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The Lowery Lowdown

A Lifestyle Blog By Shelby Miske

Why I love 4th of July??

July 4, 2019

4th of July has always been one of my favorite holidays. Not only is it a great day to stop and remember how darn lucky I am to live in America, but has a few other special meanings to me as well.

First, it reminds me of family. Growing up in a small town, the 4th of July parade and fireworks at night were BIG deals. I remember walking in or watching the parade every year with my family. One year when my mom owned her flower shop, we wore homemade red white and blue tie dye tanks and handed out red and white carnations. At night we either watched fireworks at my cousins house or had people over our house to watch, while enjoying my moms American flag cheesecake pie. 4th of July was always a good reason to get the family together and have a good time!

Second, it reminds me of my friends. As I got older, I spent a few 4th of July’s at the Jersey shore and it was always the best day of the summer. Something about grilling, drinking, and wearing patriotic colors always meant the best time. Cue the USA chants.

Third, our business was founded on 4th of July party tanks! United monograms wouldn’t exist if we didn’t start with United Tees and our patriotic shirts. 4th of July has always been our second busiest holiday! We always work out butts off the days leading up to get all of the orders out and delivered on time, then celebrate extra hard on the 4th!

Lastly, it is part of me and Sean’s love story! We got engaged on July 4th 2017. It was a very hot 4th of July when Sean sweaty and nervously got down on one knee. It was my favorite 4th of July by far!

4th of July will always be a special holiday for us! I hope everyone has a fun and safe holiday. God bless America!??

Xoxo, Shelby

2,519 Comments CATEGORIES - Life

5 Reasons to Celebrate The Small Wins

June 12, 2019

Shelby Miske United Monograms

This past weekend United Monograms reached another milestone - 100K followers on Instagram! To celebrate, we got some balloons and a fun cake - took some cute photos and enjoyed the cake with our team.  As a business account, 100K may not seem like the biggest thing, but I’ve learned over the years it is so important to celebrate the small victories! We work so hard to achieve our big goals, we need to stop and celebrate the small wins along the way.  Whether they are business or personal goals - it is so important. Today I’m sharing 5 reasons to celebrate ALL the small wins. 

  1. It makes you feel proud!  If you are like me, you don’t like to boast about yourself often. I don’t like being cocky or over-confident but I’ve learned over the past few years it’s totally fine and necessary to say “I’m proud of myself” every once in awhile.  Be proud of your accomplishments and share them with pride! I’m so proud of our team! 
  2. It allows you to look back and reflect on everything it took to get to this milestone. It has been quite the Instagram journey. Not only has our business changed a little, Instagram is always changing as well. I remember starting our business account and being excited when we reached 1000 followers! Here’s a look at some of our first posts. (Haha big gossip girl and bows guy over here) I will write another blog post in the future about growing an IG account, but consistency is key. 
  3. It builds your confidence. It makes you feel good about yourself! We are so hard on ourselves. I’m sure in the past week you’ve gotten down on yourself for something you didn’t accomplish, but have you patted yourself on the back for something small you HAVE accomplished?  Start celebrating yourself more, and your confidence will grow!
  4. It motivates you to keep going. It pumps you up! As Sean would say, “Let’s f*%!ing goooo!” After you stop to celebrate for a moment, it’s time to start planning for the next goal or milestone. 
  5. You deserve it! As I’ve said in the previous reasons, you need to celebrate YOU and your accomplishments. You deserve to celebrate. What’s the point of working hard to achieve goals if you don’t celebrate them?! You deserve some cake. You deserve a mani/pedi. You deserve a cocktail. Treat yourself when you achieve your goals! 

“The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.” – Oprah

XOXO, Shelby

100K Followers UM
IMG_7675

Shirt: United monograms 

Skirt: Free People

Balloons: Cannonborough Collective

Earrings: Tiny Tassel 

5 Comments CATEGORIES - Business, Life

How We Started United Monograms

April 2, 2019

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The path to this company didn’t start with Monograms. It’s safe to say that Monograms found us in a way.

Where to begin?!  I graduated college in 2011 with an Elementary Education degree.  I was never really passionate about teaching - it was just something I thought I would enjoy and be good at.  I knew deep down teaching was not going to be what I did for the rest of my life. During my first years as a kindergarten teacher in Philadelphia, I started helping Sean with his early business endeavors. He was having some early success selling tees & tanks to different audiences he was building through social media. Twitter was HUGE at the time and he had a few growing accounts of 20-50k followers where he would sell.  (Back when your followers actually saw what you posted and advertising was FREE!) He had enough success to start working on the business full time. It was really cool to see how social media had such a large impact on a small business, and that was only the beginning of the social media craze. Our first main business was called United Tees.

I started helping in many different ways - most of all bringing a girl’s perspective & adding ladies designs and shirts to the websites.  We spent most of our nights and weekends learning how to use Photoshop, Shopify (our selling platform), and the ins and outs of starting a business (& still learning every day!) One of our audiences was American Pride themed, and welcomed a very country/southern audience.  This is where monograms come into play! Many of the female customers would ask us “Can I get a monogram on this?” To be honest, I really didn’t know what a monogram was. Being from the north, they weren’t really a thing. I remember seeing an engraved jewelry dish my friend had from her sister's wedding and I was always confused why the initials were in the wrong order!  It is funny to think about being monograms are my whole life now. Through some research, we discovered that monograms were worth a try. I convinced Sean to get me a $500 at home embroidery machine. Through lots of patience, and many youtube videos, I learned how to work the embroidery machine.

I was so pumped when I made my first successful embroidered monogram sweatshirt!  It was a grey quarter zip sweatshirt with neon pink thread (STILL one of our best selling products!)  I soon wanted to monogram anything and everything. We started to notice how popular monograms were (especially in the south & east coast). It was like a whole world existed we never knew about.  There weren’t too many monogram companies focusing on their direct selling through e-commerce, only smaller mom & pop shops. First we created a ‘Monogram’ section on United Tees and a store on Etsy.

 

After a few months and a lot of success, I wanted the monogrammed items to have its own site and own identity.  I didn’t want to sell on a “boyish” site that had navy and red as their colors and had ‘merica f* yeah’ shirts (haha) on it.   I wanted to build a brand that was feminine, pink, and pretty! That’s when United Monograms started and the beginning of an amazing ride.

The workload soon consumed my nights after teaching, and weekends.  I would even call off work to get the orders out (whoops!) I really fell in love with building this business, and brand.  It was time to make a decision about my future and my career. Sean had so much confidence and faith in me, us, and our little business.  With the early success we had and the drive I saw in Sean to grow the business - it was an easy choice to quit teaching and work on this thing full time.   Most of our friends and family were super supportive, but there were definitely a few people that thought I was crazy! It is a little scary not having that security and certainty of the future - but if you are passionate about something you need to take that leap of faith and go for it!

After committing to working on this business full time - we started to plan our life together.  Being an online business, with not much equipment or employees at the time, we noticed that we had a rare opportunity where we could run this business from anywhere!  Feeling confident & adventurous, we decided to move to Charleston, South Carolina- a beautiful Southern city and a place where monograms are EVERYWHERE! You know they say ‘Great things happen outside of your comfort zone’ and I believe it took us leaving our family, friends, and everything we’ve been comfortable around to truly get this business going.  We have been here since Fall 2014 and love it.

The past 5 years of growing this business have been pretty crazy with many many ups and downs.  One of Sean's favorite quotes is “never get too high, never get too low” which we’ve certainly had to practice.  From shipping packages out of the second bedroom of our first apartment, to renting out a trailer and hiring our first employee, to now having a second office space and 11 employees - I can confidently say that I am excited for our future as a company - I think we are destined for great things! United Monograms has taught me so many things and I am happy to continue sharing this journey with y’all!

XOXO, Shelby

81 Comments CATEGORIES - Business, Life, United Monograms

My First Blog Post

March 17, 2019

Hi everyone! I’m so excited to be writing my first blog post! I started this blog as a way to share things I love and my experiences. I plan on sharing about business (maybe some guest posts by Sean), life in Charleston, wedding planning, fashion, and life in general. This is also a great creative outlet for me when I need a little break from work. To get started, here are 10 facts about me:

  1. I’m 30 years old
  2. I was born and raised in Pennsylvania
  3. I now live in Charleston SC
  4. I’m engaged to Sean Lowery (hence the blog name – future last name!)
  5. I’m getting married in April 2020
  6. I own a business called United Monograms (under the company name Lowery Brands – another reason for blog name)
  7. I have two sisters and one niece
  8. I was a teacher for 3 years after college
  9. I am very much so a morning person
  10. I have the best family and friends!

That’s all for now! I plan on writing a whole blog posts about how we started our business, why we moved to Charleston and some other commonly asked questions. Thanks for stopping by and I hope you continue to read along!

XOXO, Shelby

2 Comments CATEGORIES - Life

Meet Shelby

Meet Shelby

Business Owner, Excited Fiance, French Fry Lover, Deal Hunter, Rosé Sipper, Grey's Anatomy Obsessed

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