Today we’d like to introduce you to Chanell Graves, Co-Owner of The Custom Stitch Houston.
Hi Chanell, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
The Custom Stitch Houston was started to help my husband and business partner, Barry Graves, create his own opportunities after suffering a life-changing injury. After a year-long recovery, he desired to work in the same capacity that he did before his accident but wasn’t able to. He talked about starting an embroidery business for years, so I decided to step out on faith and purchase an industrial 15-needle automatic embroidery machine. Embroidery is a skill, so we both decided to learn everything from start to finish. It took both of us months of training before we started marketing our business to potential customers.
In the beginning, our families were huge supporters. We mainly were marketing ourselves to our immediate friends, family, and social media. Our initial focus was custom embroidery orders for other small businesses, schools, teams, and organizations. As we continued to grow, I wanted to make clothing that I can wear on a daily basis. That led to our website being launched in March 2022, where we created clothing that you didn’t typically see in retail stores. Much of our clothing is ’90s inspired and black excellence. Another differentiator of our clothing is everything is embroidered. We realized quickly that embroidered clothing is a different look and feel.
Once we started the website, it was difficult to get people to buy into our brand because we were a new business. Also, the online pictures of our clothing, do not do our clothing justice. We knew if people could see, feel, and wear our brand, The Custom Stitch Houston would be a hit. We then decided to start participating in pop-up shops. Once we put our clothing in front people, our brand quickly grew and is still growing. We now participate in 2-3 pop ups per month all over the Houston and surrounding areas. In April of 2023, we became a vendor at the BLCK Market Retail Store in the Pearland Town Center. So, you can now purchase our top-selling apparel in person.
We have a large demand for custom embroidery orders, and clothing for our brand. We went from one embroidery machine to three to keep up. The best part of this journey so far is seeing my husband get back to himself. I would do all of this over again just for that reason.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Owning a business is not smooth at all, at least not for us. We not only have a learn many new skills with embroidery and everything that comes with owning a business, but we also have had some losses. We just take every loss as a learning opportunity to do better and make better decisions. We try not to let that discourage us on this journey. We have learned that not all business is good business, and it is ok to turn business away if it is not a good fit.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
There are several distinctions that set us apart from other custom apparel businesses. We specialize in custom embroidered apparel. When our customers see their logo or design embroidered, the quality cannot be matched. Not only do we provide custom embroidery services, but we also have an online store. Most of our designs are displays of our deep-rooted love of Black culture and of our hometown, Houston, TX. Making money is not our end game. We want our customers to love our work, and we work with our customers so they get exactly what they want. We took our time learning our machine, learning the digitizing process, and learning graphic design.
On the business side, I just use the same skills that I acquired working for other businesses and applied them to my business. We wanted to do everything the proper way, so we got the appropriate business licenses and searched for the best vendors for our products.
We’d love to hear about how you think about risk-taking.
I believe there is risk in every business. We take risk with any new pop-up market or festival that we decide to be a part of. We do our research on the potential customer base and the event organizers, but we still don’t know if each pop-up shop will be a success. What I have found is even when pop-ups are not success with the bottom line, sometimes the connections you make with the customers and other vendors are just as important.
We also take risk with each new shirt, hat, or bag design we come up with. Sometimes you just don’t know if people will like it or buy into it. As the years and months go by, we have a better understanding of what sells, but it is still all a risk.
Pricing:
- T-shirts range from $20.00-$40.00
- Hats & Beanies range from $20.00-$25.00
- Tote Bags range from $20.00-$25.00
- Hoodies range from $45.00-$70.00
- Letterman Jackets range from $110.00-$250.00
Contact Info:
- Website: www.thecustomstitchhouston.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/
thecustomstitchhouston - Facebook: www.facebook.com/
thecustomstitchhouston
Image Credits
Th3rd Eye Studios
