Y’all know my life is allllll about twins.
As a mom of two sets of twins, I’m always seeing double — and I love it. So when I met a set of talented, confident, smart, and fun twin girls who also have a passion for stationary — I knew I had to feature them as a part of Talking Shop. Can you say kindred spirits?
Sophie and Izzy are twin founders of SOZY Pencils, a company that pioneered the Annotator — a pencil and highlighter in ONE.
Tired of constantly switching between a pencil and a highlighter for their schoolwork, the girls designed a simple hack to combine them. Soon, their friends were following suit. The girls realized there was a global need for such a tool — so they created it. SOZY Pencils was born.
On today’s Talking Shop, Sophie and Izzy chat about the challenges of their business, their proudest accomplishments, and the big dreams they have for SOZY’s future.
About You:
What have been some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned from running your business?
Never give up in life. So, initially when our prototype pencil came back and we weren’t happy with it, we almost gave up, but we learned to be patient and revised the prototype 10 times till we got it right.
Staying focused is key. You can’t get distracted from the long-term goal, but we learned to take it step-by-step and break the process down into small parts till you get to the end goal.
What have been the biggest challenges?
Refining the prototype and product samples to get it right.
Spreading the word about SOZY Pencils.
What advice would you give to other women and girls who want to start their own business?
Be confident about your decision and don’t give up.
Make sure you think about your product from the customers perspective. Meaning, how will your product help customers? How will they use it? What role will it play in their life?
How do you balance your school and work life?
School and homework come first. But we also spend time every day with our SOZY Pencil business. Whether it’s talking about Instagram themes, packing orders, doing quality control, writing thank you letters to our customers, walking to the post office to ship orders, or designing our next collection, we manage to be a team and do it together.
How does your family help with SOZY Pencils?
Our family helps us by teaching us about business and marketing, scheduling meetings, emailing customers, and helping with packing/shipping orders. We are involved in every step, they just help keep things moving along for us.
What has been your proudest accomplishment?
Taking our idea, which started as a simple hack in the classroom by taping a pencil and highlighter together, and making it into a real product that doesn’t exist elsewhere.
Additionally, debuting at the National Stationery Show in NYC and seeing how excited people were for us was amazing.
It’s really rewarding to see people want and buy our products and now they are sold in 40+ stores nationwide.
How would you like to see your business grow in the next few years?
We would like every student to have The Annotator in their backpack for school. Also, we plan to develop a whole stationery line geared towards students.
The Fun Qs:
What is your favorite thing to do when you’re not working on SOZY or school work?
Playing tennis, swimming, hanging out with friends, and watching TV.
What is your favorite treat?
Ice cream, doughnuts, churros, you name it.
What is your favorite thing to write about?
We love to write in our journals! We actually have different journals for each topic. For example, we have a travel journal, a friendship journal, a future dream journal, and a recipe journal.
Where is your dream vacation?
This is a hard question as we have had a few amazing trips to London, Paris, and Hawaii. We’d love to go to a different Island in Hawaii one day and go to Bora Bora in Tahiti. We love the beach and the beaches and water look so clear and fun there.
Shop the Annotator at SozyPencils.com and follow the girls at @sozypencils on Instagram.
