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"The most important thing you can do as a leader is admit that you don't know something and look for the answers and stay curious."
At a child’s birthday party, Rachel Huntington noticed something she couldn’t unsee.
Everything around her felt considered, the homes, the outfits, the details. But the party table didn’t match. The plates, cups, and napkins felt generic, disconnected from the rest of the experience.
That gap stayed with her. And when she started planning her own children’s parties, it became even more obvious: creating something thoughtful required sourcing from too many places, with no easy way to bring it all together.
So she built what didn’t exist.
What started as a simple idea, to make party planning more elevated and accessible, quickly turned into something much bigger. Without a formal business plan or industry background, Rachel built Bonjour Fête from the ground up, starting with a Shopify site, sourcing products from across the world, and fulfilling orders herself.
As the business grew, so did the complexity. She moved from e-commerce into retail, navigated major operational decisions, scaled through unexpected challenges like COVID, and eventually built the infrastructure needed to support a national retail launch. Today, Bonjour Fête is not only a beloved brand, it’s expanding into Target, bringing thoughtfully designed celebrations to an even wider audience.
In this episode of the Entreprenista Podcast, Rachel shares what it really looks like to build a product-based business, the realities of scaling across channels, and the behind-the-scenes work that goes into major retail partnerships.
You can listen to the podcast here on Spotify and Apple Podcast.
Here are a few moments from the podcast:
Her path to entrepreneurship wasn’t planned, it revealed itself over time:
“I was pre-med in college. I thought I was going to be a doctor. And the very last year, I realized it wasn’t for me. I switched to nursing, then moved to LA and started working at a talent agency.
That experience taught me how to pivot quickly, how to handle pressure, and to really do an impossible task.
Looking back, all of those experiences were setting me up to be an entrepreneur, I just didn’t know it yet.”
The idea for Bonjour Fête came from a simple but persistent observation:
“And I think when you first become a mom and you have little kids, you're going to birthday parties. And I think for me, I was living in this very fashionable city and I would go to these amazing houses. The homes were so beautiful. Everybody was into all this decor. And then the party table was the same image for the cup, the plate, the napkin.
I don't know why it just hit me one day at one of these birthday parties. I just said, you know, there has to be better.
And when I started planning my own kids’ parties, I realized how hard it was to source everything, I realized that you had to get it from a million different places.
She didn’t wait for perfect conditions, she built with what she had:
“I opened a Shopify site and started importing products. Taking pictures in my basement, all the very cliche things that you might hear people say. It was my actual experience.
I didn’t have a business plan. I just knew that I wanted one place for people to get things. And it felt like not every mom had the luxury of planning a party X amount of weeks in advance.”
Opening her first retail store came from necessity, not strategy:
“I was moving from Montreal back to LA and had all this inventory. I didn’t know what to do with it.
So I literally Googled how to open a store and opened a 500-square-foot retail space. My husband built it out, we figured it out as we went, and it was very scrappy.”
COVID forced a major shift, and pushed her deeper into e-commerce:
“Online came as a result of COVID. I really had my hands full with the in-store part of the business. It was doing very, very well. And I really enjoyed the in-person interaction.
Online was not my first go-to for the expansion of the business. If you had talked to me in 2019, I would have said, I want a Bonne Jour Fete in every major city. That was the way to go. And when COVID happened, I immediately knew that I had to shift that. And we have a business where there's a million little tiny things. It's a lot of things to put on a website and to categorize and whatnot.”
Landing in Target was a milestone, but far more complex than it looks:
“I got an email from Target and honestly didn’t believe it was real. I checked LinkedIn, verified everything before even getting on the first call.
The process took about two years. It’s not just about designing a product, you have to figure out logistics at scale, production timelines, fulfillment, everything.
We pitched multiple 3PLs and got told no over and over again. I thought having a Target order would be a golden ticket, but it’s actually incredibly involved.”
Her biggest lesson as a founder came from letting go of having all the answers:
“I think that in the early days of being a founder, think you just like, you want to have all the answers and, but over time, like I think that you realize that the most important thing you can do as a leader is admit that you don't know something and looking for the answers and staying curious.”
You might also like:
- Erin Kerner Built Eventio to Remove the Stress From Event Planning
- Michele Pruitt's Tailored Project Management + Event Planning Solutions
- Mari Latorre Helps Brands Create Beautiful, Meaningful Design
Connect with Rachel:
Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of The Entreprenista Podcast - the most fun business meeting for women founders and leaders. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts.
Use code ENTREPRENISTA for a special discount on your next Bonjour Fête order!
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Updated on: May 1, 2025
Guests
Rachel Huntington
Hosts
Stephanie Cartin
Co-founder of Socialfly and Entreprenista.
Stephanie Cartin is the co-founder and CEO of Entreprenista, an all-in-one platform – which includes a private community & business membership called The Entreprenista League that's made up of over 2,000 women founders at all stages of business, a weekly newsletter received by 60,000 readers, two podcasts, in-person educational & networking events, and an award program – that women founders at all stages can turn to for everything they need to grow.
Stephanie is also the co-founder of Socialfly (acquired by Truform Media Group in 2024), Markid, and Pearl Influential Capital. She has won countless awards, including the SmartCEO Brava award, which recognizes the top women CEOs in New York, and a Stevie Award for Women-Run Workplace of the Year. She has also appeared in Bloomberg, Forbes, Entrepreneur, Refinery29, and more.
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