We recently connected with Whitly Hamilton and have shared our conversation below.

Whitly, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.

Creative Crucian LLC offers Caribbean-inspired design to everyday stationery items, books, graphics and exquisite paper goods. When shopping for stationery items, you are drowned with neutral colors, common florals and designs you have seen before. Creative Crucian makes Caribbean culture fun, bold and accessible for everyday life.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

Creative Crucian began as my namesake professional design company. Upon expanding I took my digital designs and made them into physical Caribbean-inspired products for everyday use. Creative Crucian came to life when I was shopping for holiday wrapping paper. I saw the same designs being released continually, Santa Clause, snowflakes, Christmas trees, etc. While Christmas is one of my favorite holidays, I could not relate to most of the wrapping paper designs available, not only because the characters did not look like me, but also because I am from St. Croix, US Virgin Islands (located in the Caribbean) and our holiday season is completely different from the traditional American Christmas. I wanted to make the holidays relevant to my culture.

Madras is one of the most instantly recognizable fabrics in the Caribbean and I realized the bold colors of the madras fabric could easily replace the traditional Christmas plaid. I wanted my gifts to be wrapped in culture. In 2019 I released four exclusive madras wrapping paper designs which were very well received by customers. From there I had ideas to create greeting cards, stationery, and office products. One of my favorite stationery brands, Rifle Paper Company had also started out with just a few patterns/illustrations and is now a million-dollar business. I strive to create the same space for Caribbean-inspired designs.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

On August 18, 2021, began one of the most stressful times of my life. Just the week before I celebrated my birthday, I had released my first children’s book, Cooking with Kai, and pre-orders were going well.

My family had just enjoyed a fun day out at the botanical gardens when I noticed water coming through the floor in the kitchen…turns out we had a leak in our pipes that caused over 30k worth of damages to our house. Fun fact about being a homeowner, most home insurance does not cover plumbing, only repairs.

After many tears and back and forth with the insurance company, they put us in an extended-stay hotel for over 3 months. This was after living in our house with no running water for almost 2 weeks while we were sick with the first of many illnesses from my son who had just started daycare. After spending thousands of dollars to re-plumb our entire property, we had no money, and I had to forgo a much-needed medical procedure as well. I had also begun preorders for Cooking with Kai and had to decide if I should cancel and refund customers or try and make it work. I chose the latter.

I ran my business out of a plastic bin that I took with me between the hotel and our house. The hotel wasn’t ideal; our cooking, eating, family time, and my business had to all be run out of the same room. Two adults, 1 baby and 2 pets in such small living quarters got pretty chaotic.

Throw in several delays and supply chain issues due to covid, and our move-in date kept being pushed back until the insurance finally said they would no longer pay for our hotel…I could go on and on, but I’ll just say this. I am very grateful for my husband and my family and friends. I am super grateful to be back in our house where I can run my business how I want to, with 24-hour access to all of my equipment.

I will be forever grateful to everyone who placed a pre-order and gave me grace when I made mistakes. Creative Crucian means the world to me, and anyone that supports my dream has a special place in my heart. I’m proud to be in a much better place a year later with my new book, Magical Madras, available for pre-order and my host of new products offered in my shop. I am grateful for everyone who supported me during that difficult time.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I had to unlearn being humble. Growing up, and even now as an adult, being humble is often seen as a noble trait. But when you are trying to advance professionally or build a business being humble does more harm than good. For people to know about your skills, your business and what you have to offer you have to brag about yourself. You have to sell yourself and point out what makes you different, what makes you better than your competition. If not, you’ll go unrecognized. In business, you can’t just wait for an opportunity to fall into your lap. Sometimes that may happen but most of the time you have to put yourself out there so that people can learn about you, and in turn share your business with others.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.creativecrucian.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/creativecrucian/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/creativecrucian
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/creative-crucian/
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@creativecrucian

Image Credits
Portrait by Brenda Ojeda