The Laughing Cactus was created in September 2015 to provide family, friends, and the local Nashville community with unique and personalized gifts for any occasion. The idea of the venture started in the dorm room of Sam Osborn, our founder, during his junior year. Sam’s childhood friend Susie knew that Sam had been recently feeling homesick, so she decided to send him a small cactus as a gift that he could display in his dorm room window. Sam was flattered by the gesture, but he felt that a pokey,green cactus was too dull and boring to display for all the Belmont students that would pass his dorm room window on their way to class each day. After some thinking, his creative mind kicked in, and he envisioned that the cactus would make for a great medium to display his love and affection for The Hunger Games character, Katniss Everdeen. After a couple hours of work, Sam transformed his cactus into “Cactus Everdeen” and put her on display in his window for everyone to see. His creation went viral, and within a couple days, Sam started receiving inquiries from other students for customized cacti and other succulents. Before he knew it, Sam was buying cacti and succulents and creating other pop culture characters out of them, and is now scaling his idea to meet new demand.