We had the good fortune of connecting with Sumita & Anuj Patel and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Sumita & Anuj, do you have a favorite quote or affirmation?
You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want. – Zig Ziglar. In a competitive industry, its very easy to abandon the mindset of community over competition. We are passionate about helping other small businesses find success and it is our way of giving back to our community, without worrying about adding more competition. We feel blessed to have grown our business to a level of success that we only dreamed about and we want others to feel inspired from our story and apply it to their own business models.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
We got married about five years ago and have worked corporate jobs since 2014 – I am an attorney and my husband is in sales. We had no plan to start a business but when we started posting some of the things we crafted on social media, we started to get a lot of requests for orders! Since we weren’t anticipating to launch into a full-blown business, before we knew it, we were meeting folks at the parking lot of a Whole Foods and had customers lined up to pick up their orders. That’s when we knew we were onto something – from there, we started our social media pages, built our own website, and grew our business organically over the last two years. What started as a local business has now blossomed and we have shipped our custom made items to all 50 states + Canada! I think what we are most proud of though is our flagship product, the stamped book set. We create these stamped book sets by using re-purposed books that would have otherwise been discarded – we purchase these old books from local libraries so that the money we spend there is then used to fund their programs for children and adults. We have successfully saved over 10,000 books from being discarded! Books with a Purpose is how we like to think of it!

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
We are such proud atlanta suburbanians, haha! We would start the weekend off with drinks + dinner at the Avalon – so many amazing spots to check out there like Cru Wine Bar, Cafe Intermezzo, Antico Pizza, + The Hotel Avalon (talk about a dreamy lobby bar!). The next morning we would definitely head to City Center Alpharetta for brunch and a mimosa – it’s open container so you can actually grab a drink to go and walk around while boutique shopping! We would end the evening by grabbing some yummy Mexican food at Halcyon and ending the evening with a fun popsicle from PopBar!

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Our family has been instrumental in helping us build our business – the very first set of books we ever stamped were for my sister and after seeing our work, she encouraged us to start selling them. Without that encouragement, we may have never even started our business! The rest of our family is also very supportive – during the busy season, you can find them in our studio space helping us process orders, package boxes, and making post office runs for us! We couldn’t do it without their support!

Website: www.homeboundcustomdecor.com

Instagram: @homeboundcustomdecor

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