We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Amanda Cil & Mercy Arias a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Amanda Cil, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

We believe that from the moment you are deciding to open a business you are taking a risk. No matter what your business is, you are taking a risk. And that is exactly what happened to us. We knew we wanted to start offering customizable items but we weren’t sure if they were going to sell or if people were going to accept it. We like to say that we took a leap of faith. It doesn’t get easier, ever. Every time we are launching a new item we are taking a risk and praying for the best. On the other hand, we always tell others that are trying to open a business to not give up. Don’t be afraid of failing. Don’t be scared by the risks you are going to take. It’s all part of the process. You always have a 50% chance of succeeding and if you don’t at least you have the experience on what not to do and avoid making the same mistake twice. Along with consistency. We always talk about consistency because it is very important. We are thankful for social media but we don’t work with the mentality of going viral. We work with the mentality of being consistent and doing it little by little and if you ever go viral, amazing, that can add to all the hard work you’ve been doing. Work on your craft and don’t ever be scared of the risks.

Amanda Cil, 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?

Ms. Cil Designs was born because of our love for personalized clothing and accessories. 2020 was a year to reinvent oneself because of the pandemic. During that difficult time, we had several ideas and we decided to try some luck with our custom pieces. Designing and creating was one of the things that kept us entertained and stress-free; and at that moment Ms. Cil Designs was conceived but not yet launched. We had started with our custom shirts as an add on to Amanda Cil Photos’ services to help little ones and their families have the full experience during their photo session or event. It took us two years to finally share our ideas with the rest of the world. Custom birthday shirts are a staple for any kid (and mom). Bringing them to life and seeing how happy entire families get leave us speechless every time. Fast forward to 2023 we are offering a wide variety of customizable items. We have available custom tumblers, keychains, phone covers, acrylic frames, ornaments, sippy cups, beach bags, and mugs. As a mother-daughter duo, we want to continue to bring happiness to others and enjoy their smiles. We still have several projects to develop, and we can only hope that our clients love them as much as we love making them.

For us, there is no better gift than a custom made gift that includes your name or a picture. The person receiving the gift would never forget it, even if it breaks with age, because you are gifting something very very special. And we always say working on a custom piece is team effort because our clients give us the raw idea and we have to develop a design that goes with that idea and they have to approve the design/s (there is a lot of back and forth to get the design to the client’s vision) before getting the item ready. We wouldn’t change the process of creating for the world. It can be really stressful, we’re not going to lie, but we wouldn’t change it. There is no better feeling in the world than seeing an idea come to life and being able to hold it between your hands.

We are excited and can’t wait to see what the future holds. We are beyond blessed to have the amazing clients we have that recommend us and continue to accept our products. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts!

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The most rewarding part of our job is our clients’ satisfaction. The ability to give them what they have been looking for and seeing them finally happy is just indescribable. But seeing them return is also pretty rewarding because it is their way of saying “you did amazing last time and I’m coming back for more” There are many rewarding things about creating, about or business in general. Seeing our clients use and wear our creations and be happy while doing it is just another level of happiness. We know we are blessed and we couldn’t be more thankful about it.

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

For us specifically, the road has had some little bumps along the way. When we decided to start the business, it was very scary. There is a lot of competition and the uncertainty of not knowing if people were going to like what we had to offer and that delayed the entire process of sharing our products with the world. We had to learn new skills and learn how to properly use new materials. We are talking about months of learning and developing new techniques to bring the best products we could. We are seeing results already which eases our tension a little bit. There’s a lot of people that focus only on the results, but we understand that the process to get to said results is equally important.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://mscildesigns.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ms.cil_designs/