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Designing Woman
Senior business major Megan Hughes turns Virginia Wesleyan internship into successful graphic design venture
Inside Business | By Nate Delesline III
In about six months, Megan Hughes '16 turned a little idea into a solid business—all before graduating college.
This past spring, Hughes, a senior business major at Virginia Wesleyan College, established The Little Company, a graphic print design business. In December, she is slated to graduate.
Right now, Hughes operates The Little Company. She creates designs and projects for the company's two divisions. Her work includes custom graphic projects for local clients, the Virginia Wesleyan community and small business owners through Little Bold, a service-based division of her company. Through her Etsy shop, Little Harvester, Hughes serves a niche market, selling faith-based stationery and design projects to missionaries.
The Little Company began as an entrepreneurial outgrowth of her involvement in the College's internship program. She finished the business plan in May, and the company's official start date was June 1. The business, Hughes said, also is a chance to incorporate her faith into her work.
"I am a Christian company, and a lot of the designs do have that [theme] either explicitly," or in more subtle tones. But, Hughes added, she is able to create pieces for any client.
An online portfolio of her work includes custom logos, baby and birthday announcements, and stationery. And clients aren't the only ones to benefit from her work. The Little Company donates $1 for each work hour to a customer-chosen ministry annually. Dubbed One Little Gift, the recipient of the funding is selected through an early December voting contest.
At her busiest, Hughes said she spends about 30 hours per week on work related to her design business. Now with class back in session in her final semester of college, she expects to spend up to 12 hours per week on her business.
She said graphic design, an already intensely personal business, is made even more so when professionals are called on to create tangible memories for some of life's most important moments.
"To me, graphic design is the art of capturing this world's panoramic beauty into the limited vocabulary of usable colors, textures and shapes," Hughes says on her website. "As a designer in this field, this definition teaches me graphic artistry requires a deep fill of diligence, a splotch of passion, a splatter of creativity and a stroke of precision—and I wouldn't want to strive for or admire anything short of that."
For now, Hughes said she plans to keep the business a one-woman show, although she is not ruling out future expansion to meet demand. Her work has impressed her mentors and customers alike.
"Megan has been an absolute pleasure to work with, both as an instructor and as her supervisor in the work study program," business professor Paul Ewell said in an email. "She is a self-starter, as demonstrated in her project work as part of our Virginia Wesleyan College Business Conference and with her team leadership in the Information Systems Competition."
"Megan was always one of those students that never had to be told what to do," Ewell continued. "She [is] an initiator, so I was not surprised when she said that she wanted to do a different kind of internship, one where she would actually start her own business. She needed no follow-up on any work project. My role, at least in terms of her internship, was simply to make sure that she was doing work appropriate for a college graduate. She went above and beyond."
While the company continues to grow, Hughes said she plans to live and work to grow her faith in another capacity.
"Since the company is kind of young," she said, "I have chosen to take another part-time job. I'll be a missionary to colleges in the area" with Cru, which was formerly known as Campus Crusade for Christ.
The Little Company is on Facebook and online at be.net/viewthelittlecompany.
Article written by Nate Delesline III and originally published in the Sept. 18 issue of Inside Business.