(Photo courtesy Wide Sky)
The Good Page features positive LGBTQ+ news in Central Florida and Tampa Bay, uplifting and inspiring stories highlighting locals in our community. In this issue, we check in with Wide Sky, which has showcased St. Petersburg’s inclusivity through T-shirts and more for over a decade.
Founder Sara O’Brien worked in TV for years, making the commute from St. Petersburg to Tampa. She realized she wasn’t happy with her career and dreamed of a creative side hustle, maybe something she could eventually focus on full time.
This is how Wide Sky was born in 2014.
Known for designs like “It’s My Way or the Skyway,” “I Like St. Pete and Maybe 3 People” and a variety of LGBTQ+-focused offerings, the company celebrated its 10th anniversary last December. Its ever-expanding “collection of quirky local designs” reflect “the vibrant spirit of our community.”
View some of Wide Sky’s designs below:
“I always liked funny shirts and wore funny shirts, and at the time, I felt like nobody was doing anything funny in our area,” O’Brien says.
When launching Wide Sky, she admits she didn’t know much about running a business, let alone printing T-shirts. At first, she worked with screen printers around the country before finding local companies.
“I realized, wait, if I’m going to be all about local and do local stuff, then I need to be fully local,” she says, noting that she grew “frustrated with printer hopping.”
That’s why in 2018, O’Brien invested in the equipment needed to print products on her own.
“I felt like no one really took as much care of the T-shirt as I would,” O’Brien explains. “If printers are going to make mistakes on my orders all the time, I can mess up just as bad on my own.”
She adds, “It’s freaking hard. Screen printing’s hard.”
At first, she operated out of a friend’s garage, eventually moving into a workshop. This led to O’Brien printing shirts and other items for her own clients.
She also opened a Wide Sky kiosk at the St. Pete Pier three years ago. Her shop is open Fridays through Sundays.
“Last year was tough” for the company, as it was for many small business owners, she notes. “Summer’s always slow. Nobody is shopping at the pier for three or four months. Then the hurricanes coming through was like a double whammy.”
O’Brien hoped for a robust holiday season, but while “the holidays were ok, they didn’t meet the expectations as they have in years past.”
By the end of 2024, not wanting to spend so much on a separate space and wanting to prioritize Wide Sky’s roots of focusing on fun and creative offerings, she made the tough decision to rethink the business and move out of the workshop.
In fact, she left the screen-printing business entirely and sold her equipment.
“It’s bittersweet. I think as a business owner, you have to make the hard decisions so you can keep going,” O’Brien says.
She’ll continue heat press printing, both for her own designs and her clients.
“Heat press printing is becoming mainstream,” she says. “It’s super efficient. The quality is great. It’s super soft on the shirt and you can print pretty much anything.”
Printing 50 shirts takes way less time now, she adds — about an hour-and-a-half compared to four hours when screen printing — and doesn’t require a separate 1,200-square-foot workshop space.
She’s currently operating out of a spare bedroom at her home, but down the road she might find a much smaller space for the outfit. Custom printing for clients also continues to make up “a good portion of business.”
O’Brien adds that Wide Sky can print as few as 10 shirts for clients, all at affordable prices. The website also ships all orders without any extra cost.
“I’m a fan of helping the little guy because I’m a little guy,” she says. Learn more at WideSkyLife.com.
Interested in being featured in The Good Page? Email Editor-in-Chief Jeremy Williams at Jeremy@WatermarkOutNews.com in Central Florida or Managing Editor Ryan Williams-Jent at Ryan@WatermarkOutNews.com in Tampa Bay.
