Hello Star.

First of all, if you’re reading this, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to browse through the website and exploring what has become something so surreal!

I’m super stoked that you’re here. This is my first ever blog post so I wanted to introduce myself, give you all a lil more insight on who I am and how I grew up. Let’s start...  

I’m Manisha Rose, founder of L/R. I’m 21 years old and on August 3rd of 2000, I was born in Sabah. I was raised in Kuala Lumpur with very frequent visits to my hometown. I started L/R in 2018 and ever since then, have been putting all my love and entire heart into this !!! (If you wanna read all about the brand, how it was founded & what it’s all about, you can click here) 

Growing up, I was always very interested in fashion and business. Although I always thought I was going to pursue a career in singing...it didn’t quite turn out that way.

I’ve always had some sort of an interest & passion for business. When I was about 6 years old, I had a VISION. You see, every Chinese New Year, I would go back to my grandma’s house to celebrate and a ton of people would be there. I took this a an opportunity to set up a ‘store’ on my grandma’s front porch. I called it the ‘Home Sale’. I had my ‘kedai 2 ringgit’ (dollar store) cash register with a fake barcode scanner and everything. My parents, being the absolute most supportive people in the world, brought me to HERO (basically, Malaysia’s Costco) and bought me a ton of things in bulk. At 6 years old, selling erasers, pencils, stickers and even these random keychains i got, to a predominantly adult crowd seemed like a great idea. All I knew was that I wanted to sell things because it felt like so much fun. My first ‘shop’ was called ‘Footsteps’......credits to my brother for that lowkey gross name. I continued doing this for about 4 years, slowly upgrading to fruits, cola floats, cupcakes & even got my ltitle cousins to help around as servers. I got older and my grandmas’ guests started to hate on me for selling overpriced food. Those times were genuinely so much fun and I remember knowing that it was what I wanted to do in the future. Building a business! Not selling overpriced fruit.

At about 9 years old, our school had a fundraising campaign in support of WWF. I thought it would be super fun to do henna and hand/face painting during lunch in school and donate all the proceeds to WWF. I went to meet with my principal, got her permission and went home to design some henna and face art. I asked two of my best friends at the time to help me and we raised a decent amount of money. I think it was around RM400? Not bad for a few 9 year olds with extremely mediocre drawing skills. This was when i knew i wanted to learn more & contribute to the environment!

It’s safe to say that I learnt A LOT more about business since then.

Family background check. I wasn’t born into a wealthy family, and a huge part of me is very grateful for that because through that, I’ve learnt to be appreciative of what I had growing up later on in life and of what I have now. It also taught me to be happy about the little things. Although my parents didn’t have so much back then, they always found endless ways to make us happy. I’m sure a bunch of you experienced a simple childhood, just like I did. Do you miss it too, sometimes? I know i do.

My parents always spent their hard work on travelling, good food and experiences over anything materialistic, so as a child I got to travel loads and I am so very grateful for that! Being exposed to so many different cultures at such a young age definitely helped me grow as a person and made me a lot more understanding and open towards other people. I also grew up in a multicultural & diverse setting. Every year, I ‘properly’ celebrate Chinese New Year & Deepavali, but also fit in Hari Raya & Christmas because of my other family members. During every special occasion, a ton of people would come over and the couples were 80% interracial— its safe to say my family & i aren’t strangers to diversity!

I never went to college or furthered my studies after high school. Although some people may disagree or think that it was a wrong choice, this decision of mine was supported by the people closest to me & that's honestly all that matters. After getting my SPM results, I took a year long break while doing some modelling here and there. I thought long and hard about what i wanted to pursue first and asled myself what was good for me. I’m so grateful that my parents never ever pressured me into going back to school and that i had the luxury of waiting it out while trying to figure out which direction i was heading. I had plans of studying fashion abroad, business and even performing arts but i knew that i wanted to go straight to work. I’m sure a lot of you can also relate to the pressures of having to continue your studies etc… this is definitely a topic I want to touch on in another blog post! (let me know if you’d want to start a conversation surrounding that)

Well, that pretty much covers the important parts of my life story & a little bit of how i got to where i am today. I hope you guys gained a little more insight and understanding of who I am and the people around me. I’m so thankful that you stopped and cared enough to read all that I had to tell. Whether you read something you resonated with or learned from, I’d love to hear what you have to say. 

I’ll be preparing a lot more content, so in the meantime, follow L/R’s Instagram (@lrthelabel) & stay tuned for more!

Talk soon & stay vibrant.

xx, Manisha