In the age of the internet, if you are not a tech billionaire by 23 something clearly went catastrophically wrong. This notion remains in part responsible for the mid-life crisis hitting at 30, not 40, but it also gives rise to ambition and innovation. It doesn’t discriminate. A good idea executed well becomes a parachute for success. Anyone can build one, and one woman who did was Lana Hopkins. She may not be 23 and she may not be a billionaire, but she is the founder of Mon Purse, a multimillion dollar luxury handbag company re-imagined through the customisation process.

Hopkins’ “ah-ha” moment didn’t arrive while working in print and digital ad sales at News Limited, but instead when building a bear for her nephew at Westfield. After enduring an unsuccessful search for a handbag, she decided to buy her nephew a gift and found herself at a Build-a-Bear workshop creating her own plush toy. “That’s when I realised those two activities were not mutually exclusive,” Hopkins recounts. Why search for the perfect handbag when her perfect handbag was completely different to the woman beside her? Why not create her own? Research followed, along with a trip to a Turkish factory, some self-directed coding and MonPurse was born.