We were lucky to catch up with Amy & Jesse Quiroz recently and have shared our conversation below.

Amy & Jesse, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?

Taking risk….. This seems to be in any aspect of being a small business owner, right? Like most entrepreneurs/small business owners, there is always that assessment of whether you take the risk. For us, it all started out with my procrastination of what to get my wife for Christmas. I knew that she had a love for crafting, so I quickly jumped on Amazon and bought her a Cricut. She started using it to make what she called unwelcome mats. And to make the templates, she was using the Cricut. This is where our first risk came about. Amy wanted to expand and sell these mats at our local farmers’ market. Amy took the risk and paid for the vendor fee purchased supplies like tents and tables for our booth.

We really didn’t know what we were doing at the time, except that it was in a direction that we eventually wanted to move forward in. We dabbled in several products during our time at the markets but nothing really stuck with us like shirts did. Amy went to school for Graphic design, which allowed us to use our creativity and put out products that we enjoyed making. We had lots of success at the farmers’ market. This led us to think about making it a true business from what at the time was just a hobby.

That’s where the biggest risk came about, we went all the correct routes to get LLC’d and our Tax IDs. It was official, we were a small business. We worked out of our home for several months, but as business picked up, we knew we needed to separate our home life and work lives. At this time, we weren’t sure about opening a storefront or what we needed to. Invest, would it be worth it to have enough business to support having a storefront and extra overhead?

This again has us taking a risk and investment on ourselves and our business; we jump in with both feet and lease a storefront. It was probably the best decision we made. We now had a place for our customers to stop by and order or pick up orders. This same risk hit us once more late last year. We outgrew our store, and thankfully, there was another storefront on the same block, just 2 doors down, that opened up. We decided to move our lease to that building even though the rent was twice as much. We couldnt pass on the location, it was a corner unit right on our downtown streets. This has provided us with more foot traffic and in turn more business.

Being a small business owner comes with a lot of risk, but turning these into calculated risks is how you defeat the fear and uncertainty feelings.

Amy & Jesse, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

We started with just a Cricut, and it has evolved from there. We initially started with welcome mats, We now offer custom apparel as well as stickers and vinyl decals.

We are most proud of the work we get to do with our local communities, we are able to offer prices low enough that our sports programs can offer our shirts for sale and receive a kickback.

How’d you meet your business partner?

I’m married to my business partner, I’ve run a business prior, and that was cell phone repairs, but this time it’s my wife and I running QT Designs. Our daughter works for us, and the two younger kids help around the shop too. It’s truly a family-run business.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I’ve had to learn to say no, I’m the type that wants to try to take on all projects. I like to be able to help people This has put me in some tight spots for deadlines. Now I give an honest estimate on when I get the products delivered to our customers.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.qt-designs.com
• Instagram: qtdesignsllc
• Facebook: Qt Designs