Marie Gems got built during a genuinely hard stretch, in a two-bedroom apartment, in between everything else going on with a growing family. There was no business plan taped to the wall. There was me, a lot of late nights, and a stubborn streak that kept pulling me back to it. This is the real version of how it happened.

Before Marie Gems

I have a bachelor's degree in web design, so I knew how to build a website. What I didn't know was how to market one. I could design all day long, but getting anyone to actually see what I made was a whole different skill. That's why I got into network marketing. I joined It Works to learn the marketing side, and from there I did Scentsy and Paparazzi too.

I'm a mom of seven, and I've been a stay-at-home mom for about ten years. For most of that time, I was doing anything I could online to make money from home. Then Paparazzi ended for me, and something clicked. None of it had ever really been mine. I couldn't control the products, the rules or whether it could all disappear overnight. I was tired of not having something of my own, something I could fully control. So I started making my own products.

The hard stretch

There was a stretch where things got really hard. My family and I ended up in a motel for three months before I found a two-bedroom apartment. Marie Gems got built during those apartment years, in between everything else going on with a growing family.

It wasn't a straight line, and there were a lot of sidetracked moments. For a long time I didn't want to niche down, and I learned the hard way that I finally had to if I wanted things to work. My brain runs with about a hundred tabs open at all times, so focusing has never been my natural setting. But I kept coming back to it.

What a morning looks like now

Some mornings I'm up doing labels while the baby watches cartoons, because that's just how mornings go now. I'll have 15 orders to ship and a client email to answer before anyone else in the house is even awake. And all of it is something of my own, which is exactly what I wanted when I started.

And because this is the real version: when I use talk-to-speech to get my thoughts down fast, I have trouble with the letter R sound, so things don't always come out the way I need them to.

Where it is now

Today, Marie Gems is a DTF transfer shop in Wichita, Kansas, that's been running for about three years and has shipped more than 500 orders. It's been my main source of income for a long time, and this year I finally did the thing I avoided for so long. I narrowed the shop down to what it does best: ready-to-press DTF transfers.

And in March 2026, we moved out of that two-bedroom apartment and into a seven-bedroom house.

If you're building something too

Most of us are just figuring it out as we go, learning the hard way. I want other moms who are trying to build something from home to know you're not the only one doing it one step at a time, in between everything else. You don't need everything figured out to start. You just need to keep coming back to it.

Everything works itself out. It just takes time. We get sidetracked, but we keep going.

If you want to know more about the shop, here's more about Marie Gems, and if you're local, here's how DTF transfers in Wichita work with pickup and shipping.