We’re Viv and Ami!
Friends for over 20 years. Business partners for 14 years
We started The Wishing Chair in 2012 because we loved beautiful things and wanted to make more of them. Ami came from corporate marketing. Viv from journalism. Neither of us had any business experience in retail. We started anyway.
First generation everything — founders, retailers, employers, business owners. We figured it out as we went, mostly by getting things wrong first. 14 years later, that's still largely the method.
A Thrifty, Bootstrapped Adventure in India
Building something in India is its own particular adventure. there's no rulebook. things that should work don't. Things that have no business working somehow do. You hold your plans loosely and you find the humour in it — or you go under.
We've always chosen the humour.
The balance we're still chasing, after all this time, is the magic and the math. the magic is why we started — the thing that makes someone walk into a store and feel something. The math is what keeps the lights on. you need both. we're getting better at the dance.
14 Years In
What we didn't expect was what 14 years would do to us. You learn what you actually want. What joy looks like when you're not performing it. Qhat success means to you specifically — not to anyone else.
We're in our 40s, running a real company with real people, and we find it all genuinely, embarrassingly precious. We say it out loud so we don't forget.
Reads & Feeds
Two things we enjoy the most are “our newsletter and the Viv & Ami Book Club.”
The Newsletter
The newsletter began as a COVID distraction, sharing our favorite internet finds. Now it’s a monthly curation of our day-to-day peccadilloes we like to share as women entrepreneurs.
We love the heaps of emails we receive in response to these, it keeps us connected and inspired.
The Book Club
The book club started to keep us accountable to read a book a month instead of just scrolling Insta or binge-watching Netflix. It’s now a cozy literary party for book lovers who share our passion for the written word.
Email us at vivandami@wishingchair.in if you want to be a part of either.
on our socials
More behind the scenes
If you'd like to see more of the in-between moments — the studio, the process, the books we're reading, the things we're noticing and the occasional chaos of building a creative business — you can find us on Instagram at @vivnami.