Life & Work with Fernando Silva of Tustin

Today we’d like to introduce you to Fernando Silva

Hi Fernando, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
We started Terra Labs towards the end of 2023 with the goal of making our home a more interesting space to be in. We were tired of using cold overhead lighting and we couldn’t find unique lamps that didn’t cost a fortune so we though why not 3D print our own! We made a few designs we really liked and people would come over asking about them so we thought why not sell them.

It was a bit of a wild ride at first because we were photographing everything ourselves in our small apartment and fulfilling orders out of our tiny garage. Then came the holidays and we couldn’t believe the number of orders we received. That’s when we knew other people had the same problem as us and that they wanted to create interesting spaces of their own. From there we focused on growing our product offerings and digital presence and at the start of 2024 we were approached with a major opportunity that changed the trajectory of our business. We were asked to create a custom centerpiece lamp for an undescribed event and upon delivery we discovered that it wasn’t just any event, it was the 2024 Grammys.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It has been a lot of fun to grow Terra Labs but it definitely hasn’t been easy. I didn’t know anything about digital marketing and there’s a huge learning curve. Understanding how to communicate with customers, how to market where they are, and knowing their pain points is a big part of business and I only knew how to create a product, not how to sell it. So I would say marketing is a big challenge but it’s also a lot of fun because of all the creativity involved.

Another challenge we face is that we design, manufacture, and assemble everything in house. And by having so much vertical integration we’ve focused a lot on baking efficiency into our business as we scale. This is particularly difficult during the holidays since it involves a lot of planning and it’s difficult to predict exactly what is going to happen.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I actually studied environmental science and studio arts in college so I didn’t have much business experience before starting Terra Labs but those two areas of study helped me refine a lot of skills that I wouldn’t have learned in business school. Studying environmental science definitely helped me to understand the technical side of 3D printing like material science, machine mechanics, and data analysis. It also taught me to understand all the different components of large systems like climate and geology which I think translates well into understanding all the different components of a business.

In studio arts I focused a lot on ceramics and that really helped me to understand physical forms. I learned a lot about what makes something aesthetically pleasing and visually balanced and I think that’s translated very directly to what we create at Terra Labs.

If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
I would say it’s persistence. When you start a business there’s a lot of situations where you don’t know what to do or if what you’re doing is the right thing but you just have to keep trying and even if it wasn’t the right choice you come out the other side with insight that you didn’t have before. So yeah, I think persistence is really important.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://terralabs.design/?utm_source=article&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=voyage
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terralabs.design/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Terra-Labs-Design/61554134782261/

Image Credits
Bryan Fernandez @ https://www.fdzbryan.com/