Ivy Ocampo: "We were thinking of our product assortment and how to produce these items, and we were like, 'We have no money.' We knew we needed to get a loan. We did all the small things first, like setting up the LLC; even that takes a little bit of funding to do. But to get all the production and materials together, if you don't have any backing, you need to look for a loan. So we started looking for organizations that had small-business loans, and there was one called Working Solutions out of San Francisco."

Jeanette Sawyer: "It had a really low interest rate. They work on financing women-owned and women-of-color-owned businesses. We spent a good amount of time forming a business plan. Neither of us has a business background, but it was something we learned how to do by asking a lot of questions. My boyfriend's dad gave us a lot of advice on how to go about things, and really, we were able to do what we did because we had so much support."