Sara Fitzell and her son Jurell opened S.F Ink Kanohi me Tinana just four months after the country came out of lockdown.
It's what earned them a nomination last year in the Rotorua Business Awards.
This year, the family owned and operated business has been nominated a second time for the NZME People's Choice Award.
Fitzell says following the death of her eldest brother, she had a "huge reality check" catapulting her into what she's currently doing.
"At that stage everybody was in a real bad state. If it wasn't him, it would have been me, at that time, and just seeing the devastation to the family," she said. "After that I ended up leaving the job I was at. I was then pregnant with my second son, and we were struggling, we were struggling really bad."