How Michele’s Unique Boutique Started
Hi Everyone, I hope you’ve been enjoying RUSEEN Reflective Apparels blogs! I want to share with you why I occasionally create customs items. There are multiple reasons I love creating custom reflective clothes. Hopefully you have seen some of them either on our Facebook, our daily deals page, or at an expo! If you know me, I’m sure you have also seen me wearing some of the items that I have made for myself.
I started creating custom items a couple years back because I wanted my personal shirts to be different than the shirts that I constantly see at work. I do love the shirts that we sell but once I’ve looked at them week after week it’s not what I really wanted to wear once I leave work. When I run, I do like to wear our reflective clothes, so I had to start creating my own designs to wear. I like my reflective clothing to be subtle, but also seen. I’m more of a graphic shirt person than wearing shirts with words on them. That’s why I tend to make the custom shirts with no words and simple reflective placed on the front and back of the shirt.
When we make shirts at work there is a lot of reflective that gets wasted. I didn’t like all of the waste even though we try and use as much of the reflective material as we can. We keep the scraps that we are able to use for a smaller graphics or even to make our RUSEEN’s that go on the back of the shirts. Still there is waste we are not able to use on our regular stock shirts. That’s where I come in, I save the reflective sometimes from the middle of letters like the center of the o or the middle of the e. I also cut out different shapes from larger reflective pieces that we can’t otherwise use. We also offer our reflective scraps as donation to race directors who host night races if anyone out there is interested! 😉
It’s always fun to switch up my day and not do the same thing. Here is a shirt that I just made for myself two weeks ago. I like it so much that I’ve just been wearing it around and haven’t even run in it yet.
RUSEEN’s Craft Night - Make Your Own Reflective Athletic Clothing
We have also done some “Make your own custom reflective gear nights” at RUSEEN Reflective Apparel. We advertise the event on Facebook, then the night of the event people either buy shirts from us to design or bring their own shirt. During this custom night the participants have the chance to do exactly what I do when I make custom shirts. Some of the people are way more creative than I am though. I’ve seen some great items made, it’s always a fun time! One boy who came before had such a good time he wanted to have a birthday party at our shop, he was so sweet. 😊
Variety is the spice of life, but seriously if I’m not feeling motivated to do desk work I’ll take a break and make a shirt quickly. It’s nice to switch up my daily routine and be creative. I can order in shirts that we don’t usually carry to make the custom reflective shirts. It gives me the chance to check out new items that maybe we should carry and gives me the opportunity to make one of a kind shirts. I make shirts that we will most likely never make again in a certain color or style.
I’m happy when I see that others are excited to buy something that I created. The items that I make take a lot more time to make than a shirt that we offer on our website. I know how much time and thought I’ve invested into each item and therefore that’s why I’m so happy when others seem to like the custom items. At the same time, I do get a little discouraged when no one seems interested in multiple custom items that I created. My style isn’t necessarily the same thing that others like, and I realize that. I wish I had more time to make custom items more regularly.
Daily Use For My Custom Reflective Apparel
When I make custom one of a kind items I like to add more reflective than we have on an average garment of ours. RUSEEN’s apparel still has more reflective than most other brands, even when other brands specifically label the item reflective. By using the left over reflective I can add more reflective to a garment and keep the cost down at the same time. I try to go above and beyond on the reflective, so much so during a night race one time there was a guy right behind me and he told me all my reflective was so bright I was making him dizzy. I think he was just a grumpy man. 😂 I want to make sure I’m visible if I’m out on an overcast day, or if I’m running in the dark or at dusk. I have even made myself a couple shirts that I wear out on the Harley. They are reflective and nice to be wearing if I end up staying out past dark, but the average person wouldn’t realize that it is reflective during the day.
I wear my reflective clothes any time of the day and for any activity. The apparel is comfortable and cute for sitting around the house, running, riding on a motorcycle, going out for lunch… I have an endless list. So please, if you haven’t seen any of our custom stuff before please check it out!
We are happy to make custom shirts for you, your group, or club. I guess the club shirts obviously wouldn’t be one of a kind, but still custom! I hope you all enjoy our custom items!