This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Hey, Side Hustle School listeners. This is Chris Guillebeau. I'm glad you're here. When you are thinking about what to sell for your side hustle, sometimes it's good to think about luxury items. Don't just think about what people need, think about what they want.
Because if you're just selling something that people need, it can be hard to compete, it can be hard to create some kind of differentiation. But if you focus on luxury, all the things that we don't really need in life, but we like to have, you might find some kind of creative option there. Today's creative option started by a side hustler, of course, is a luxury toothbrush, like a fancy toothbrush, wooden, handcrafted. You'll hear all about it and how this guy was able to produce polished profits. I realized we just talked yesterday about beards, about this guy who grows a beard and then sets out on a quest to create the world's greatest beard oil.
Not everyone needs beard oil, but most people need to brush their teeth. So this guy today has basically doubled the market of people from yesterday. Anyway, from beards to toothbrushes, this wasn't hygiene week on side hustle school. It's just another good story. And I'll bring that to you right after this quick message from our sponsor.
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It was spring 2015 and Andrew McDonald got the phone call he knew was coming. The company he was working for was closing. He had been managing corporate sales at the same company for the past six years and had been the one relaying the dreary financial reports to the higher ups, which is why he hadn't been caught totally unprepared. Months earlier, he had seen the writing on the wall and begun some subtle job searching, but the options he found would have required a severe pay cut. So he thought since he was 28 years old, he already had a house and a car.
Why not start his own thing? In order to prepare for this coming lifestyle change, he sold his fancy car, cut back his spending. And when his job officially ended, he spent some time planning what would come next. He looked back through his idea book, or as he calls it, his book of cool things and got to work. And trying to decide what to do next, he even spent a week in silence at a monastery.
And in the end, he had six ideas that he felt were actionable, then he whittled those down further to two ideas, a men's clothing shop and a high-end toothbrush. Andrew focused first on the clothing shop because it was the idea he was most comfortable with, having spent over a decade in men's retail sales and had the highest potential for profit. That's not really what our story is about. He knew he could make the clothing shop work, and by January 2016, he had come together and was on track to being profitable. So that was great, and it freed him up to turn his attention to his side hustle, which was that high-end toothbrush.
He spent a fair amount of time thinking about this market. In particular, he realized that men were already spending money on nice grooming products, just like we heard about in yesterday's story. Some of these guys were buying wood-handled razors or badger hairbrushes to shave, but then they would pick up a plastic toothbrush to brush their teeth. So when imagining the design of the toothbrush, Andrew kept this market in mind. And the next step was the design, which Andrew did on the cheap.
He used the website Upwork to hire a Swedish architect for $150. He worked with him for about a month to get two beautifully designed toothbrushes. From there, Andrew went to another website called shapeways.com, where he had the toothbrushes 3D printed in various sizes and thicknesses for $100. He now had a design and a prototype that he liked, but from here on out, things got complicated. The next step was figuring out the material.
Because he envisioned that it would be made from wood, he went to local hardwood and specialty wood shops and asked people every question he could think of. He would go two to three times a week with more and more questions. Luckily, the hardwood and exotic craftsmen he was talking to were very passionate about what they do and more than happy to chat and share. But the more he learned about wood, the more he realized how tricky it was gonna be. If you use a lot of pressure when you brush your teeth, you run the risk of snapping your wooden toothbrush in half.
That was a no-go. Also, some woods are poisonous to humans, and some other woods just wouldn't hold up to repeatedly getting wet multiple times a day. Eventually, Andrew found some beautiful and super strong hardwoods. The next thing to consider was protecting them from water while still keeping them safe to put in your mouth. He really wanted beeswax to work, and he even worked with a local beekeeper to find the perfect blend.
But no matter what he did, whenever he coated his toothbrushes with beeswax, for some reason they tasted like, well, like beeswax. Luckily, just as he was admitting defeat with the beeswax, he found a German firm who had developed a coating that was specifically designed for wooden children's toys. Perfect, except one more big challenge. Next, he had to figure out how to get the bristles into the beautiful wooden handle. Plastic toothbrushes have the tufts of bristles inserted into the holes using a machine that can pump out thousands of toothbrushes an hour.
Andrew figured that one of these companies would be able to run his wooden toothbrushes through their machine with no problem, but it turned out that the slight variation in size, literally 1/64th of an inch, was enough to jam up the machines. He tried a broom maker, a vintage toothbrush maker, a bamboo toothbrush maker, anyone that he could think of, but no one could do it. The best he found was a Canadian company that had a 1/3 breakage rate. Now, at this point, he had spent about $900 on design, prototyping, wood, and other miscellaneous costs, which is still not that much money when you think about all he's done so far. But Andrew took a step back and realized he'd been putting all his toothbrushes into one basket.
So he started looking for alternatives, which was at first difficult to do since he'd invested so much time in getting that wooden handle to work, but he realized those were just sunk costs he had to focus on the future. Through his connections at the clothing shop, he found an old Italian company, best known for luxury hairbrushes, but they'd also developed a line of toothbrushes that were both beautiful and functional. They were able to produce them at a fraction of a cost that Andrew would have been able to produce his toothbrushes because they already had the manufacturing in place. So Andrew changed his plan a bit. He stepped in and simply brought their product to North America and decided to become a reseller.
And from this point on, his needs were much simpler. He bought a Shopify theme for $250, a domain name for $10, $350 worth of initial toothbrush stock, and $100 worth of shipping supplies. His monthly costs are $29 for Shopify and $19 for Recharge, a subscription service. He then set up Google AdWords to drive traffic, which has been pretty cheap since luxury toothbrush isn't a super popular search term. And that accounts for most of the visitors he gets to his website.
He uses Stripe and PayPal to process payments, and a few months after starting was bringing in about $1,000 a month. That's not a huge amount of money, of course, but financially, this side hustle gives Andrew the ability to spend more time and money on new side hustles. He's kind of like me or like a lot of us. We just can't stop starting things. He's already working on launching his next product thanks to the extra income from the toothbrushes.
And beyond the extra money, Andrew loves that he gets to manage the entire supply chain of his side hustle. From sourcing to packaging up the orders for customers, it's all him, he does everything himself. And even though he ended up not manufacturing his own product, he's still really excited about providing something unique and different to people who appreciate a luxury good. [Music]
So in this story, even though Andrew ended up reselling, just purchasing someone else's product and then selling it himself, at first he pursued this path of becoming a manufacturer, making his own product. And he had almost figured that out for less than $1,000.
So if there's something you're thinking of making, probably a couple of lessons here. One, it doesn't have to cost a lot. Like you can get a prototype made without spending a lot of money. And two, it's also totally fine and reasonable may actually be better. As you investigate that process, if you find something else that's already out there, you're not failing if you abandon your manufacturing idea, you're just choosing something else.
Being willing to experiment and not only experiment, but being willing to change course is a powerful skill. Now, as I said, luxury items are much better than generic items. Nobody needs a handcrafted toothbrush, but it's not just about what people need. It's about what they desire, what they want, what makes them feel better. And Andrew has found a special way to tap into that.
Well, speaking of taking care of your teeth, remember to be nice to your dentist. They have fillings too. And by now you know the drill. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. Today's show notes, including links to everything I talked about, Andrew's toothbrush hustle, the site he used to find the architect to do his initial design, as well as the platform he used to create that prototype, anything else we find that will all be at sidehustleschool.com/230.
If you've got a comment or question for the show, give me a call on the Hustle hotline that is 844-9HUSTLE. Another fun story is coming up tomorrow. I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School. [Music]
