Press & Media

“Kindness reveals itself most authentically when people aren’t looking,” says Alison Dalglish-Pottow, and her latest venture lends a great deal of truth to this statement. Amidst the commotion of our modern world, which is often pumped with a daily dose of bad news, Alison has been crafting a movement of positivity. She calls it, Angel Love.

The idea was first conceived by Alison, her friend and co-founder, Mimi Wood, and their two adolescent daughters while sitting in a patisserie in East Toronto. As they sipped hot chocolate and munched on cupcakes in a sliver of wonderland, they chatted about the state of the world beyond these magical walls, where the weight of negativity seemed to be deepening its pull on society’s well-being. They picked apart this moment of joy, thinking of ways in which they could extend it to others and perhaps, even slightly, ripple its force across the globe. All they needed, they soon realized, was one special ingredient: kindness. And so, Angel Love was born.

Angel Love is an e-commerce platform that maintains a mission of “spreading kindness through wearable, shareable, charitable products.” Their online store sells custom clothing and accessories that are ethically-sourced, high-quality and made in Canada, often in collaboration with local artisans. Each line of product that Angel Love creates is launched in partnership with an international charity, which sees 10 percent of net sales donated towards their cause.

“It’s kind of like how people say you wear your heart on your sleeve. Well, now you’re wearing your kindness on your sleeve, quite literally,” Alison says. “We’d like to activate a megaphone around the concept of kindness through this movement.”

Their latest product line was created in alliance with Heartmob, an organization that stands up to cyberbullying, and includes custom hoodies, graphic tees and semi-precious stone jewelry that was specifically crafted with rose quartz and hematite to attract good energy and repel the bad. Partnering with charitable organizations, Angel Love hopes to create an ecosystem of positive living, ensuring all of their products are manufactured, sold and bought under the guiding light of compassion.

As the company’s CEO, Alison has dedicated herself wholly to this venture. Her innate love for helping others is most likely a trait passed down from her parents, whom she describes as genuinely good humans. Growing up, she witnessed the importance of generosity and spent years working with a slew of charities, creative organizations, and even running her own successful, and entirely digital art gallery, called FPI Gallery, which was designed to help market local artists in an increasingly online world. In 2001, she was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal for her outstanding contributions to Canada.

Along with her Angel Love partners, Mimi Wood, who is also a Canadian realtor, and Jennifer Bassett, who runs a flourishing events company, Alison measures the success of this latest venture not by the number of products sold, but by the social impact the products have. “The products are a way of keeping our audience engaged,” she says. “But the movement is truly the lead in all of this.”

Alongside their custom products, Angel Love focuses on initiatives such as the #mankind Wall, which is a way to highlight “the good guys,” as Alison calls them, in a fairly female-centralized movement. “Why girls and women leading this? It’s not because men aren’t amazing too, and we try to provide that inclusive aspect for men with our #mankind campaign,” she says. “But we really wanted this to be a safe place for girls and women because really, girls and women are born, engrained from childhood and nurtured to be the leaders of emotional compassion and sensitivity.”

They also advocate for Angel Activism — the mere task of paying forward an act of kindness in the modern world — and are hoping to popularize this trend by translating their efforts to the digital world through a predominantly online presence and their unique brand hashtag, #WithKindness. “Why the words #WithKindness? Well, we lead with kindness, we click with kindness, we can eat with kindness, meditate with kindness, help with kindness — there are so many ways that you can live and function with kindness … The possibilities are truly endless.”

And Alison’s dreams don’t stop here. As this altruistic movement grows, she hopes that Angel Love can collect enough steam to eventually partner with A-list celebs and global companies that will help spread their mission of love. Her goal now is to recruit a squad of angels who will begin to flutter their own wings in every corner of the world.

“Kindness is the new cool. Let’s create a world that stands up for that,” she concludes. “Let’s be those champions of a kinder world.”