Daily Inspiration: Meet Cherie Tye

Today we’d like to introduce you to Cherie Tye.

Hi Cherie, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I grew up developing my eye on my own. No inherited taste, no blueprint. Just a very early awareness that I saw things differently than the people around me. That instinct eventually took me to New York, where I spent years in product development, fashion, and the business of elite nightlife. Promoting, operating, learning how environments are built and how people move through them. When I relocated to Columbus, I brought that infrastructure with me. Pray Date is the formal expression of it. A creative development house built on the idea that conviction, when it meets the right process, becomes raw material. One of the things I’m most excited about right now is my collaboration with Wade Blackhard. He works exclusively with decommissioned military surplus, actual materials with real provenance, and reconstructs them into wearable pieces that carry the weight of where they’ve been. Every piece is hand-sewn. No formal training. Just six years of Army service and a practice that started in 2016 and has been building ever since. My role is the infrastructure behind the work. Material sourcing, bridging the conversation between concept and execution, and building the visual language that makes sure what the world sees matches what the work actually is. That’s the kind of work Pray Date was made for. I’m still early in building it here. But I’ve always built in places where the room didn’t exist yet.

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?
No. It has not been smooth. And anyone who says their road was smooth is leaving something out. The hardest part was not the work itself. It was learning how to protect the work. Early on I gave a lot creatively in situations that were not set up to honor that. No clear scope, no real compensation, just goodwill and momentum. That cost me more than money. It cost me time I cannot get back. Relocating to Columbus added its own layer. I came with a background that does not have a lot of local context. Product development, fashion, elite nightlife in New York. Translating that into something legible here has been its own education. But struggle is where methodology comes from. Every hard lesson I took seriously became part of how Pray Date is structured. The boundaries, the pricing, the way I enter a client relationship. None of that came from a business class. It came from experience. I am not behind because of what I went through. I am more precise because of it.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
The work I do is hard to put in a box and I have made peace with that. Product development has historically lived behind corporate walls. The language of boardrooms, manufacturing contracts, and retail systems that most independent creators and small businesses never get access to. The methodology existed but the access did not. I saw that gap and I walked into it. What I do is bring that discipline into what I call the vendor economy. The independent makers, the street-level brands, the creatives who are building something real but have never had anyone treat their work with the same rigor that a major label or a big retailer would. That is where I operate. I take the tools that were designed for the top and apply them at the ground level. And the results are different because the conviction is different. These are not people chasing a market trend. They are people building from something they actually believe. What sets me apart is that my work is faith-forward. And I want to be clear about what that means because it is not decorative. My faith is not a tagline or an aesthetic choice. It is the operating system. It informs how I see, how I structure, how I protect the integrity of the work. Pray Date exists because I believe conviction is a resource. That when you build from something real, it shows. People feel the difference even when they cannot name it. What I am most proud of is that I have built a methodology. Not just a portfolio. A repeatable way of entering a brand, finding what is true about it, and producing work that lasts longer than a trend cycle. That took years to develop and it is entirely my own. I am still making myself legible in this market. But the work speaks a language that does not need translation.

Do you have recommendations for books, apps, blogs, etc?
I do not have a podcast rotation or a shelf of business books I revisit every time I need direction. That has never been how I am wired. My greatest resource is observation. I have always learned more from watching how things move than from being told how they work. A room full of people. The way a brand is received. The moment something resonates and the moment it does not. That is data to me and I am constantly collecting it. My faith is probably the most consistent resource in my life. It is where I go for clarity, recalibration, and perspective when the noise gets loud. It is not separate from the work. It is what keeps the work honest. I pay attention to people too. The ones building something real. The ones who have already traveled roads I am still walking. A meaningful conversation with someone who has lived the experience is often more valuable than anything I could consume online. There is value in protecting your perspective. The more you consume, the greater the risk of sounding like everyone else. I would rather develop my own eye than borrow someone else’s framework.

Pricing:

• Pricing is project-based. Every client comes in with a different need, a different starting point, and a different vision — and the work reflects that. The details are the sauce. There’s no flat rate because there’s no flat client.

Contact Info:

• Website: In development
• Instagram: Praydate_cherietye
• Facebook: Pray Date