Catalina Cheng has always been creative. She’s been drawing as long as she can remember, inspired largely by her artistically minded family. She was barely in the fourth grade when other kids took note of her skill and started asking her to make various pieces for them.
So Cheng charged a couple dollars for each kid’s comic or clay figurine, and gradually grew that classroom service into what is now Catalicious Creations. The business designs a little bit of everything: t-shirts, key chains, vases and ornaments, to name a few.
“It’s something I genuinely enjoy,” says Cheng, who’s from Odessa, Florida. “Having the freedom, getting to choose everything, is great. I’m always at school, whether it’s for class or extracurriculars or studying, so I can just work on this whenever I have the time, which is something you can’t do when you’re working for someone.”
Cheng credits the Internet and social media with helping her get the word out about the enterprise. She sells primarily through an Etsy store, where she’s received orders from all over the world, but also features her items at stores throughout the community and sets up booths at local festivals and sporting events.
“I love that I have the website, because it’s just there whenever I need it,” says Cheng. “It makes sales, especially the ones coming from so far away, so much more convenient. But I also love knowing the people—one of the stores I sell my items at, I knew the owner because I buy my art supplies from her, so we could mutually help each other. I get to experience both sides.”
Today, Cheng is a high school senior at George M. Steinbrenner High School. She’s headed to the University of South Florida in the fall, where she has tentative plans to study business, while continuing to run Catalicious Creations.
“In the future, it’d be cool to have a storefront, something established,” says Cheng. “So I do want to grow the business, but not too much. I like that it’s this small thing. Local musicians can commission shirts from me, ask me to design album covers, and I can do it right because I know them. I like that personal part of it.”
