Kayleigh Ibarra opened her business 218 Design in April. She specializes hand-made custom shirts, vinyl decals, glass etchings and wood projects. For 5 Questions this week, the Grand Forks Herald spoke to her about it.
Q: Where did your love for design and crafts come from?
A: Well, I actually started with making sweets. I used to be a cake decorator, but we moved and then things changed, and I became a stay-at-home mom. I have a big desire for crafting, so to help our family income, I decided to get into shirts and tumblers.
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Q: What are some of the different things that you make?
A: I make sublimation shirts, and I’m getting into screen printing, but I also sublimate on tumblers and cutting boards and make detailed and hats and all kinds of other apparel and items.
Q: When did you decide you wanted to do this professionally?
A: Probably about two months ago, really. I'm brand new. I've been doing it as a hobby for about a year and a half, but I fully took the dive in about two months ago. COVID-19 sparked it, actually. Being stuck at home, I was going to get a license for daycare, and it didn't work out due to COVID-19 and a bunch of other things, and I finally had some money to get some better equipment, and things just went from there.
Q: What are some of the challenges you’ve faced while starting a small business during the COVID-19 pandemic?
A: Definitely resources are hard to come by. Shirts and things like that in the style I need are actually becoming really hard to find due to shipping and short staffs, and it’s all over the place. Also, I've got four children, so that made things difficult when we were going back and forth with distance learning. People are still scared, some people are still questioning getting things for new people. We try to follow all the guidelines when it comes to meeting, but the pandemic is made everything difficult for everyone.
Q: What should people know if they’re thinking about commissioning a custom design?
A: I try to keep the communication line open. I get an idea of what the customer wants, and I do a lot of the creations myself. I send you know send probes before going through with anything myself, and if there's any little changes that need to be made, I will happily do so. Right now, I'm starting to get into like a two- or three-week turnaround time.
