This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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What time is it? Showtime, live from Seattle, Washington. The "Side Hustle" book is out today. Naturally, I'm pretty excited about that. And I know a lot of our listeners are too.
I've been getting some nice notes from people saying how much they're looking forward to it. Well, now you don't have to look forward to it. You can go and get it. If you did not get a chance to pre-order the book, you can actually just go and order it now. Ask for it at your local bookstore, order from your favorite online retailer.
And it would be super awesome if you could share it with your friends. Use #SideHustleBook. Maybe even take a picture of you with the book and send it to me. I mean, if you want, you don't have to. Anyway, onto today's story.
This adventure takes us to all seven continents and features three friends who become business partners to spread the joy of colorful hammocks. One of these three friends is actually my close friend, Stephanie Zito, who is a partner with me in one of my "Side Hustles," the travel hacking cartel. We've also taught a creative live course together about how to make your dream trip a reality, and she's been to more than 118 countries herself. But today we're not talking about that, we're talking about hammocks. Also, today's episode includes a 20% coupon code for these amazing hammocks.
So stick around, listen to the great story, and I'll tell you about that at the end. [Music]
It all started in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, or was it Washington, D.C.? In any case, this story begins 15 years ago when Stephanie Zito was living in D.C. after moving back to the U.S. from Africa.
She had a bright yellow and orange hammock she'd bought while traveling overseas. And on sunny days, she'd hang it up in front of her row house on Capitol Hill. Capitol Hill at the time was always full of busy people dressed in black suits, rushing by and looking at their blackberries. If you don't know what a blackberry is or you don't remember it, well, that's fine. It's not really worth remembering.
And on days where she'd sit on her hammock outside, these busy people would look up from their phones and smile and stop to chat. After many interactions on the front stoop, Stephanie came to the realization that hammocks were magic. She told one of her friends that they needed to make their own brightly colored travel hammocks and sell them in the weekend art market. They spent weeks searching for fabric and teaching themselves how to sew. But after finally creating one hammock, they realized they didn't have a business model that would let them sell hammocks cheap enough to cover their costs.
That happy hammock they made was consigned to the department of, well, that could have been nice. And nothing happened for two years, or at least nothing happened with this project. Presumably some other things were happening with Stephanie and her friend. But after two years, Stephanie took a full-time job working for a humanitarian organization in Cambodia. She ended up staying nearly four years, and early in her new life there, she was walking through the market one day and found some brightly colored nylon.
She bought two colors, bright pink and blue, and took this fabric to the shop of a seamstress she'd recently met. She drew a picture of the hammock she had tried to make in DC two years back. Turnaround was quick. The next day she had an amazing hammock and the idea to start a hammock hustle returned. She called up two friends back in the US and said, "I found a way we can start that hammock business.
And we can do it in a way that works to support women here in Cambodia." Now that was the origin of this project, and it grew part-time with Stephanie and two friends for the next four years. Stephanie went back to the shop with fabrics. She made new kinds of hammocks. They created some with different features, including an iPhone pocket and different style stuff sacks. They designed and built and then improved their website.
It helped that one of the friends was a designer. And they ramped up to shipping 1,000 hammocks a year to fans and hammock lovers worldwide. Now, there were some challenges doing this. In fact, there were some big ones. It was hard to get a consistent supply of fabric in Cambodia.
And for a long time, they were paying $11 each to ship these hammocks to the US. This had a big impact on profit margins, and it meant they couldn't afford to do retail sales until they solved this problem. Another big challenge was that the world discovered hammocks somewhere around year four of their project, where they had once had just a handful of competitors with similar products. All of a sudden, there were a lot of them. Most of those were made in China or Indonesia, which means it's hard to compete on price while maintaining the quality and ethos of their product.
So they know they have to make an exceptional product that is different and make sure people know their story. But they've been doing that. That story and their side hustle is called Color Cloud Hammocks. And since starting, they've sold about 5,000 of them. Somewhere along the way, the hammock making also changed continents and countries from Cambodia to Ethiopia.
As part of the change, they're now able to manufacture and ship an entire year's worth of inventory in one production run, which lowers costs and reduces complexity. But they're still supporting local women who make the hammocks. In addition to selling online in their own shop and through a number of hammock resellers, they're now selling through local gift and garden shops across the US. They also have the capacity to brand hammocks for corporations and events, and have partnered with breweries, businesses, and even the World Domination Summit to create branded hammocks and event hangouts. And don't miss this part.
The Color Cloud team knows they could easily increase their profit margin if they shifted manufacturing to China, just like where many of those competitors make them. But when they started the business, their model to support jobs for women was a core value. Stephanie says as well that many businesses focus on the marketing of giving back, but from her humanitarian experience, she knows that it has an even greater impact to invest in the source of the supply chain. These colorful, happy hammocks have now traveled far and wide, and they really are making the world a better place. And by the way, you can get a 20% discount on your own Color Cloud hammock.
Just head to colorcloudhammocks.com and use coupon code "hustle." Naturally, I will link that up for you on our show notes page. [Music]
Awesome, I hope you enjoyed this happy hammock hustling story. I have been a longtime fan of Color Cloud hammocks. I've actually hammocked myself in Singapore and Sydney, probably a couple other places as well. And these hammocks have been very popular at WDS each year since we started.
If you haven't seen them before, you should at least take a look. They are really fun. There's a Color Cloud tracker where you can see the hammocks around the world. There's a great Instagram account in a Color Cloud. And we'll link all those things up for you on the show notes page, which is cidiscelschool.com/262.
I like how these three friends have built and continue to build a mission-driven business, which is supporting local women in Ethiopia instead of a big factory in China. But it's also making money, and it's also a lot of fun. Well, I hope you're having fun today. I am excited to kick off my 100 City Tour. I hope you will join me for some of that, perhaps physically at one of the stops.
They're all posted at cidiscelschool.com/tour, but if not physically, at least virtually as I go along. We've got a ways to go. As always, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. I'll be back tomorrow and every day. I'm Chris Guillebeau for Cidestle School.
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