Designer Makes Magnificent Menswear

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

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Over the past few years, we have seen a significant rise in direct to consumer brands. Companies like Casper and Dollar Shave Club became household names nearly overnight, at least partially thanks to the world of podcasts. If you listen to a lot of podcasts, you're probably hearing ads for companies like that all the time, all these companies that are doing direct to consumer marketing. In fact, some predictions have the entire direct consumer market becoming a $175 billion industry by 2023. So what's different about these brands?

Well, they are fast moving, perhaps faster than the larger, more traditional brands. They just have less weight. They have flatter structures. They can make decisions quicker, et cetera, which can also create an opportunity for people who want to do business with them. Now, of course, this is a side hustle school.

So it's not so much about companies here. We are about individuals. Like I am interested in helping individuals create freedom and opportunity, make some of that money, perhaps some of that $175 billion, at least a good portion of it. So in this story, in today's case study, a menswear designer who's also a new mom goes in search of flexibility and freelancing. After quitting her stable job, she pitches direct to consumer brands and ends up with plenty of work.

Let's talk about how this all came to be and what she learned along the way. The story is called "Designer Makes Magnificent Menswear." It's coming up, well, you guessed it, after this message from our sponsor. [Music]

Amy Barnhart never aspired to work for herself or even start a side hustle. As a menswear designer for Tommy Bahamas, she liked the security of working for a large company. Or at least that was the case until she had her first child.

The fast-paced environment of the big brand world had its advantages, but they quickly evaporated once Amy became a parent. What she really wanted in place of a steady paycheck and corporate lunches was more free time and autonomy. She tried to switch to a part-time role, but it soon became apparent that that wasn't an option. So instead she did something bold. Amy took a leap of faith, quit her job, and began a quest to make a living freelancing.

And she would choose to focus that freelancing on the menswear industry. It was scary, but she'd been through school for apparel design and had spent eight years working in the field. She knew that a lot of freelancers in this space didn't have that real world experience. And that difference would make her stand out from the pack, or so she hoped. She figured all she had to do was find a few clients.

How hard could it be? But having no business background, she wasn't sure how to do it. It turned out her lack of knowledge on how to do things a traditional way led to some unconventional methods of sewing up new business. First, Amy decided to cold email a number of contacts. However, rather than do this randomly, she chose highly targeted prospects in the menswear industry whose products she actually liked.

To create that list of prospects, she looked at trade show exhibitor lists and scoured Instagram. She would browse the pages of menswear companies she'd liked in the past and look at suggested accounts that were similar to their brands. Another key point here, she avoided big brands. Instead, she targeted direct-to-consumer companies who were either just starting out or somewhat early on in their journey. With a list of businesses in hand, it was time to start cold emailing.

But wait, the next challenge was to find the right contacts or email addresses for each brand. So to do that, she used a combination of their own websites and LinkedIn. And when she wasn't able to find an email address, she'd make an educated guess. In many cases, employees at companies will use their first name or a combination of first name and last name for their email. With that, she rolled up her sleeves and got to work.

Amy crafted a tailor-made email to each prospect. In each one of those messages, she would praise their work, outline her previous experience, and note how it related to their business. Amy found that for every 10 emails she sent, she'd received two or three responses. That's actually a pretty good response rate, which Amy puts down to choosing the right targeted prospects and creating custom emails for each one. In other words, the mass generic emails don't work.

Once she had her foot in the door and a company wanted to know more, it was time to pitch. For that, Amy devised three different services. The first was package design. The second was what's known as a tech pack. Think of it as a blueprint for a factory to produce an item.

It includes details like fabric and colors, lots of specifications. The last and most lucrative was full product development. That included everything from the first two services plus additional handholding to see the product through to completion. Amy discovered that most of the businesses she pitched to, at least the ones that wanted to have conversations, needed help with all three. Many of the founders she talked to were very much learning on the job and welcomed the idea of an experienced freelancer who could hold their hand through the process.

What she offered was so in demand that in just her first 10 cold emails, she secured two clients and instantly felt like the whole crazy idea was validated. When she received the first check for her work, she celebrated by taking a walk around the block in the middle of the day because there was no boss to tell her she couldn't. Over the next year, Amy realized she actually liked running her own business. It surprised her considering she'd never really thought about it before having her baby, but she liked it in ways that didn't only relate to the original goals of flexibility and free time as a new parent. Fast forward to today and Amy doesn't need to cold email anymore since she gets enough business through word of mouth.

So much so that she makes a consistent income working only 10 hours a week. She's gone from being an employee to a parent to her own boss and more. [Music]

You can learn more about Amy's business at amylensdesign.com. We will of course link it up in the show notes page as well. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better.

I hope that you'll listen to these stories and ask yourself, what is it that I could do? What idea could I pursue? And what is the next step to pursue that idea? Those show notes for today are at sidehustleschool.com/16831683. From that page, you can also ask a question for the show or apply to be featured, all kinds of other fun stuff.

And you can subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts. Hope you'll come back tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]

from the Onward Project.