By: Jacob Justice
In a home garage, you would expect to see things like tools, cars, and maybe even lawn equipment. However, for Eddrey Molina, Thuan Nyugen, and Salman “Koja” Aldhuafairi, their garage is filled with sewing machines, printing presses, ink canisters, and shelves filled with T-shirts. This is because the garage serves as home base for these three young men to create, advertise, and distribute clothing for their own unique brands.
Salman “Koja” Aldhuafairi is the founder and owner of Koja’s Print Shop. It is an online business that Aldhuafairi says he began in high school, where he specializes in creating t-shirts and hoodies with unique graphic designs.
“I like the old vintage graphics, and that’s what I do most of the time.” Aldhuafairi said, “I do like a lot of soccer designs, and I recently got into, like, basketball, doing a lot of old vintage graphics, a lot of things of that sort.”
However, he is not the only one utilizing the garage for creativity. Eddrey Molina uses the garage to create designs for his own brand, Art Diary. He says that his brand specializes in hats and flannels, with a vision to create street fashion that is affordable for everybody.
“Since I was a kid, I’ve always liked clothes,” Molina said, “so I am into fashion a lot, right? But clothes are actually really expensive. Like, I don’t know why guy clothes are so expensive. In my head I was like, why don’t I just create my own clothing line? And then I’ll have all the clothes that I want.”
Through the growth of their businesses, these entrepreneurs have learned valuable skills in the world of business management. Thann Nyugen, the owner of Ethereal Desires, says his hands-on experience in the clothing business allowed him to not only create custom garments but also manage supply and demand.
“I taught myself how to sew, how to be how to, like, make garments from scratch.” Nyugen said. “I’ve taught myself how to, invest my money correctly, how to invest it in a way where the margins are right and my brain’s profit in a way so I could put it back into my brand and for it to grow, learning how to manage a business or stuff like that.”
As their brands continue to grow, their advice to young entrepreneurs is to always continue to try. As Salman “Koja” Aldhuafairi puts it, “you never know”.
“Honestly, you never know what works until you try it. You got to put something out and see how the market reacts, because everybody thinks they have great ideas are all and they’ll talk themselves out of it, or they think they have a good idea and it’s a bad idea to think you have a bad idea. It might be a good idea. You never know until you put it out onto the market and see how they react to it.”
To catch up with these businesses and order some of their products yourself, you can follow them at https://kojasprintshop.com/, https://artdiary.store/ and https://soldout.com/?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAaeXXpaNI1mDO3Uy9xVZEc70ECivVGLDJ3gDJ8e0x1mZjsn1PEExANM_B5XGiw_aem_K8Xhq3aCdknenYUT0Gzdtg
You can also follow them on instagram @kojasprintshop, @artdiary_clothing, and @etherealxdesires.