Meet Dana Jr. & Erica Holmes | Owners, Artists, Printers, Marketers

We had the good fortune of connecting with Dana Jr. & Erica Holmes and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Dana Jr. & Erica, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
Sleepy Owl LLC was created in 2013, when we saw screen printing as a way to incorporate artistic passions with a business that could generate revenue with potential to grow. As a young couple with musical and art centered hobbies, we decided to learn screen printing in order to keep the cost of our merchandise to a minimum and provide a service for others we knew who needed print work done. We created a business plan that starting with using our tax return money to fund the start up cost and create our LLC, working out of our home to bring our ideas to life.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
While Sleepy Owl LLC was initially started as a way to print our own band merchandise and personal projects while taking in custom orders to support the cost of operations and expand our range of abilities, Sleepy Owl evolved into its own brand that represents our styles and interests. Our designs and clothing are heavily influenced by Dana’s love of Nike SBs, skate apparel, and the skate community. The name Sleepy Owl came from our idea to start this business while still maintaining our personal careers which meant we worked a lot of really late hours printing orders and building our brand, taking inspiration from the power and wisdom the owl represents with our night owl hours of operation. It takes a lot of time and dedication to start a business in spare time but we are proud of the commitment to keep creating new pieces and grow. As a married couple, working together professionally with challenges such as deadlines and the ever growing to-do list can be heavy at times, but focusing on the positives of creating something tangible from an idea is very rewarding. We strive for our brand to be all-inclusive and promote a positive message while doing something we enjoy. It is always exciting to see people wearing our apparel and representing our brand, and we hope to keep evolving to one day have a storefront and eventually work for ourselves only.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
If we had visitors from out of town there is lot of good food we would share with them: Planted Soul, Soul Vegetarian, Grindhouse Killer Burgers, Sublime Donuts, Jeni’s Ice Creams. We would also check out the High Museum, Atlanta Botanical Garden, take a walk along the Beltline, hang out around Little 5 Points, see what shows are in town and catch a ball game.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Sleepy Owl has been successful due to the support of our family, friends, and coworkers who have helped us grow our brand from purchasing our apparel to modeling for photoshoots, and using our business for custom projects. Their dedication to our vision has helped the business progress to where we are today.

Website: https://www.sleepyowlllc.com

Instagram: sleepyowldesigns

Twitter: SleepyOwl5

Image Credits
Dana & Erica Holmes