TV Producer Sells Monogrammed Scarves; Earns $1,000 Riding Subway

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

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Side Hustle School friends and listeners, welcome back, it is a pleasure, as always, to be able to speak to you and bring you these stories of people just like you starting a side hustle, making money without quitting their day job, looking at their origin story, how they got their ideas, how they made it happen, how it's affected their lives, usually how much money it's made. And if you are new, I do this every single day, seven days a week, about six days a week for stories on the seventh day we have a weekly recap. And I often talk about the power of observation, how if you can learn to spot potential profitable ideas, this is probably the most valuable skill you can acquire, at least in terms of side hustling and making money throughout your life. Because when you learn to spot ideas, it's not just one thing that opens up, it's all sorts of potential and possibilities. So today's episode is about the power of observation in practice and specifically using Etsy for market testing.

Now we've had a number of Etsy stories recently, I know that some people love them and others are like, "Well, I don't need another Etsy story." There's something really interesting about this one that I think you'll like, even if you have no plans to make something handcrafted, you're not a crafter or an artist, you can learn something from this woman's story. It's all about a TV producer who sells monogram scarves, and one day she earns $1,000 riding the subway to work. She actually earns a lot more than that on a regular basis. But as you'll hear, that was one special morning that I wanted to highlight and pull out for you. That story is coming right up after a quick shout out to our sponsor.

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Today's story comes from Kirsten Legrecca in Hoboken, New Jersey. By day, she's a TV casting producer at a big production company in New York City. Her side hustle, Rosa Gold, is a scarf brand that gives back, trying to wrap the world in a little more love, as she likes to say. She donates a percentage of profits to pencils of promise and donor's shoes because she's passionate about education, especially for young girls. But how did this come to be in the first place?

Well, that's what's interesting. Kirsten's e-commerce site blossomed out of an Etsy store she opened in 2014 as a testing ground for a lot of ideas she had swirling around her head. She'd come up with an idea, order a sample or two, post a listing, and then order more if it was getting a lot of views, favorites, and orders. She also posted a few images on Instagram, but mainly relied on the built-in traffic from Etsy to get sales. Etsy taught her how to listen to her customers, and she'd pay attention to custom orders people asked for, especially if two or more people asked for the same thing.

When she was in college, Kirsten had spent her nights and weekends working as a merchandiser, so she knew that putting items that weren't selling on a mannequin or just moving them around would often lead to them flying off the shelves. Since Etsy's entirely online, she decided to try the same concept by taking new product images for items that weren't selling well. She began to specialize in scarfs when she wanted a monogrammed blanket scarf for herself, but she had in mind a specific style that she couldn't find, and she also didn't like the style of monogrammed fonts she saw, so she decided to make her own, and her monogrammed blanket scarves were the product that stuck more than any other. After two years, she decided she wanted to go bigger than Etsy, and she's still there, but she's also migrated everything to its own site, added some additional projects, including bandanas and t-shirts, and started to build it into more of a brand. Kirsten's initial startup costs were very low.

She just spent about $250 on that first Etsy shop, and she grew her business as organically as possible. When she first started, Kirsten bought wholesale products and then sold them, but she wanted to design her own products, so she tested out manufacturers she found online. She started with a lot of cold emailing to scarf factories all over the world, finally settling on one that proved to be a great partner. They make the scarves and ship them to her, and she still does all of the monogramming herself. Because scarf sales are seasonal, Kirsten can sell as little as $1,500 of product a month, or as much as $10,000 to $20,000 in product.

To account for that seasonality, she's trying to incorporate more year-round products, and she also recently launched summer blanket scarves to increase her sales in the warmer months. She was able to negotiate low minimums with the factory for those, so it wasn't a huge risk, and she's waiting to see what happens and how people respond, because trying new things is, in fact, what she's built this business on. Now, here's a great high point in Kirsten's story so far. One time she was on a train heading to work in New York City, and she noticed on her phone that she sold $1,000 worth of product during the ride, and then by the time she walked 10 minutes to her office, she made another $1,000. While silently freaking out at her desk, she checked her website analytics and saw that it was because of a radio mention on Elvis Duran in "The Morning Show" and a content push to their site via social media.

She says that day was crazy. She was sitting at work watching her phone explode and getting bombarded with customer messages and phone calls. She was completely sold out of inventory by 9 a.m., so she crafted an email telling people there'd be a two-week wait to receive their order, but only one person canceled. Because of days like those and her constant improvement and tweaking, Kirsten's main goal is to turn this side hustle into a full-time job. And her self-imposed deadline is January 1.

As she's figuring more things out along the way, she's moving closer and closer to that full-time goal while continuing her Etsy testing process to see what works best. [Music]

Well, even though I have never sold anything on Etsy, I related very much to the story because the testing process that Kirsten uses is very similar to what I did long, long ago when I used to sell on eBay. And when I was trying to figure that out for my very first side hustle, I would buy a bunch of different stuff and then list it up. Just like Kirsten, I would pay attention to what got the most views, the most bids, what sold for the highest price. I would also look at popular categories and see what were the most popular items within those categories.

And that was great because it was real-life market testing. And just like we highlighted in this story, sites like Etsy have tremendous built-in marketplace. So if you build your own site, you have to worry about getting traffic to it. But if you're selling something on one of these sites, you can very quickly and easily test what people respond to. And it's totally possible to do this creatively over time and then eventually find your niche or find the thing that you're gonna specialize in.

That's exactly what Kirsten did. You too could do that in your own way. Maybe it's not Etsy, maybe it's another site. You'll probably end up with a totally different product than she did. But this process of real-world experimentation is so good because people are actually paying for stuff.

It's not just like asking 10 of your friends, hey, what do you think about this? It's putting it out in the marketplace and seeing what people buy. So congrats Kirsten, I think that's super awesome. Listeners, as always, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. If you wanna find the show notes for today's episode and check out Kirsten's shop, just come on over to sidehustleschool.com/221.

That is for episode 221. More stories and lessons and occasional entertainment are on the way. I will be back tomorrow starting at 601 a.m. Eastern time. But you know what?

That's just when the episode goes out. You can listen whenever you want. I hope you're having a great day wherever you are. I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School. [Music]