarantining because i didn’t have to get up/get dressed up everyday [being at home, in your pj’s is top tier idc! lol]. on the other hand, the isolation drove me crazy [well, crazier lol] and i was terrified to leave my house even for basic needs because i’m immunocompromised and i ain’t wanna die [yes, i’m dramatic & no, i don’t care — there were two pandemics [covid + the killing of so many black/poc folks damn near every week  —  going on as far as i’m concerned]. too many people were dying from all that sh*t and i was not trying to test my luck or my immune system]. during the lockdown, I had begun to make some new connections and really tried to figure out how to get my brand out there to as many lawbaes as possible. i started doing ig lives, podcast interviews, etc. to grow my business + to grow myself in the creator space; and it worked! i gained over 1,200 followers between march 2020 + march 2021 — sure, it’s not the biggest growth but it was something lol — and I decided to realllllllyyy take content creation more seriously.

having earned both my  jd + llm with a focus on intellectual property law, i knew that i had to “secure” my  brand and one of the first steps to doing so was to try to obtain a trademark for ellecommawoods; so i filed an application with the uspto for blogging/advertising services [class 35 if you’re curious lol] and continued working to expand my reach as a content creator. this is where the bullsh*t begins lol. 

stay tuned for part II. . .