Jenny Campbell of Benbecula’s Culla Creative business idea came from a gap she found in her own wardrobe! As a family business, they’ve progressed well in their endeavour.

‘I always wanted a T shirt with the water tower on it. Now I have loads – and same with passing places as well, the diamond passing place specifically.’

As well as noticing what was missing from her own wardrobe, Jenny noticed that it was difficult to get local t-shirts as gifts for friends. From this, her and her husband Matt got to work and started creating their new local fashion range. As soon as they found a t-shirt supplier, the couple started designing their local merch featuring the Benbecula water tower, otters crossing, passing places, and our island arpeggio. The first order was made for a load of new T-shirts in 2019.

As Culla Creative did their research, they made the decision that they wanted a high quality, ethically made product that wouldn’t fall apart in the wash after a few wears.

‘We found a company in Glasgow that do a variety of T-shirts. We found these earth positive ones and they’re carbon neutral. The factories that make them use renewable energy for all their offices and they have very green ethics. I’m quite conscious of filling the planet up with rubbish and I don’t want to do that with the business. I thought that they were great and their fabrics are really nice. 

Matt is the designer out of the two of us. He got himself one of these drawing tablet things a few years ago. So, I was like, ‘well, you spent lots of money on that. What are you going to do with it? We need to make some money out of it.

 

Suddenly, he got really into drawing, then started doing digital drawings and did a few designs. We basically wanted to make T-shirts that we wanted ourselves.’

The Glaswegian company which Culla Creative orders from do good quality screen printing which the couple send their designs to. However they do have a minimum order of 24 units per design which, at the moment, prevents them from doing one-off designs. They have thought about buying their own printer in the future.

‘The cheapest printer that I’ve seen is about £3000. We don’t want to get a rubbish one, obviously, but they look quite promising for the print quality.

We want to probably add a few more designs, but at the moment it’s a bit harder since we don’t do a print on demand service. It’s difficult because we have to hold the stock ourselves and you only have a certain amount of space. 

Ordering from Glasgow is a lot easier to provide products at a lower price. Because the T-shirts that we get are good quality. Having our own printer would increase the workload significantly, and rise the price of our products.‘

The Culla Creative Couple have thought about getting a unit to work from the future, which could work for both the T-shirt business and Jenny’s separate photography business, Clickybox.

 

‘I contemplated setting up a little studio type thing, but obviously these are just pie in the sky ideas at the moment.

 

When we started this business, we were very lucky to get a loan from my dad to buy our first batch of T-shirts, which we then paid back as soon as we could.’

Jenny and her young family moved back home after education and spending some time in Newcastle. From their time at home they’ve had great support from their family and local community.

‘It’s amazing to be back home. I never really appreciated it when I was younger, but here we are! The amount of support that you have from people, especially local people is great. People think about you when they want stuff done for their business. I think that being part of a smaller community makes it easier to be seen for what you do. If you’re in a city, you would have a lot more people who do the same thing as you or who charge less than you.‘

Lastly, it’s important to remember that a lot of people work very hard in the background for various arts mediums. Whether it’s T-shirt making, photography, music, or visual art,  for many its a full time job. 

‘For some, working in the arts is a bit of a hobby. It’s just a bit of extra pocket money, when they’re not putting any value on the work that they’re actually having to do. Although they’re doing it for a bit of fun, it’s actually putting other people’s businesses in jeopardy, then people think that the value of their work is overpriced, when in reality it’s absolutely not. 

We want to celebrate this place and we want to make good quality products for people.‘

As well as T-shirt, Culla Creative products have grown offering bags, mugs, and artwork.  Please check out this link for your Christmas shopping. cullacreative.co.uk