We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Emily and Chelsea. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Emily and Chelsea below.

Alright, Emily and Chelsea thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Are you happier as a business owner? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job?

We love being business owners. Does it have its tough moments? For sure. Late nights in the print shop scrambling to get an order finished, equipment malfunctions, issues with our wholesale providers, printing mess-ups on our end (hey, we’re still learning)… sometimes, those thoughts of having a “regular, 9-5 job” creep into our minds. Maybe it would be easier to just tackle the same routine tasks and projects on a daily basis that are given to us by the powers that be. Maybe that would be easier or more comfortable. More secure. Safer. However, with each new order that comes through, the positive feedback we receive from clients, and the support from our community, we’re quickly reminded that having our own creative freedom and being able to bring people’s designs and ideas to life make all the challenges worth it.

Emily and Chelsea, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Chelsea and I first met through CrossFit and quickly learned that we share a passion for design, especially regarding apparel. Also, doing CrossFit six days per week in North Carolina means we sweat through A LOT of t-shirts, so it only made sense to combine our love for fitness and unique apparel and create Cactus Designs Screen Printing & Apparel. We set up Chelsea’s garage to be our print shop, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s our second home at this point (well, I suppose it’s Chelsea’s “home home,” haha). So far, we love every part of the screen printing process, from meeting new clients and helping make their creative artwork come to life to pressing the ink onto the shirts- even when we have some mess-ups while we continue to learn and improve. We’re looking forward to printing more of our own designs for fans and followers of Cactus Designs and delivering high-quality products for our clients around the Fuquay Varina area.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

I first met Chelsea at a CrossFit gym in Fuquay. She was coaching the class I was taking as a newbie, so I was terrified, but she made the experience a fun and memorable one for me. Her knowledge of Olympic weightlifting and her ability to communicate to athletes how to best move their body to accomplish a task are unparalleled. I soon started drinking the Kool-Aid that is CrossFit, and whether she was coaching me or working out with me as a friend, we grew closer as the years went on. Now, outside of working out and printing shirts, our two families love going out to eat together, making unique cocktails, and just hanging out by the fire on a cool night (even though we don’t have many cool nights in NC).

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

One main challenge we’ve run into is the learning curve that comes with screen printing. Of course, since we’re both new to screen printing and are learning along the way through trial and error, we’ve had our fair share of issues when it comes to burning, exposing, and lining up screens on the press, but we know that these minor obstacles will only help us become better printers in the long-run. An added challenge is printing in a garage in North Carolina where one day, it’s 95 and humid, and the next, it’s 40 with zero moisture in the air! These changes in temperature and moisture can mean that some shirts might get burned if the dryer is too hot (which, unfortunately, has happened many times), while other shirts might not cure to the necessary temperature (which means the ink may wash out when the shirts go through the washer). Essentially, A LOT can go wrong during the screen printing process, which can be really stressful and frustrating as business owners. Through many headaches, we’ve learned how important it is to properly store and care for our products and equipment. We’ve also learned to give ourselves some grace and remember that we’re still learning and improving with each new order. Our customers’ happiness is our number one priority, so even if something goes wrong that we didn’t anticipate, it’s our job to make things right, and we’re dedicated to putting the best products out there.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.cactusdesigns.co
• Instagram: cactusdesignsnc