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

Alright, Meghan thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us 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.

I think when most people think of embroidery, the first thing that comes to mind is either extremely small-scale hand-stitched embroidery, or some massive unreachable online embroidery company. With Nerdhouse, our goal was to build a company that first and foremost people recognize as being collaborative and communicative.

A lot of people (myself included) have had a bad experience with the large-scale online embroidery ordering process, and the frustrations that go along with that process, i.e.: products being delivered that don’t look much like your original design, questions sent to online chatbots that never really get answered, etc. So when a client comes to us we want to ensure they’re feeling 100% listened to and comfortable before we start production on their project.

Along with keeping communication lines open, something else that sets Nerdhouse apart from most of the embroidery industry is that we do not have any minimum order requirements. Whether you want to get one special jacket embroidered, or 1,000 hats embroidered – we offer that flexibility to make it happen. This has also attracted clients with very specialized or creative projects to us, in part, because they can play around with styles, colors, and other ideas without needing to commit to a huge run of products.

Meghan, 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?

My partner Shea and I started Nerdhouse Inc during the Covid-19 pandemic. Shea had been drawing designs and getting them embroidered onto hats for a couple years, and the owner of that shop told us that we were in there so often we would save ourselves money by just buying an embroidery machine and making the hats ourselves…as long as we didn’t open up shop next door to him.

We took his advice and ran with it! Since we couldn’t leave the house much during the pandemic it was the perfect time to take a deep dive into the embroidery world and learn the ins and outs of our new machine. We originally had planned to keep the machine at our house (AKA – our 1 bedroom granny flat) and just make things for ourselves and close friends. Pretty quickly though, word spread about our new embroidery robot, and we found ourselves starting to make bigger and bigger runs of products for friends of friends and other local businesses.

Eventually, we got to be so busy that we needed a space outside of our granny flat. Since that first year, we’ve moved three times into consecutively larger spaces, and just this year we purchased a second embroidery machine and started training our first part-time employee.

Over the past 4 years, I think the moments that make the two of us most proud are when we see pure joy and excitement on a client’s face after seeing their art come to life through embroidery. Whether a client is getting an embroidered blanket for their newborn baby, made custom bandanas for their fiancé, or making a run of hats for their small-business opening – those moments are always super special. It’s pretty incredible to see what a difference a collaborative creative journey makes!

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

Never underestimate the power of word-of-mouth growth! We’ve gotten more business by asking our clients to spread the word/tell one other business owner they know about us than through any other marketing effort. Of course, making sure you look at SEO and staying active on social media is also incredibly important, but I think if you’ve given a client the best experience possible & asked for that referral – you almost always get it.

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

As I mentioned previously, we didn’t plan on this turning into our main business, but I’m really glad that Shea and I both were on the same page and gave the business the room it needed to grow. When we first started embroidering a few projects here and there for other people we both had other jobs. As those embroidery projects became more frequent, we realized one of us would have to put more full-time energy towards Nerdhouse Inc. My job was remote, so I could manage my time between both fairly easily, but Shea’s job was in-person, so he decided to leave and put that time towards the business.

We were both a bit wary of trusting that the business would continue to be successful and that embroidery requests would continue to come in as steadily as they had at first, but we took the leap of faith anyway. Now, we run Nerdhouse out of our office space in Del Mar, CA, it’s is full-time for both of us, and part-time for our first employee. Looking back, I can’t imagine it working out any other way!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.nerdhouseco.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/n_h_w_w/