Lemonade Out of Lemons: Penn State Student’s Business Ventures Amid Pandemic
After several days of feeling defeated and lost after her junior-year summer internship was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Christy McDermott scrambled to find something productive to make her summer worthwhile. Sitting outside in the sun talking with her best friend, she finally found what that something would be: starting a sustainable upcycling clothing business together.
McDermott, who’s now a senior, and her best friend spent all of last summer working to develop their new brand and small business of upcycling jeans that is known as SLVG JEAN.
Although this pandemic has caused immense stress amongst the college-student community, McDermott and other students found it allowed them to develop their passions with the substantial amount of time on their hands.
“It was a super positive thing because — I mean, I wouldn’t have started that at all if it weren’t for the pandemic,” said McDermott. “I thought it was a really cool experience and it is something that I do put on my resume.”
SLVG Jean is a sustainable clothing company that reworks old jeans and that are thrifted or that customers send in to give them a new life. These jeans are then revamped with different designs and styles to make them look completely new. The founders of SLVG Jean always put in a great amount of time to cook up just what their customers have requested.
McDermott’s best friend and cofounder of SLVG JEAN, Karli Strutz, who attends the University of Kentucky, agreed and called starting their business during these difficult times “a blessing in disguise.”
“Christy and I grew way closer, and it was something new for us to navigate as friends,” said Strutz. “I feel as though it’s harder to manage now since Christy and I attend different schools but it’s still extremely manageable — it’s like being in a long-distance relationship,” said Strutz.
Growing a small business became a theme for quarantine where people had so much more free time on their hands and were looking for ways to rake in extra income since everything was shut down.
Senior Maggie McLaughlin, an art and advertising major, started her upcycled sustainable business in July 2019 but says it grew like never before during the pandemic.
McLaughlin was studying abroad in Italy during the spring semester of 2020, and she was then sent home after COVID-19 began spreading rapidly. Like McDermott, McLaughlin was looking for something to keep her busy and productive and unknowingly began what was once just making clothes for friends and family into a business venture.
“The pandemic is when I probably gained like most of my followers and people … I didn’t know or people from other countries started to reach out to me for different things, which was really cool,” said McLaughlin.
McLaughlin’s business became Magg’s Rags, and she amassed a following of almost 6,000 on social media accounts like Instagram and TikTok, where she had a few of her videos showing off her designs go viral.
“Honestly, it was just that first video that blew up has me gain like — I think 90 percent of my followers even still from today,” she said. “That video has like a couple million views on it and it’s still getting likes and people are still commenting on it and following and messaging me about it, which I don’t know I just think it’s all so funny.”
McLaughlin finds that being an advertising major helped her with growing her business and feels that watching it grow was so astounding. Since then, McLaughlin has grown more confident in selling other items than her upcycled and reworked clothing, such as paintings, vases and pottery.
“I really feel like every day I wake up with new ideas, and I want to find new ways to express them and ideas that people resonate with and look to,” said McLaughlin. “I feel like I’m really proud of that.”
McLaughlin isn’t the only Penn State student who is proud of growing her business in a time where it seemed everything else in life was turning the wrong way.
Artist and small business owner Isabella Del Signore, who goes by Bella Lucy when she makes art, is a junior working toward a bachelor’s degree of fine art and new media. Del Signore describes herself as a freelance illustrator and painter and she has been selling her pieces since her senior year of high school.
Del Signore designs an array of artwork, such as illustrations on Vans and other apparel, making logos and tattoo designs, and creating album covers for musicians and editing short advertisement videos.
“I really enjoy bringing like – sound and rhythm to life in an image, and also enjoy doing that for companies too,” said Signore.
Del Signore said that balancing college, a small business and these unprecedented times can be tough to manage, but she agrees that the pandemic definitely gave her more time to focus on her art and commissions and it taught her a few things along the way.
She reflects on the pandemic as a time where it was difficult to find inspiration, especially as an extrovert who gets her energy from experiences and the people around her. This made it difficult to balance out making art as a way to express her feelings and emotions and making art to sell as commissions.
“I’m really looking forward to this summer like being able to balance the both of them again because it’s the best feeling, like — seeing someone wearing my art or when someone buys it — it like sticks forever,” Del Signore said. “I’m like ‘I love this person and their support just means so much.”
Del Signore’s best friend Erin McDermott, who is not related to Christy McDermott, says that the pandemic has definitely had a positive effect on her artwork.
“Bella’s work speaks on a level that words cannot,” she said. “She brings her creativity and artistic energy into all parts of her life, and it spreads to everyone she meets — it’s truly amazing to see.”
Although the pandemic turned the world upside down and caused mass tragedy across the world, these students found a way to turn a negative experience into a positive one.
“I think just think it’s so important to pay attention to the expression during this time because we’re all going through so much,” said Del Signore. “I just feel like paying attention to creatives all around during the pandemic is like so vital for keeping a community and bringing people together.”
