Small Business Spotlight: HanBowden Designs

Kaitlyn Sides Reporter

Waco sophomore Hannah Bowden has been passionate about making things for a good cause since middle school. She Boden has dabbled in various crafts, but this year she resumed her designs for Hanboden, now offering stickers, T-her shirts, and hand-drawn journals.

“I’m a health science major, so this won’t necessarily apply to my job in the future, but it’s a lot of fun to be creative,” Borden said.

When Boden was in middle school, she began teaching herself calligraphy, selling wooden blocks with handwritten letters on them. But it wasn’t until she started selling shirts to raise money for her mission trip that the idea came to her to start a small business.

“My first missionary trip was in seventh grade,” Borden said. “I designed the shirt myself. It was like when I was like, ‘Oh, this is actually really fun.’

Borden started selling stickers and other T-shirts, but it wasn’t until college that she expanded her work into a business, she said. Since then, she has participated in local markets along with other student-run small businesses.

Bowden created HanBowden Designs earlier this semester when one of her camp friends inspired her to start it.

“I was working in Pine Cove over the summer and I said to her, [sell my products] Because again, it’s a lot of work,” Borden said. “And she was like, ‘If it’s something and it brings you so much joy, why don’t you do it?'”

Boden now uses his small business not only to find moments of comfort during his busy sophomore year, but also to share the gospel.

“I have to do this and this and study for that test,” Borden said. , we lose sight of using His gifts to design things that glorify Him. given to me “

Brittany Hood, a 2000 Baylor graduate and Bowden’s mentor, said she was there when Bowden was a kid practicing on paper with Crayola markers.

“She’s grown her skills and used them to really invest in other people and things that matter,” Hood said. requires a lot of effort.”

HanBowden Designs now offers stickers, t-shirts, and hand-drawn journals.

“It’s kind of for the joy of doing it, and a lot of mine is sharing the gospel with people,” Borden said. But I think a big part of that is that each sticker I make carries a message.”