Stickers can be found decorating the laptops and water bottles of college students everywhere. In quarantine, many of these students are finding themselves starting their own sticker businesses.
Senior Prasiddhi Jain has put her design abilities to good use with a new print and sticker business, The Printaholic.
Many students use these stickers as creative expression.
“I use stickers as a way to show things I like in a fun and colorful way,” first-year Winter Earnhardt said. "I use my laptop everywhere I go, so they’re great to have on it.”
Knowing your target audience is important when starting a small business, and Jain used her artistic abilities to create something they would both use themselves.
“I personally love stickers,” Jain said. “I love decorating my water bottle and my laptop, and I thought it would be something really cool to start off with.”
Quarantine boredom was the mother of invention for Jain. She said she began creating custom prints for people through Facebook after making a successful birthday gift for her mom.
“It kind of started with me drawing a picture for my mom’s birthday, just like of our family, and then over quarantine, I was pretty bored,” Jain said. “It kind of started as a custom prints shop, which is still kind of what I do. People can send me pictures and I can turn it into a custom print, a digital copy, and then send it back.”
Jain said she ended up on "small business TikTok" during quarantine, which gave her the idea to extend The Printaholic’s product base with stickers. She creates designs on her iPad, then uses a Cricut to print and cut the stickers out. She said it takes her about two hours to make a custom portrait print, and up to an hour and a half to make a sticker. Her general designs include popular phrases, flowers and Tar Heel icons, among many custom commissions.
