Charly Taylor embroiders her way to success
Many small creators have used this time at home to create their own small businesses, like Charly Taylor, freshman, and her small Etsy shop, Happy Hats Embroidery. Inspired by the boredom and extra time quarantine had brought to her, Taylor has been selling embroidered bucket hats for the past four months.
Embroidering all of her hats by hand, Taylor and her partner Annabelle York, freshman, decided to combine forces during the summer and also create their own designs for each individual hat. “I wanted to be able to feel like I was doing something productive and learn something new out of it so that I had a new skill to take with me,” Taylor said. “I wanted to learn how to run a business, along with learning new skills like contacting people. I learned how to embroider as well.”
However, Taylor and York have had to combat a number of new issues with the start of school. “Sometimes it’s kind of hard, because some of the designs take longer than others so I’ll have to like, try to finish my homework and then embroider. Sometimes I have to stay up late to finish an order,” York said.
Tegan Ballas became Happy Hats Embroidery’s first customer while she was scrolling on the Internet one day. “I found Charlie’s business when I was searching through TikTok one day and she had come up in my following, and I saw that she was a small business, not very recognized, so I decided to reach out to her and help her,” Ballas said.
Being a fan of Harry Styles herself, Ballas had decided to order one of Taylor’s common designs, the Navy Angel bucket hat. “A lot of things are very well made and very unique,” Ballas said. “All of them match the songs that go with it, and it’s really just cool to see how she kind of brings the songs by [Harry Styles] into a certain logo that didn’t have that logo before.”
While staying at home, Taylor and York have enjoyed being able to make time for themselves to continue finding the best ways to continue their small business. “COVID has given me more time to work on it and kind of work on myself in the way I run my shop,” Taylor said.
Before starting her company, Taylor wanted to create something with her free time. “I knew I wanted to do something with my time so I took months figuring out what I was good at and what I genuinely enjoy doing. I also took lots of time to make sure I researched everything, that way my customers would have the best products they could get,” Taylor said.
