Featuring Heidi, Founder of 'Heidonious' Sticker Shop

Photo Courtesy of Heidi

With an upbeat and optimistic mindset, Heidi shares her art by selling stickers. Heidi, a senior in high school, started her online shop towards the end of Dec. 2020. Her passion first kicked-off when she started creating cartoon-ish doodles for her friends— at the time, she was casually drawing with applications like SnapChat and MSPaint. After tastefully upgrading to Procreate, she soon began sharing her content online. Heidi goes by the nickname “Heidonious” on various social media platforms, including her Redbubble (a website where independent artists share their art to be printed on t-shirts, mugs, etc.) where she sells her designs; currently, her artwork is mainly advertised as stickers. She describes her published pieces as demo designs or “taste-palettes” that she can continue to build off of. You can find Heidonious’ shop here.

The start of Heidi’s journey as an entrepreneur started with Twitch and Discord. Like YouTube, Twitch is a popular site for content creators to share their hobbies through videos. Similarly, Discord is a messaging application that provides efficient ways for groups of people to share their similar interests. Heidi’s introduction into these communities allowed her to connect and share ideas with other independent artists, small businesses, and even professionals. Through this promotion of her art, Heidi began to carry out commission work around September of last year— specifically, she designed banners and emotes for use on Twitch. Along with this, the support she received motivated her to participate in various events and competitions. Heidi credits a lot of her growth to the support that these applications gave her— she states, "I’ve been able to bounce ideas off of them, and have been very fortunate to have so much advice provided to me." From this, she created a sturdy foundation of support for herself, and she ensures that any new entrepreneur will find the same comfort within their own community. 

Despite the encouragement, as a senior with school as a priority, time was the main struggle. As Heidi began to launch her brand, her fluctuating schedule hindered her improvements— she observed that regularly producing new content was difficult with school as a handicap. When addressing this obstacle from a student’s point of view, Heidi pivoted towards flexible clients so that she has the leniency to work on her own time while keeping her small business casual. On this account, she advises to find help when running a brand alone; maintaining the sections of a business (like marketing, advertising, and production) is easier as a team, especially when selling physical art. 

With no doubt, a website is fundamental to any business, even more so if their products are only accessible through the internet.  When choosing where to market and organize her art, Heidi opted to keep the mindset of “business isn’t all numbers,” which (in Heidi’s situation) means to focus more on the process of creating her art rather than the benefits or costs of money in her business— Redbubble’s sustainability and their focus on employee-friendliness was the choosing factor. Nonetheless, studying the financial perspective of a platform is necessary and an essential step when launching a virtual shop. For example, Redbubble does not cost extra to run a shop on their website, whereas platforms such as Etsy does— however, they do take a greater tax cut than Etsy. To Heidi, the tax cuts were not a deal breaker. Plus, when working with a platform like Redbubble, Heidi offsets the need to actually print out her work, as a matter of fact, uploading her products through this site makes her shop self-sufficient and manageable, which is a major benefit.

On the topic of growth, keeping up with popular trends when advertising products is a definite key factor.  For example, Heidi incorporates popular memes or styles into her doodles so that her designs can look appealing to youth audiences— this is a strategy that is extremely beneficial when working in a field of design. Something to pay even more attention to is the value of one's products; Heidi confidently expresses that staying humble with pricing “is not going to help you grow.” When running a small business, it is necessary for her to reflect her time, labor, planning, and materials into the prices of her content in order for her business to maintain stability. 

Clocking in around 90 sticker sales already, Heidi ambitiously hopes to improve her style of design for the future and expand her reach on different platforms. But for now, her plan is to continue setting small targets for herself with optimism while she approaches her goals. Modestly, Heidi still refers to her shop as a hobby rather than a business because starting this “side-project” means more than just monetary value to her. It has opened a door and has allowed her to express herself freely as an artist. This is not only a great method for any artist to develop an array of skills, but it also allows Heidi to share her creations, all while having the free choice of making any design she wants. Notably, these opportunities have truly exposed her to the value of her own art.  In the age of the coronavirus, online shopping has become a necessity for most people; watching movies, buying food, and even getting groceries have all adapted to the demand online. Starting businesses online has proven to be simple and effective— Heidi is a prime example of this process.