FlippedDimension tells grad stories through regalia customizations
By Lena Moreno, May 5, 2026
Outside the Bronco Student Center every week, students and faculty visit a familiar booth that has stood on campus grounds for years. Chibi-style Billy Bronco stickers, keychains, embroidered apparel and more notably this semester, custom graduation stoles hang from hooks and mannequins.
All merchandise is part of Cal Poly Pomona plant science alum Christian Nunez’s small business FlippedDimension, a campus staple that has evolved with the community.
What started as a hobby in 2020 transformed into a multi-product creative outlet. Nunez’s earliest designs consisted of the former CLA Tower pencil holders that kept him in commission for a year and made him realize he wanted to start a business, according to Nunez.
As FlippedDimension expanded, Nunez experimented with embroidery in 2024 and began custom apparel for campus clubs, programs and departments.
“I’ve always wanted to release apparel, and that dream was realized two years ago,” Nunez said. “It’s always fun dreaming of something and achieving it.”
Nunez said when he sets his mind to something, he always strives to achieve it, leading to his new project of custom embroidered graduation stoles.
The idea started last year after his friend asked him to customize her stole, allowing him to test new embroidery projects. Nunez said her stole included embroidery of her chemistry club’s logo, her name and degree.
“She kind of put that seed in my head to do graduation stoles,” Nunez said. “That gave me the confidence to do other people’s stoles and be like, ‘Hey, this is something I can offer people.’”
According to Nunez, though his first experimental stole worked, the process was a learning curve for him. There is no singular defined layout for stoles, Nunez said, which required a lot of trial and error to see which stitching methods worked best.
In the early stages of graduation stole commissions, Nunez said he didn’t have a proper system for students to place orders, manually juggling dozens of orders at once.
“I had to keep a mental note of everyone’s orders and it was very stressful,” Nunez said.
As a result of his previous system, he rebuilt the entire order process from scratch.
Now, Nunez has a fully customizable ordering system on his website, allowing students to upload their own images, predesigned elements and personalize their stole to their liking.
“The whole website was really easy to add things I wanted onto my stole,” said biology student Ava Valdemar. “I was really particular. I was like, ‘I want things to be equal on both sides.’”
Valdemar included her major, the CPP logo and Cum Laude honor roll status. Incorporating these details was unique to her experience as a first-generation college graduate, Valdemar said.
According to Nunez, students have told him the personalized designs he offers are something they can’t find elsewhere online.
“I built the tools necessary for people to actually design it how they would like,” Nunez said. “So, that gives me a lot of satisfaction, building something and then getting people to use it and playing around with it, too.”
Nunez said custom-made stoles are the most meaningful for him to work on, as they reflect students’ identities they can carry on stage.
Students are also adding cultural symbols, flags, religious imagery and family tributes.
“Every time someone places an order, it is very indicative of their culture,” Nunez said. “It makes it all the more personalized to them.”
A standout moment for Nunez was a student who noticed his embroidered work featuring the Virgin of Guadalupe and San Judas. Nunez said the student was going through a difficult time and shared how meaningful it would be to have those religious figures on their stole.
Nunez offered to embroider their stole free of charge after sensing how much it meant to them.
“Money comes and goes, but people’s accomplishments really matter,” Nunez said. “I want to make them happy.”
Nunez said he also gets good customer feedback for making his website as visual as possible and being communicative. There’s also no surprises like unexpected adjustments without their permission.
The impact of Nunez’s work allows him to meet students of different majors, goals and personalities across campus. Math student Alyssa Chavez said she was searching online for months for major-specific CPP stickers until she finally discovered Nunez’s booth.
“These stickers are very unique,” Chavez said. “I like how they’re diverse to all majors or even things surrounding Cal Poly, just like it’s known for its cows, the horses and their animals.”
Four years after launching FlippedDimension, Nunez enjoys the challenge of balancing multiple projects throughout the academic year: stoles during grad season, new embroidered clothing, maintaining his website and vending on and off campus.
At the end of the day, creating merchandise reflective of the accomplishments and identities at CPP is the heart of his business, according to Nunez.
