Craftsman Creates $350,000 Hustle from Handcrafted Leather Products

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

Welcome back to Side Hustle School. I'm Chris Guillebeau. Got a fun story for you today. One very important message of the show is that you can make money by making something you love, as long as you focus on other people and why that thing should matter to them too. And today we have another manufacturing story.

It's all about someone who makes a direct transition from day job to side hustle. So often the transition is a bit more indirect. Somebody's doing something at night that has nothing to do with what they do for their day job. But today's story is more closely related. And as you listen, think about where you work and what kind of work that you do.

And ask if that may inspire you to create your second income or your third income. I'll tell you all about the craftsman who creates a $350,000 hustle from handcrafted leather products right after this. [Music]

By day, Phil Callis works in development and operations at Horween Leather Company, 112 year old Tannery in Chicago, Illinois. Working around leather all day is actually what inspired Phil to start his side hustle. Phil is constantly surrounded by hundreds of sheets of different colored and textured leather.

And he wanted to create something he could use and appreciate every day. Leathermaking had been a hobby for him. So he started by creating leather wallets and bags for himself out of the most unique styles of leather he came across. Soon his friends were admiring his handy work and saying they wanted these things for themselves. After about a year of receiving compliments and requests, Phil and his good friend Dan, who's also in the leather business, decided to try a side hustle selling their handcrafted leather products online.

Now, since creating leather products requires some materials and specialized tools, there were some real startup costs in getting this hustle off the ground. They did everything they could to bootstrap. They worked out of Dan's garage. And all of these supplies and tools cost about $5,000. They invested in those tools, but they didn't spend much money on marketing.

They used a platform called Big Cartel to create a website and slowly they began to get organic traffic through some simple search engine optimization efforts. And they weren't doing bad at all. Every month they'd have a couple of thousand dollars worth of orders. But then came a big surprise. A large retailer in Asia placed a wholesale order through this website, and that order was worth more than $50,000.

Now, if you think that's awesome, it is pretty awesome, but when you think about manufacturing, you might realize it also created a big challenge. In Phil's words, he said, "It was exciting, but also very exhausting. To fill that order, I stayed up late many nights and I worked many weekends." Still, it was worth it. And a year later, they got another big break. When the owner of the tannery Phil worked for started up a specialty leather store in Chicago.

He loved their products and wanted to showcase them on his website. With his expertise and authority in the leather industry, it gave their hustle a big boost in both credibility and visibility. It wasn't long before they outgrew Dan's garage where they had been bootstrapping and needed to find a new place to work. Fortunately, a space behind the tannery became available and they moved everything there where they still work today. As time went on, they were able to optimize their manufacturing process and spend a bit more time on marketing.

They moved their website from Big Cartel to Shopify. They started a weekly newsletter with special offers and an Instagram feed where they published daily posts featuring their favorite leathers and interesting manufacturing techniques. They've also worked with a company called Massdrop. And this company cultivates communities where people with common interests can learn together and not just learn together, but also buy together. And they've sold hundreds of wallets through this partnership.

Now all of these efforts both localized and virtual have paid off quite a bit for them. Phil and Dan now receive more than 500 visitors a day to their website and they have a conversion rate of about 1.5%. So they figured out as long as they get visitors coming to their website, a certain percentage of them in their case, 1.5% are gonna purchase something. So that's why they focus more attention on building traffic to their website. And this adds up to about $350,000 worth of merchandise sold annually.

And that sounds like a lot and it is, but keep in mind their material costs are pretty high and they've also done some outsourcing and contract hiring to help manage production and customer service. As much as Phil and Dan both love the extra income, they also love that they get to create something that people are excited to buy. Phil also said that he really loved the challenge of figuring out how to overcome new hurdles in this business. It wasn't something he had done before and he enjoyed the exploration process. Figuring out where to host their online store, how to tell the story of their leather, how to take good photos of the wallets and other items they made.

And ultimately the community they've created with their customers is what motivates them to keep creating fun, unique products. [Music]

So as I said, when we started, it's probably more common to find a side hustle and something that isn't so directly related to what you do for your day job. But there are exceptions and this story is a great exception. Phil and then his partner, Dan, both worked at a tannery. Then they started creating their own handcrafted leather projects without quitting their jobs.

And then the owner of the tannery ends up getting on board and featuring their products on his website and in his store, which gave them that credibility and visibility. And finally, they were able to get a space for their workshop behind the tannery where Phil has his day job. So obviously it doesn't always work like that. But if it hadn't worked this way, it still could have been a success some other way. They could have found a different space.

If the owner of the tannery didn't have a shop, well, maybe they would have focused more on online sales. Maybe they would have focused more on wholesale business like that big $50,000 order they got when they first started. There's all kinds of ways it could have worked. This story is one of them. And there's all kinds of ways that your story could work too.

You really don't know what's gonna happen until you begin experimenting. So I hope you don't wait too long to do that. I hope you're already experimenting, coming up with ideas and figuring out what the next steps are for those ideas. I mentioned a number of resources in this episode. If you wanna come to sidehustleschool.com/95, you can find the show notes and I'll link all those things up.

I would also love to give you a free five steps to hustle course. You can get that right on the website. Thank you for listening. Keep hustling. I'm Chris Guillebeau.

I'll see you tomorrow. [Music]