Liberty screen printer brings Hustle + Heart in the face of early-stage failure
March 20, 2019 | Elyssa Bezner
Liberty-based apparel company Hustle + Heart wouldn’t have found success without failure, said Serena Kotalik.
“[You should] never give up whether you’re starting a business like mine or any other,” said Kotalik, founder of the primarily wholesale, online company, which sells many of its wares through a VIP Facebook group. “With each [failure] I have learned [from it] and gotten past it.”
Hustle + Heart took on many forms before landing on the correct one, she explained, with the store evolving from an Etsy-based brand selling phone cases, to screen-printed graphic tees, to finally, its wholesale and Facebook sales structure.
Click here to request to join the VIP Facebook group.
“I’ve taught myself everything that I could possibly figure out how to do,” Kotalik said. “I read books, I watched webinars, and I read blogs about this entire process until I knew exactly what it was and what equipment I needed.”
The switch to wholesale came in response to competitors copying the store’s original designs as well as a dizzying influx of custom orders, she added.
“Now I can have the boutique owners join my Facebook group and then they can comment [on posts] or order or message me to say what they want and that way they can all have an area where [specific people] can see all my designs,” she said.
Click here to learn more or shop Hustle + Heart.
“My brain is not like the normal person,” laughed Kotalik. “I love the fact that I get to be creative every single day. I constantly think about work and I’m so excited to wake up the next morning because I am just so pumped. That’s what drives me. My days just fly by so fast because I love what I do.”
While running a standard online boutique of her own remains a dream, the wholesale aspect of the business already consumes so much time, said Kotalik.
“I can’t add another business to my life right now,” she said.
2019 Startups to Watch
stats here
Related Posts on Startland News
Need for speed: Mozilla awards $101K to local gigabit projects
The Mozilla Gigabit Community Fund announced it will award a total of $101,000 to fund six local projects that use gigabit technology to impact learning. The Gigabit Community Fund is a national partnership between the National Science Foundation, US Ignite and Mozilla. Locally, the fund partners with KC Digital Drive, whose goal is to leverage…
Firebrand Ventures joins $6.85M round in Des Moines startup
Continuing a streak of investments, Kansas City-based Firebrand Ventures joined a sizable investment in an Iowa-based payments processing startup. Firebrand joined six other venture funds in a $6.85 million funding round in Des Moines-based Dwolla, which builds applications that facilitate bank transfers, manages customers and verifies bank accounts. The round was led by Union Square…
Challenging the notion of ‘entitled millennials,’ Rise Fast empowers young people
When the economy took a turn for the worst in 2008, many millennials saw their parents and grandparents laid off by companies they’d been loyal to for years. Eze Redwood said that although it’s easy to gloss over the impact that traumatic events have on a generation’s psyche, young professionals carry the weight of this…
As engagement grows, KC Women in Technology gears up for 2017
Imagine if the next Mark Zuckerberg was a young female living in Kansas City. Despite an interest and aptitude in technology, imagine she walks into a popular clothing store and seeing a shirt that reads: “I’m too pretty to do math.” Subliminal messages such as this are not an uncommon occurrence for many young women.…