If you’ve followed the history of our small business, you may already know that Abby started making phone cases in the family garage! Our office space has come a long way since then, and we thought you might enjoy following the journey!
Small beginnings
Abby bought her first sublimation printer and heat press when she was a middle schooler, and she started making phone cases in the family garage. The setup was nothing fancy — just a workbench with a stool. And you can only imagine how HOT it got during the South Texas summer!
The process was scattered: we printed the designs inside at a desk in the kitchen, and heat pressed the cases in the garage. We would then package them on the dining room table and would make trips to the post office to mail completed orders to customers! Our inventory needs at this point were fairly small, so we kept our supplies sorted in bins in the garage.
Moving on up
Around the time that business started picking up, our family decided to move and had to put our house on the market. We couldn’t keep phone case supplies scattered throughout every room, so we found an office building where we could rent a private office. We moved operations to that office and had a great time decorating it abbyrose pink & gold!
Coincidentally, this office move was in spring 2020, just in time for the COVID-19 pandemic! We were able to keep abbyrose running in our office since it was a private space, and we spent many long days and late nights filling orders!
The office workspace was great — we bought our first desktop computer and had separate stations for printing, heat pressing and shipping orders. What we lacked, however, was STORAGE! Our inventory needs quickly outgrew our limited shelving and soon there were boxes everywhere!
You can see this first office space in a number of our TikToks & Reels:
Traveling office
One of the challenges of a small business is the inability to take time off! In our 24/7 world, business never stops — so when we take a vacation, we take the work with us! Our temporary office setup at our family vacation in Florida was the backdrop of one of our first viral TikToks!
Media studio
As our website grew, so did our need for high-quality images and media. Luckily, Abby’s brother, Zach, has just this skill set AND some room for a studio in his basement! Enter the Colorado-based abbyrose media studio! You may recognize the setup from this popular TikTok about a very elaborate ad we filmed or this one about all of the phone types we carry!
Back at home
After our family house sold, we moved into an apartment that had enough room for abbyrose to come back home. We set up the master bedroom as the office, along with some extra beds for visiting family! We were glad to not have the daily commute to the office any more, and we also gained much more room for inventory storage!
You can see this new home office space in several TikToks and Reels:
Off to college
In 2022, it was time to leave San Antonio! Abby was already at Texas Tech in Lubbock, and Aubrey was moving to Austin to attend the University of Texas for her junior year. The abbyrose office moved along with her! This is our current office in the second bedroom of her apartment — a little tighter space but still very convenient and functional!
Several of our TikToks & Reels feature this newest office space:
What’s next?
What’s next for abbyrose? We are thinking BIG! Aubrey will be graduating from college in 2023 and Abby in 2024, so we hope to be able to move operations to a larger warehouse space, and maybe open a retail storefront!