Creative Worker Interview with Series Six Owner Sami Mauer

I had the absolute pleasure of speaking with Sami Mauer. I have looked up to her for over a year now because what she is doing and where she is now is where I would possibly like to be in 5 to 10 years, so it was wonderful to finally get the chance to speak with her about it.

Sami Mauer is the owner of her own St. Louis based T-shirt design company called Series Six. She designs the shirts, fills the orders, works with vendors, collaborates with other businesses in St. Louis, and much more.

She began designing her own shirts and sweatshirts when she was in college. She said that while she was on campus in the South, she would “see people around campus wearing these southern inspired t-shirts” (Mauer). This got her thinking that “we don’t really have anything like this in the Midwest” (Mauer). She took design inspiration from the many interesting and fun t-shirt design companies in the south that celebrated what was unique about the area. When she went home for break back in STL, she said she noticed that St. Louis did not have something like this. She decided to design her own St. Louis themed designs to celebrate the things she loved about St. Louis and began wearing her designs. People asked her where she purchased her shirts as they loved the designs and would like to purchase one as well. With this, she began to sell her designs.

She went to college for business and design, but out of college she accepted a job on the business side of things because she did not think she would be able to make real money off design. She had the perception that “only the best of the best make money in design” (Mauer). However, she kept growing her design business on the side. After a year of working out of college, she was able to quit her job and start running her business full time. Her business continues to grow, and she is even moving from a solely online business to opening a store front in the coming weeks.

In class, we have learned that there are pros and cons to working in the creative industry and we discussed the paradoxes of creative work. Sami confirmed many of these to me. In Can Creative Labor be Good, Hesmondhalgh and Baker write “People can of course be creative in any kind of work, but some types of employment are commonly thought to offer greater possibilities for creativity than others.” (2011). Sami spoke to this as she worked in data organization and event coordination before designing full time. She said a big con to her job was trying to come up with new designs, concepts, and ideas. Especially because she works with the theme of STL so it can be hard to come up with new things and getting into a creative rut. Sami however said that she would much rather have to deal with a creative rut, “than deal with the same thing every day and crunching numbers” (Mauer). Sami was even able to work in marketing design for the company she worked for before going into her design work full time, but even this she did not prefer to her work on own designs.

Alternatively, she said that her favorite part of working her job was that she had the flexibility of creating what she wanted as well as making her own schedule. She also liked that every day was not the same. She has a lot of variety in her day.

It was wonderful to talk to Sami and hear how she got started, how she got to where she is now, what she likes about her job, and what she would change.

Cited: 

Hesmondhalgh, D., & Baker, S. (2011). Creative labor: Media work in three cultural industries. In Creative labor: Media work in three cultural industries (p. 1). London: Routledge.