We recently started a small family business – UPLiiFF.com — We design, make, and ship our own custom shirts, hats, and bags.

WHY DID YOU START THIS BUSINESS?

1. Karen and Randall planted the seed. I had A LOT of fun helping them build out their brand and website. I remember when we came to the end of that project, I didn’t want to quit. I wanted to continue helping them and be a part of their business journey. Seeing them make their own product, distribute it out into the world, and watch it help people, heal people & provide hope…planted this strong desire in me to want to do something like that for the world.
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2. Every time I wear a bible scripture T-shirt or a shirt with a positive message, I get stopped in public. People ask if they can read it, or they ask me where did I get the shirt from. A week before I decided to start a business… I was in Ohio. I was walking into a grocery store. This older woman sitting in a car called me over. She wanted to read my shirt and asked me where could she get one. It was a no-brainer for me. I had been looking to start a business making our own product(s) and I felt like that was the call with our name on it! Ironically, A LOT of the skills I have picked up in life over the years have felt pointless at the time. However, today I’m putting those “pointless” skills to use in this business. It has saved us a TON of time and money!

HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH THE NAME UPLiiFF.
Well, the word “uplift” was taken.  After a couple of weeks of trying to find an available name, I decided to stay with my original idea of using “UpLift”. I played around with spelling it the way we pronounce it “UPLiiFF”.  Though the spelling is different, our mission is the same. Words are POWERFUL and they can either bring life or death (that T-shirt is available on our site by the way). Our mission is to uplift those around us. Those who buy and wear our shirts, help propagate that mission in various parts of the world. I’ll put it this way. We’re spreading the love one t-shirt at a time!

WHAT’S NEXT
The hardest part was starting! When I’m executing an idea like starting a business,  I move quickly. I’ve learned in business that if you’re going to fail…fail fast! Don’t drag it out. So in the beginning, I do everything quickly and as thoroughly as possible to get up and running. That kind of makes things harder, but it keeps things moving forward at a good pace. Now that we have our wheels spinning, and have a little bit of a grip on the operations side…we’re now perfecting things. We’re slowly scaling up to the big picture. We just launched our breast cancer shirts and we’re now working on a handful of new designs. We’re looking to start pushing out Hats and Hoodies within the next month and if GOD is willing…we’ll continue scaling up from there!

This has been an overwhelming journey in a good way. We didn’t expect to get as many orders as we did on our first day of launch. There was one night I was up till 5:30 am making shirts and packaging orders. To be honest, even though it has been A LOT of work, it’s been fun! We’re learning so much on this journey and putting something back into the world with the intent to “UPLiiFF” people. To be honest. That feels good!

ANY LAST WORDS
Thank you sooooooooooooo much to everyone who has supported us, spread the word about us, and purchased from us. We’ve experienced nothing but love and that is MUCH appreciated!