About · Gear for AI
You do not need another AI newsletter telling you to “embrace the future.”
You need someone to sit beside you and say: here is the one thing worth trying this week. That is what Gear for AI is for.
- 🛍 Etsy sellers
- 🕯 Candle makers
- 🎨 Canva users
- ✋ Handmade sellers
- 🚀 Solopreneurs
This site is built for creative small business owners — Etsy sellers, candle makers, handmade product sellers, Canva users, solopreneurs — who keep hearing about AI but have no idea where to actually start. People who know their product well but find content, branding, and marketing exhausting. If that is you, you are in the right place.
Who I am
My name is Mohan Perera. I started my career as a graphic designer in 2005 in Sri Lanka. Design was never just a job for me — it was how I thought through problems. That habit has followed me ever since.
In 2008, four of us left our paid jobs to start a custom clothing business. We had no real capital and no roadmap. We scraped together enough to buy a second-hand heat-press machine, rented a tiny shopfront near a train station in Gampaha, and promised customers they could walk out with a custom T-shirt in fifteen minutes.
It worked. Slowly, then quickly.
What started as a small print shop became Tshirts.lk — Sri Lanka’s first fully online custom T-shirt platform. We grew it over ten years, built an entire product business on organic search and word of mouth, and in 2018 I sold the company.
I moved to Sydney. I kept designing. I became a self-taught children’s book illustrator, using a mixed media collage style that does not look like anything else on the shelf. I joined Vinapa — a creative studio focused on family and children — as Head of Project Management. My wife and two daughters are the reason I keep going.
How I ended up here
The honest part
When AI tools started appearing everywhere, my first reaction was the same as yours probably was — part curiosity, part overwhelm. I did not want to learn to code. I did not want to spend a week reading documentation. I just wanted to know: can this actually help me do real creative work?
The answer was yes. But it took a while to find the parts that were actually useful versus the parts that were just noise.
Most of what I read about AI was written for tech founders or marketers with big teams. None of it was written for the person selling handmade earrings on Etsy who needs better product descriptions but does not have an hour to spare. So I built Gear for AI for that person.
What you will find here
Gear for AI is not about chasing every new tool. It is not theory. It is not tutorials that assume you know what an API is. It is practical. Here is what that looks like:
- Prompts you can copy and adjust for your own product
- Simple workflows that save you time on content and marketing
- Honest tests of AI tools — what actually works for small creative businesses
- Ideas for using AI in Canva, product descriptions, social captions, Pinterest, and more
Every article on this site tries to help you make one clearer decision or create one useful thing. That is the only standard I hold it to.
A note about AI and your creative voice
AI can help you write faster. It can give you a starting point when you are staring at a blank screen. It can suggest ideas when you feel stuck. But it cannot replace the thing that makes your business yours — your taste, your story, your judgment about what feels right.
The best results I have seen come from people who use AI as a helper, not a shortcut. They bring their own context, their own style, their own experience — and let AI do the rough work underneath. That is the approach Gear for AI is built around.
Meet Lumi
Lumi is the fox you will see around the site. I wanted a guide character who felt curious and friendly, not expert and corporate. Foxes are creative problem-solvers. They find a way. That felt right.
🦊 Lumi does not tell you what to do. She just helps you figure out the next step.
Where to start
If you are new here, the best place to start is with something practical and small.
Start here
How to write your first product description with AI
Or browse by what you need most.
Gear for AI is written by Mohan Perera — designer, entrepreneur, illustrator, and someone who figured out AI the slow way so you do not have to.