Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Rafael Matias. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Rafael, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

To be successful, first and foremost you need to have passion for what you do. I think that if the only motivation is money, we will burn out and never feel fulfilled. Some other ingredients need to be in the mix as well, like patience, knowledge, and integrity to what we do. Knowledge is important, as soon as we embark in a project we start to figure out that we might not know as much as we though about any given field. So keep educating ourself in our craft is instrumental.

Rafael, 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?

The idea for Arcani Studio came from a combination of three things I love – design, spirituality, and t-shirts. I am a graphic designer. I like more the creative side of design than the technical aspect. The idea of designing t-shirts didn’t come from me; my wife was the mastermind. One day she asked me why I didn’t design t-shirts and start a side business, I took it as a joke at first, but then the idea began to settle, and I started brainstorming and asked myself if I was creating a t-shirt business to who I was selling them too. And that’s when I got the idea of an esoteric/spiritual niche. I bought a heat press, a plotter, and a bunch of vinyl and started testing my designs. I liked them, and I think they provide people within that niche with garments they love and identify with.

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

As I mentioned before, we need to be patient and give the business time to grow and develop, and this process can feel so slow and frustrating. I thought that selling T-shirts was going to be an easy task. How hard could it be? Buy the best quality blanks that align with your audience, place a great design, and customize it. Everybody is going to love it! That might be the case, I can have compelling designs printed on beautiful shirts, but that doesn’t translate to automatic sales, which can be frustrating. We need the patience to grow our audience, initiative, and willingness to learn. Not having sales at first is hard, but we need to go through that process. Hardly anyone in the t-shirt business talks about that initial phase. There are a lot of YouTubers with channels dedicated to the t-shirt business, and most of them are very successful in the field, but hardly ever anyone talks about the initial grinding.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

Arcani Studio is a relatively new business adventure. We launched last fall season at the beginning of September. So there are still many things we’re figuring out when it comes to digital marketing our online store. In December, I started going local and reaching people around me in local markets. It is incredible how much I was missing. Starting locally was my best strategy to get the business to launch and begin having sales.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.arcanistudio.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/arcani_studio
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/arcanistudio
• Other: https://www.pinterest.com/arcanistudio

Image Credits
Rafael Matias