This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey everybody, what's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau, so glad you're here. We are approaching the end of April, 2021, episode 1580, 1,580 for you here. This is also the Throwback Thursday segment, Where Are They Now?
Where we take an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved since we first featured them. Last week we heard from an athlete who sets out to create chewable energy gum. It is, in fact, gum believable. Today in our latest feature, we'll hear from Steven Chu in Northern California, who together with his wife, operates a couple of different businesses, including the one we're gonna focus on here, Bumblebee Linens. Bumblebee Linens, we first featured them back in episode 928, so quite a while now.
That was a really interesting story. He's actually got a pretty cool origin story that he'll touch on a bit in his update. But since then, a lot of other things have happened, including the fact that after they experienced a ton of growth, they ran into a huge problem one year ago when people stopped getting married, or at least they stopped having large weddings, and much of the travel industry shut down, as I'm sure you are aware. What you may not be aware is that Bumblebee Linens was able to pivot in a remarkable way. So I'll let Steve tell you more specifically about how Bumblebee has taken flight once again, after returning to the hive to regroup in the early days of the pandemic.
All right, Steve Chu, I'll come back at the end to wrap us up. [Music]
My name is Steve Chu. I'm from Santa Clara, California in the United States, and I run two side hustles, an e-commerce store called Bumblebee Linens.com, and a blog over at mywifequitterjob.com, and I was featured in episode 928. For Bumblebee Linens, we sell handkerchiefs and linens for special occasions like weddings, baptisms, and other events. So we got started, ironically, because my wife is a crier.
At our wedding, she knew that she wanted a handkerchief for the photos, 'cause she knew she was gonna cry, and we couldn't find them anywhere. We looked all over the place in the US, couldn't find any place. Finally, we found this factory in China that was willing to sell us a bunch of handkerchiefs. So we ended up buying a couple hundred handkerchiefs. We used maybe six for the wedding, and then sold the rest on eBay, and they ended up moving like hotcakes.
And so fast forward three years, my wife became pregnant with our first child. She wanted to quit her six-figure job, basically, as a financial analyst. And where we live in the Silicon Valley, I don't know where it's like where you guys live, super expensive here. You basically need two incomes in order to get a good house and a good school district. So we remembered that when we got married, we listed those handkerchiefs on eBay, and they sold like hotcakes, so we got back in touch with that vendor, imported a bunch of handkerchiefs, and started bumblebeelinens.com.
During COVID-19, as you know, certain e-commerce goods thrived and others tanked. So for example, due to shelter-in-place laws, office supplies, health and fitness, beauty and cosmetics, home improvement, all those categories skyrocketed, but on the flip side, luggage, swimwear, cameras, bridal and formal wear, and party and event supplies went down on average over 50%. And unfortunately, my e-commerce store, Bumblebee Linens, was a business that was hit pretty hard in March of 2020. During that time, my revenue was sliced by more than half when the coronavirus first hit the United States. And as you know, as I mentioned earlier, my primary products are handkerchiefs for weddings and special occasions.
I also sell personalized and monogrammed napkins for parties, hotels and airlines. So basically, my store was hit hard on practically every front. After all, no one was getting married or throwing parties, but perhaps we could remarket our existing products with a different spin. So we basically thought of different ways to transform our hankies into essential goods that people actually needed to buy. After all, if you think about it, a handkerchief is fundamentally just a piece of fabric, and fabric can be molded into practically anything.
So on April 4th, we published a tutorial on how to turn a handkerchief into a face mask without any sewing required. And in addition, we gave away a free handkerchief with any purchase specifically for the purpose of making a mask. Even though we saw great success selling handkerchiefs for the do-it-yourself face masks, we also started getting inquiries from customers who wanted to buy ready-made face masks instead of making them themselves. And so we just got on the phone with our Chinese suppliers to see whether we could adapt our existing fabric to create our own line of masks with our own designs. And we also reached out to existing mask makers to see what we could stock immediately.
And in early May, we launched our first line of colorful face masks using our handkerchief fabric and properly sold out within one hour. We also then introduced a line of monogrammed and personalized face masks, which sold really well as well. So all that stuff happened with our e-commerce store. And what ended up happening is business just skyrocketed after we started pivoting to quarantine gifts. And we actually ended the year up overall, even though we had the worst march in April in the history of the company.
Everything just came roaring back. And I think there's no looking back in terms of e-commerce. E-commerce is the place to be. And to give you an example of why I believe that's the case, it's because prior to COVID-19, my mom, she never used to buy anything online. But during COVID-19, because she couldn't go out, she now gets her groceries online, she buys everything online.
And this is what most people are doing now. They're getting used to buying everything online. I actually don't advise people to follow on our exact footsteps today. I think the simplest, most straightforward way, and again, if you're a little reluctant or risk averse, I think the simplest way to succeed in e-commerce today is to start off by selling on a marketplace like Amazon or eBay that has a built-in audience that can drive you traffic. And what you wanna do is you wanna buy a small quantity of goods from somewhere and then just try to sell it.
And if the demand is there, then you can spend the time to launch your website, place a bulk order, and then reduce your cost of goods to maximize your profits. We started out with the website, which is a lot more work. And I found that, you know, as humans, often we'd like to see quick wins and a bigger marketplace will allow you to do that. [Music]
Steve, thank you so much. Really appreciate that detailed update.
Steve had actually has a lot of lessons for you. If you're curious, you might wanna check out not only bumbleblinens.com, which is a pretty stellar example of an e-commerce site, but also his other site at mywifequitherjob.com. So Steve does a lot of stuff. He's also got a new podcast, probably some other projects that have come out since I started working on this update. So I respect the hustle.
Throwback Thursday was one of our most popular features of 2020, and as you've heard, we're gonna keep it going this year as well. Let me know what you think and who you'd like to see featured from our archives of more than 1,000 stories. Also, if you've got a question or an update for us, just come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. Last but not least, why was the bee fired from the barber shop? It's because he only knew how to give a buzz cut.
You're welcome. Feel free to pass that one on. I'll be here all week. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the "Onward Project."
