When Sandy Higgins talks about growth, she doesn’t romanticize it. She laughs, reflects and tells the truth, often all at once. After nearly two decades at the helm of The Crackerjack Shack, Higgins has built far more than a decorated-apparel business. She has built a culture rooted in adaptability, transparency and an unwavering commitment to both customers and fellow decorators.
The Crackerjack Shack began in 2007 as a boutique children’s clothing brand, stitched together by Higgins herself. Success came quickly but so did burnout. “Honestly, exhaustion!” she says when asked what prompted her pivot. “Children’s custom boutique clothing is very unique to the designer, so it wasn’t really scalable beyond what I could do myself. When the business grew, I hit capacity really fast. At that point, I was working four hours into my day just to sleep.”
The turning point came unexpectedly at a sewing show in 2009. A fellow seamstress posed a simple question: Have you ever thought about making logo wear? Higgins recalls, “Boom! That one question changed the entire course of the business!” Within six months, The Crackerjack Shack had fully transitioned into logo wear, screen printing, embroidery and branded apparel that could scale without sacrificing quality.
Today, Higgins leads a multi-service decorated-apparel operation serving schools, fundraisers, corporations and organizations nationwide. She credits longevity not to rigid planning, but to flexibility. “Nothing in business stays the same,” she says. “It’s a lot like raising kids, just when you think you’ve got everything figured out, everything changes.”
Rather than chasing price or volume, Higgins made an early decision to prioritize relationships and experience. “I have never focused on being the least expensive,” she explains. “Our clientele is extremely loyal because we reliably deliver an exceptional customer experience. Our goal is to build relationships, not sell products.”
Seeing clients as partners rather than transactions has shaped everything from operations to branding. Even as the business scaled, Higgins held tight to the principles that guided her basement beginnings: “Keep your word. Deliver quality on time, every time. Own up to your mistakes… Keep your customers as the north star always.”
In recent years, Higgins’s influence has expanded far beyond her production floor, especially on TikTok (@gototheshack), where she has amassed a loyal following of more than 300,000. But her social-media success wasn’t part of a master plan. In fact, she didn’t even know what TikTok was when her younger employees suggested she try it.
Higgins has no problem getting hands on with the ink while making content. Photo courtesy of The Crackerjack Shack
“They told me I should do an ASMR TikTok,” she laughs. “I said, ‘You mean to tell me I can record this squeegee as it goes across the screen and people will watch that?’” They were right. Her first video hit 50,000 views, and a four-color process print video soon passed five million. “What have we got to lose?” she remembers thinking. “We now have a loyal following of over 300K on TikTok. It’s the best totally free exposure our business has ever gotten.”
Social media didn’t just expand Crackerjack Shack’s reach; it reshaped its customer base entirely. “We would’ve never gone nationwide without it,” Higgins says. And unlike many brands, she holds nothing back. “We share everything! No kidding! I’m known online as the ‘Business MeMaw’ and there’s nothing you can’t talk to your MeMaw about!”
Higgins’s content philosophy is deceptively simple. Before posting, she asks herself four questions: Is it fun? Is it educational? Is it inspiring? Is it something I would’ve needed in my first three years of business? The goal, she says, isn’t the process being shown but the feeling the story creates. “Instead of thinking, ‘What should I video?’ I’m always thinking, ‘How do I want my audience to feel?’”
That emotional intelligence carries into branding advice she gives new decorators. “Most business owners know what they can make, but they have no idea who they really are or what they’re selling,” she says. Her solution? Stop selling products and start solving problems. “At The Crackerjack Shack, we don’t print T-shirts. We print peace of mind.”
Higgins is unapologetically personality-driven online, a strategy she knows isn’t universally endorsed. “There will be a lot of people who tell you that’s not wise,” she says. “But connecting with our audience in a meaningful way and backing that up with strong customer service has helped us grow into the company we are today.”
She calls her team and clients “Shackers,” a reflection of the community she’s built. “I’m a real person running a real small business, warts and all,” she says. “I think people appreciate the authenticity of that story.”
As The Crackerjack Shack continues to thrive, Higgins is already thinking about what comes next. With her daughter prepared to assume leadership and a strong team in place, she sees her future increasingly rooted in mentorship. “I believe in small business, and I love teaching,” she says. “I plan to do more mentoring and training over the next 5–10 years. The future is bright! We have exciting things ahead of us.”
