We recently connected with Erika Anderson and have shared our conversation below.

Erika, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?

WAYS is an acronym – Worry About Yo Self. My day job is a 911 Police Operator. All day I field calls for service where I have to remain calm and send help for those I need. As you might expect, many 911 calls are not at all emergency related. Many calls could be solved by minding one’s own business or as I like to say WAYS. Since I cannot express myself as I wanted during work hours, I created an outlet through WAYS Apparel. Our sassy t-shirts reminds us and others to WAYS.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Our sassy t-shirts reminds us and others to WAYS.

While snappy comebacks may be the main focus, we are a full service apparel company. We have made promotional apparel, t-shirts for events and family reunions. We set ourselves aside from the completion by offering customization. Like our design but not the colors? We allow complete customizations to make one’s design as unique as they are!

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

Before WAYS, I was not on social media. One beauty of social media is that it allows for people all over the globe to communicate. But to be profitable in this day and age, a business much have a social media presence. I had to learn all about social media algorithms and hash tags. It has been an uphill battle and I can still tell you that I am still learning. Word of mouth has been great but I am finding surprising success with online sales through social media accounts and Etsy.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

WAYS is still a side hustle for now but I have achieved way more than I thought I would. Hard work and networking has allowed me to become an approved vendor for a few business and cities and it has opened up many doors for WAYS.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.waysapparel.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/waysapparel
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/waysapparel
• Twitter: @waysdetroit