The following are real life events leading up to the creation of a small online ecommerce business known as Totally Woke Fashion.
It was June 2012 in the small city of Bristol, Virginia. A father and husband who worked fulltime as an Emergency Medical Technician for the local 911 Emergency Rescue Station in town was struggling to make ends meet. Working more than 40 hours a week on the local ambulance wasn't paying the bills and taking a part-time job wasn't going to happen since he was hardly home as it was.
Eric knew that he needed to find a way to make an income on the side without cutting into his already busy schedule. Searching through the internet one night he came across a website that offered him the possibility of earning a passive income selling products online without having to purchase any products or inventory to get started. All he had to do was create digital art designs to be sold on blank products that where offered by the website and advertise them on social media to generate sales. Skeptical, Eric decided to give it a try. He had already exhausted most of his possible job leads and had hit a dead end. It was time to try a different approach.
Eric, who has been a freehand artist since childhood but had never used photoshop programs before had hit another speed bump on his journey towards earning money online. He was now faced with the challenge of learning how to use the features of a digital art software that was totally alien to him. But after several weeks or YouTube tutorials and software workshops online he was now able to create simple art designs that could be used for his products that were to be sold on Zazzle.com.
Building an ecommerce store.
Not sure what the process was for creating a shop online or how hard it would be to set it all up, Eric began creating what would be his first ecommerce shop, titled: "Love Quotes Mall". The small ecommerce shop created and sold romantic quotes and digital photos and only had a about 30 items for sell at that time.
Family Disaster
Soon after creating the shop, Eric and his wife discovered they were going to be having a child. But just as the celebration of having a new member in the home began. It was cut short after learning that the child would be born with a heart condition that almost always ended in death. Over the course of 9 months of weekly doctor visits it was time to deliver their new child. But the only medical facility that was able to deliver the newborn was located about 5.5 hours away and was in the city of Nashville Tennessee. Finances where already tight and cash on hand just wasn't there for them to stay in a hotel during their visit to Nashville. So Eric and his wife were forced to sleep in the hospital when they could and the local Ronald McDonald house while their newborn child struggled to stay alive in the NICU ward for infants at the local hospital. After three and a half months their child had passed away due to heart complications and Eric and his wife were faced with a huge loss and major setback to their family. Needless to say that all intentions of earning an income online had been placed on hold and Eric and his wife had faced his worst nightmare in their lifetime.
The loss of another family member
During his struggles in Nashville, TN with his newborn child, Eric's mom had become ill with an artery disease and was now terminal. Just six months after laying his child to rest, Eric was faced with the loss of mother who had been his only parent since the age of 10 years old when his father passed away with lung cancer from working as a coal miner in the state of West Virginia for more than 38 years. Eric now had to lay his mother to rest in the same year as the passing of his child.
Stress in the home
Facing the loss of their child together and Eric facing the loss of his mother all in the same year of 2014 the air in the home was sometimes to hard to breath and even simple conversations between Eric and his wife would often turn in to full blown verbal fights between the couple, creating a void in their marriage that just couldn't be mended.
The Divorce
Just two months after the loss of his mother in October 2015 Eric and his wife came to the decision to split up and file for a divorce. Eric had now suffered the loss of his newborn child. The loss of his mother and now the loss of his marriage of 6 years all within a year and was now faced with the challenge of starting over alone and living in a $800 dollar a month camper rental in a local campground. Eric was forced to work for the campgrounds to earn his keep. Drinking had become his only escape from reality and Eric was struggling to believe that his life would ever return to normal.
New beginnings
After a year of living alone in his tiny camper, Eric finally had saved enough money and yearly income taxes to rent a house in Blountville, Tennessee where he learned to cope with his demons and met his new wife. Eric and his new wife were pregnant together and soon to have their first child together. Eric knew that he would need to provide a better income for his family. He and his wife made the decision to move to Fredericksburg, Virginia where employment wages where much higher in pay. Eric returned to work as an E.M.T and worked his way up the ladder quickly. In just under 9 months Eric had worked his way into the position of the company COO and was the acting Chief of two rescue stations.
Work related stress and the life changing medical emergency
Covid 19 had placed a new level of stress on Eric in his career that he had never navigated before. Always worried about the safety of his rescue crews and the safety of his own family at home the stress took a toll on Eric's own health as he struggled with a stomach ulcer that eventually landed him in the hospital receiving and emergency surgery to save his life. Eric's stomach ulcer had ruptured and Eric was bleeding out inside at a rapid pace. During surgery Eric passed away but was revived back to life by the surgical team as they operated to save his life.
New Disabilities
After returning home from the hospital, Eric spent the next six months laying in bed and sleeping most of his days trying to recover. The Doctors in charge of his health had told him that his recovery time would take a year at best. Eric and his family where currently living on his taxes that he had received and were faced with having to relocate before the money run out, to find a cheaper place that they could afford. Eric and his family were forced to move back to Bristol, Virginia where the cost of living was much cheaper to survive. Now no longer able to work. Eric's wife took on the role of being the new source of family income, cleaning rooms for a local hotel to make ends meets.
Refusing to lay down and quit
Now spending his days as a live at home father with his four year old son, Eric has revisited the idea of selling his digital art designs online to assist with the families living expenses.
As of December 3rd, 2022 the ecommerce shop Totally Woke Fashion was born and has built a small following on Facebook of a little over 2900 people. The ecommerce shop now has a little over 430 items for sell on the Zazzle.com platform. Eric hopes that his business will one day grow big enough to help ease his wife's burden of being the sole source of their small families income and to leave behind a ecommerce retail legacy that will continue to support his family long after his own passing.
And now you know what Zazzle means to me and my family.
What does Zazzle mean to you?
