What is TheHumblStart? (THS)

What is The Humble Start you might be asking? Well first off, there is no "e" in humbl, it's TheHumblStart. It rolls off the tongue more easier and let's just face it, it's pretty cool. It all started on the day of March 12, 2023.

     TheHumblStart was founded by me, Dinushan Gunaratne (DG) a High-School Freshman Student. The idea of creating this brand came around not really by the typical way people come about making brands. I was sent a Facebook Reel by my dad about a guy explaining a lucrative side hustle to try out, it was to create some clothing designs on a website called printify, this website allowed you to make any type of POD (Print-on-demand) products. All you had to do was just make the design, and printify did the rest.

Now the part where the side hustle got you money was on Etsy. Etsy was the place to sell the Apparel and you would sync Printify onto Etsy and it would be an automated business that ran basically on its own and you didn't have to do anything except make the designs.

To give a background, I was always doing side hustles/finding ways to be wealthier than yesterday. As a younger tween and teenager I was trying affiliate marketing, teaching/training kids in martial arts, doing coaching lessons (Private Lessons), making money through graphic designing, chores, picking money off the floor, selling anything! I did YouTube animation videos under the channel name of "DoodleDG" then I started doing gaming videos and livestreams under "Doodle2G" and then towards the end I came across the infamous "FACEBOOK REEL!" that a side hustle could be "Easy" I fell for the trick and went into it because the Facebook Reel guy said that, "Anyone could do it!" I was determined that was ME!

So then I created the clothing brand as we all know it now as, "TheHumblStart" I decided to take away the e in humbl because it just looked better that way and was more unique. Then I mushed the whole 3 words together into one. The whole brand is about the Smiley Face, because at the time and to this day, I was always texting my family and friends with the colon and parentheses smile in every text even though emoji's existed. I was also just the type of person that if you were to just look at me at any second of the day, I was probably smiling for just no reason. I've always been such a positive and happy person. My mother and father raised me that way :)

TheHumblStart as a brand focuses on the ideology of Self-Improvement. To improve your life on a daily basis whether that's physically, mentally, socially, financially, spiritually, etc. there is so many ways you could improve your life in a positive way and that's self-improvement. I first came around to the idea of self improvement in the beginning of 2023 and I decided to take it seriously because I wanted to find a purpose in my life and find a way to retire my parents. When I was making one of the designs that's in the first edition designs, "I want to be him" the bottom right corner had the line that I made which says, "It only goes up from here!" that was the birth of the THS (thehumblstart) Slogan.

I thought this was foolproof! I made the price ranges for the clothing apparel, the profit split margins I would get and I thought I was making cash. Until I found out about fees. Because this was automated between Etsy and Printify, they were slowly taking my margins, more and more. I was just the middle man in-between that just managed to get the cash the was left behind and dropped on the floor for me as a pity. I was pretty much making negative cash because I was spending money on buying the sample clothes to promote the business and my profit margins were lessening from more fees. The problem was that if I increased the prices more than they already were, nobody would think that was a good deal, people were already hasty on buying because it was a steep price from the start and they weren't familiar with TheHumblStart! It was such a headache figuring all these fees and charges and legal aspects as a beginner business owner/entrepreneur.

I decided that I had enough of Etsy and I closed down TheHumblStart... Not Quite closed because I had this new found passion for clothing and fashion. I wasn't going to quit on this brand. 

This was the real official birth of TheHumblStart! Sophomore year rolled around and I wasn't playing around anymore, if I wanted to kick this business off into the right step, I needed to get the tools to make clothes, so I found a place with blank apparel and I found a machine to heat-press the clothes! put 2 and 2 together and you got yourself a very nice Humbl Start! :) <-- (You see I did the smiley face).

Because now I was the guy that was getting the prints and the clothes while also doing the labor to put the ingredients together to make the best clothing in the world, the prices were cheaper! The sales were coming through slowly and picking up a pace!

I've always had the idea lingering in the back of my mind that I need a place to officially have a store and make it a real grand opening to TheHumblStart! Then there was my recreational center in my hometown where they were having amusements, rides, games, food trucks, and vendors! Vendors? Maybe I should get into that... Manalapan Day 2024! That was where I was, spending months and months prior to the day of the event prepping to have a pop-up shop! This was a monumental day for the brand and really was a dream come true to make everything flesh out into the real world and have a REAL shop. 

Now? What's TheHumblStart doing? Well, we've been working tirelessly into this brand new Website and creating well crafted designs mixed with quality clothing to provide the best, for the best! Second Edition after First Edition?

Where can you keep up with the Humbl Journey? If you scroll down to the bottom right of the website, you can see all the socials that THS is a part of and you can keep updated with what's going on from there! So make sure to subscribe to our YouTube Channel, follow us on all social platforms to stay Humbl! and I hope you have any amazing rest of your day!

Thank you for reading this entire blog, my name is Dinushan Gunaratne, This is TheHumblStart!

"It Only Goes Up From Here!"