This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
No snakes, big sales and the faux leather hustle. Welcome to Side Hustle School. Welcome as well to Throwback Thursday. My name's Chris Guillebeau, your host. In this segment, we take an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved since we first featured them.
Last week we heard how a college student flipped used furniture from Facebook Marketplace. They actually paid off half their tuition bill without ever taking out a loan. Today, we're gonna go to a side hustler who did something very different, built a passionate following by making snake skin wallets without using a single animal product. So as I said, faux leather, faux snake skin, just upcycled materials and a clever story. I guess in some ways it's reminiscent to Near and Deer, the faux taxidermy service that I told you about.
Well, it's actually an e-commerce business just like this one now that I think about it. So yeah, no snakes, big sales, the faux leather hustle. Let's hear this story. I'm gonna pass the microphone to our featured side hustler. I'll be back at the end with a few words of wrap up.
[Music]
All right, so this whole thing started because I was broke, but I wanted a snake skin wallet. If that sounds strange, keep in mind that I love the look of real snake skin, the texture, the slight gloss, but obviously I didn't want to spend $300. And honestly, I wasn't super comfortable with the whole real snake party either. So I was at this fabric recycling place, kinda like a thrift store, but for random materials. And I just started digging through bins, leather scraps, old car upholstery, weird vinyl samples.
And eventually I found this crinkly textured vinyl that looked kinda like snake skin. Not exactly high fashion, but it was convincing enough. I grabbed a few pieces for maybe 10 bucks total, took them home, and stitched together a wallet using the cheapest sewing tools I had. Honestly, it was rough. Like you would not have been impressed, but when I showed it to a couple friends, they were like, wait, that's fake?
That's awesome, can you make me one? And that's when the light bulb went off. I opened an Etsy shop. I called it False Idol Goods, and the whole brand was built around one idea, luxury vibes, no animal harm. I listed the first batch of wallets for $28 each, and it cost me maybe six to $8 to make one depending on what scrap materials I found.
At first I thought it was gonna be like vegans and super eco-friendly folks who would buy them, but actually the people who really loved them were just people who liked telling a good story. They loved being able to say, yeah, it looks like snake skin, but it's made out of an old Honda Civic seat. In the first three months, I sold about 120 wallets, and about a third of buyers would also add a $6 faux snake skin key chain I made as an upsell. So even though each item was relatively cheap, my average order ended up around $34. I didn't run any ads, didn't even have a social media strategy, honestly.
All I did was write fun, weird Etsy descriptions, stuff like reclaimed luxury and cruelty-free swagger, and take really dramatic close-up photos so the texture looked expensive. Pretty quickly, it caught on. Pinterest picked up some of the photos. A couple of eco-lifestyle blogs featured the shop, and suddenly I wasn't just selling wallets, I was selling passport covers, minimalist card holders, and belt pouches, all sticking to that same full luxury, reclaimed materials vibe. Over time, the numbers looked like this.
Shop revenue hit about $2,500 to $3,000 a month pretty steadily. Margins stayed solid, around 65% profit after Etsy fees, and supply costs. Total after two years, just over $42,000 in side income. I kept sourcing everything secondhand or salvaged, which meant my materials costs stayed super low, and it made the story even stronger. Every piece really was one-of-a-kind.
And the customers were weirdly loyal. I had people who bought a wallet, then came back a year later for a matching passport cover. Or they'd message me like, "Hey, any chance you could make a crossbody bag "out of fake crocodile next?" Answer, no, but I appreciated the ambition. Here are my lessons and takeaways. Texture sells.
People shop with their hands and their imaginations, even online. A good story beats a big ad budget. I didn't pay for traffic. People wanted to tell others about their cruelty-free, upcycled wallet. Lastly, weird niches are sticky.
You don't need everyone to love your product. You just need a few people to love it a lot. If you can give people something they're excited to show off, and a story they're excited to tell, you're already halfway to building a real brand. [Music]
Weird niches are sticky. You heard it from our featured style hustler.
You don't need everyone to love your product. You just need a few people to love it a lot. I think somebody out there needs that advice today. If you're trying to figure out what to do, the more specialized you can be, the more weird you can be in some cases, at least as long as there are other people who like your weird thing, that's gonna make your life much easier. A big thanks to our color.
A big thanks to our listeners as well. Thank you for being out there. 3,120 episodes and counting. I make the show for you every day, seven days a week. It's always completely free.
You can download the entire archive of the podcast every single episode, also for free at sidehustleschool.com. You can also ask a question, sign up for a weekly newsletter, and who knows, maybe there's more. Well, in fact, there is more. There are notes pages for every single episode as well. So check that out.
And of course, subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to "Side Hustle School." [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
