Meet the Shifters

The Pilots of Shift Retail Lab

By, Tony Ward

A person who works for Shift Retail Lab

Marieasha “Mee Mee” Little

Pre-Med undergrad and Shifter at Shift Retail Lab.

“Focus on your center. Find something or someone that inspires you daily that brings positivity to your life.”

Communications art major, President of the American Marketing Association and Shifter at Shift Retail Lab.

Where To Find Inspiration

By, Tony Ward

Being an entrepreneur is demanding. There are the daily struggles of life and adding, launching, and maintaining a business to the equation can seem like a lot. One thing that is essential for success is staying motivated and inspired. The most important thing is to find what inspires you.

Family

One of the most popular when it comes to inspiration has to be family. Julien Reininger , founder of “Jacked!” says that seeing his father who was a chef was one of his biggest inspirations and he knew that he wanted to be involved in food innovation.

Bri Williams , Founder of LoveLipLine says that she comes from a family of entrepreneurs and business owners. Having people around you that love you and push you to act on your ideas can be one of your greatest assets to ensure our designers could bring the team’s vision to life.

Helping Others

Helping others is another fuel source for your entrepreneurial spirit. Zaza Willis is the owner of 3000REALM, a brand that represents marginalized genders, sexualities, and races. The goal was for the consumers to have a brand that helps give their identity a voice and expression.

Mason Miles is an upcoming clothing designer that has started his brand “Dress for Yourself.” Mason describes the brand as clothing that gives people the confidence to wear what they like.

Curiosity

Curiosity is one thing all entrepreneurs have in common. That energy to find an answer pushes them to execute the ideas they have. All innovation starts from an idea and curiosity continuously pushes those ideas to become something great.

Past Shelfie, David Casey , had a curiosity for innovation and joined Shift to test his ideas and inventions.

Fail Fast, Fail Frequently, and Fail Forward

By, Bella Lubinskas

Failure is something that Shift seeks to celebrate. Failure is a way of showing that you’re brave enough to try and creative enough to continue attempting. It took two years for Thomas Edison to invent the light bulb. During this time, he made around 1000 prototypes in an attempt to make a perfect light bulb. However, When a reporter asked about his 1000 failures, he replied “I didn’t fail 1,000 times, the light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.”

We asked our Shelfies what failures they have experienced, and what they learned from them!

Have you experienced failure?

Yosef (Shelfie): Well, yes, a lot. I did in the packaging mostly. I had done all year’s worth of research before I started the LLC officially of finding the right compostable packaging. And I ordered a bunch of materials and they just filled in terms of the size, the performance, and all of that. So a lot of money went away, but I learned a lot from that overall time spent on it.

Raechel (Shifter): Working super hard at my business and kind of having that as like, any type of income for the summer. And that just didn’t happen. And I wasn’t necessarily disappointed because I knew that if I applied myself, it could have been much better. So I wouldn’t see it as a failure, but more so just like a learning curve.

Malique (Shelfie): So right now it’s more so like the initial start-up cost was a little bit more than what I thought it was. So labels trying out different packaging techniques and stuff like that. So right now it’s the balancing act of actually trying to keep revenue and stuff up to counterbalance some of those expenses that we had during the summer. But my time has been sort of like the biggest factor in limitations this semester.

Mason (Shelfie): When I first started, it was printon-demand, and I like drawing, so I just draw a design and put it on a shirt. And I did not the response I wanted. People were like, oh, this is corny. And then that drove me to work on my craft and create something that I could be proud of even more. And I wanted to prove those other people wrong. So it’s been a motivation for me to keep going and fail frequently.

Zachera (Shelfie): I would tell myself, keep going. Fail faster. Fail forward. I don’t know what I’m doing, I’m figuring it out. And because I’m figuring it out, I’m going to fail, I’m going to make mistakes. But if you try to circumvent that or avoid making mistakes, then you won’t go anywhere. You won’t make any traction. So my biggest advice to myself last year, six months ago, and even last month, fail faster. Just keep going. Fail faster, fail forward, and fail frequently.

Daisana (Shelfie):

Treat everything, any hard obstacle, like a speed bump and give yourself grace.

How did you overcome your failures?

Hope (Shelfie): I got a lot of feedback from my friends and family and then I would just try to make the next thing better and make sure all those mistakes that I had made were not present in my new product.