When her hobby of crocheting led to her home becoming cluttered, Daisy Hernandez decided to create Stitches & Beads Co. to sell her homemade crafts through pop-up shops based in Columbia.
Crochet was a hobby Hernandez picked up from her grandma at the age of 14, but she had given up on it until she began to struggle with her mental health. During tough times, she needed to find an outlet.
“I was like, ‘What can I do that will, like, get me into my creative outlet?’” Hernandez said. “Like, ‘What can I do to just get out of this funk?’ So I started crocheting.”
As she continued to crochet, Hernandez began researching what to do with the surplus of items she had created. Eventually, with the help of the internet and social media, Hernandez fell in love with the idea of a traveling pop-up shop. She found it a better fit to spread her love for creating and enjoying crochet items rather than crafting solely for her own consumption.
Starting up her pop-up shop journey wasn’t easy. Hernandez recalls that her debut pop-up at the Heritage Festival and Craft Show was expensive and challenging, primarily because she hadn’t known what to expect.
“It was, like, a big learning curve, but the more I got into it, the more I knew what to do and what not to do,” Hernandez said.
Hernandez learned to utilize Instagram and Facebook to keep her customers engaged and informed about future events. Through working on marketing her brand and finding her target audience, she got into the flow of owning and running a small business. Now, she reaps the benefits she’d been in search of when she initially began this adventure.
“I love making people happy, and I love seeing, like, the smile that they get on their faces,” Hernandez said. “It’s the same smile that I get when I, like, finish a project. I’m like, ‘Okay, if I can make people happy, I’m going to keep doing this.’”
What started as a means of getting out of a depressive funk turned into something so much more fulfilling. Hernandez continues to crochet to liberate her life while also uplifting the lives of her customers.
