Car­ol Quash

True’s Cre­ationz is just a lit­tle over a year old, and al­ready its own­er is get­ting her chil­dren in­volved in build­ing what she sees as their foun­da­tion for gen­er­a­tional wealth.

The small Ari­ma-based busi­ness of­fers print­ing ser­vices, in­clud­ing la­bels, cal­en­dars, cards, stick­ers, as well as sub­lim­i­na­tion print­ing – a dig­i­tal print­ing process that us­es heat and pres­sure to trans­fer de­signs on­to items such as mugs, tum­blers, de­cals, slate stone pho­to frames and key­chains.

In Feb­ru­ary 2025, Ash­ley Bap­tiste opened for busi­ness with equip­ment val­ued at ap­prox­i­mate­ly $20,000 – an in­vest­ment that was a huge sac­ri­fice for the sin­gle moth­er, but one she knows will pay off in the fu­ture, once it is man­aged well.

Bap­tiste told Busi­ness Guardian, “I bought two high-qual­i­ty print­ers, a cri­cut, a sub­li­ma­tion oven, a heat press and a lap­top.

One print­er us­es reg­u­lar print­ing ink and the oth­er us­es sub­li­ma­tion ink for spe­cialised items. The sub­lim­i­na­tion oven and the heat press are used to trans­fer de­signs on­to blanks, and the cri­cut – a com­put­er-con­trolled de­vice – is used to cut de­signs with pre­ci­sion. It is ob­vi­ous­ly Bap­tiste’s favourite piece of equip­ment.

“The cri­cut is such an amaz­ing ma­chine,” she ex­plained with ex­cite­ment in her voice. It cuts out what­ev­er de­signs you cre­ate. You can do re­al craft with it and I re­al­ly en­joy ex­per­i­ment­ing with it.”

She said be­fore mak­ing the in­vest­ment, she spent hours look­ing at YouTube videos, learn­ing how to use each piece of the equip­ment, look­ing at pos­si­ble chal­lenges and com­mon mis­takes to avoid. And while be­ing self-taught has brought her to a place where she is com­fort­able enough to pro­duce items in which she takes much pride, she is en­cour­ag­ing her chil­dren to take it even fur­ther by get­ting the nec­es­sary the­o­ret­i­cal and prac­ti­cal train­ing in every as­pect of the busi­ness – cre­ativ­i­ty, man­age­ment, fi­nance – in or­der to grow and main­tain what will even­tu­al­ly be theirs.

“So they can help build and even­tu­al­ly take over the run­ning of True’s.”

She said for the past year she has not been do­ing much ad­ver­tis­ing be­cause she chose to lim­it her ser­vices to her close cir­cle of fam­i­ly and friends, as she on­ly does it on a part-time ba­sis.

“I put it out on Tik­Tok and IG, but I have not re­al­ly ad­ver­tised to the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion But peo­ple have been see­ing my work and ask­ing about it,” giv­ing her the in­cen­tive to ex­pand.

But that, she said, may be a short-term chal­lenge be­cause she runs the busi­ness out of her home where there is lim­it­ed space.

“This means I can’t do as much as I want to, es­pe­cial­ly with prod­ucts stor­age. But once I get that space, I will def­i­nite­ly be ex­pand­ing.”

She ex­pects her next big pur­chase will be a di­rect-to-trans­fer (DTF) print­er, which will run her in­to thou­sands of dol­lars. But it is an­oth­er sac­ri­fice she is will­ing to make.

“I want Dar­ius, my son, to start do­ing DFT print­ing on T-shirts. In the in­ter­im, we can do the de­signs and out­source the print­ing.”

Bap­tiste us­es Can­va as her go-to app to cre­ate de­signs for cal­en­dars, gift and busi­ness cards when clients don’t send a de­sign of what they want – an­oth­er skill she has taught her­self and one she en­cour­ages her daugh­ter, Aria to ex­plore.

“She’s very crafty, so I want her to build on that be­cause there is so much space for her cre­ativ­i­ty in this busi­ness.”

Bap­tiste is al­so get­ting ready to in­tro­duce resin prod­ucts to her list on the mar­ket.

“I ac­tu­al­ly have resin and the moulds, but I just have not got­ten the time to ac­tu­al­ly start it be­cause that in it­self is a process to do.”

Bap­tiste, 38, looks for­ward to the day when she has the time and re­sources to run True Cre­ationz full-time, along­side her chil­dren.