Dachshund-Loving Duo Designs Doxie Apparel

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

[Music]

The Doxon loving duo designs Doxy apparel. In this episode, two dog lovers create and grow a wiener dog themed brand that now provides a six figure income. It all started from a side hustle, of course. Welcome friends, welcome to side hustle school. It's Chris Guillebeau, your host, bringing you stories, ideas, tips, case studies, actionable info you can use to start or grow your own money making project, hopefully doing something you love without quitting your job, without going into debt.

For nine years, in fact, this is our 10th season of consecutive daily episodes, seven days a week, 365 days a year, giving you all these case studies, tips, actionable ideas to help you, right? It is to help you, to inspire you, to motivate you, to give you a practical nudge because I want you to be able to have an income generating project of your own. That is our single-minded mission here at side hustle school and I'm so glad you are around. So as mentioned, today we're talking about dogs, Dachshunds specifically. Now there are a few different ways to pronounce that word.

I'm just gonna go with Dachshund. I did some research and I saw that there were three or four different pronunciation versions but I'm gonna go with that. We're talking about that specialized dog breed and speaking of specialization, I often talk about the importance of choosing a niche or getting really specific on who you want to serve. You can't get much more specific than this. Really interesting story.

I got a lot of feedback when we first recorded it many years ago, let's do a new version here. Dachshund loving duo designs Doxy apparel. Stay tuned. [Music]

We've all heard the saying when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. What Claire and Chris Wolfson experienced had nothing to do with citrus, but everything to do with a sudden health scare with their beloved Dachshund Bean.

After experiencing paralysis in his back legs, Bean was able to have serious and seriously expensive back surgery and then make a full recovery. Go Bean. That was a traumatic experience for Claire and Chris but Bean's strength really inspired this designerly duo to create something in his honor. They originally wanted to design and develop harnesses to support back health and dogs prone to injury but without any background in that area, they felt intimidated. So they decided to use their apparel and graphic design skills to create a series of knit beanie hats called Bean Beanies.

Chris developed the logo while Claire helped source beanies and even sewed on their custom labels. At this time, they both were working full-time corporate jobs while selling Bean Beanies on the side. It was just a fun project. Startup costs were low. They spent 10 bucks a month for their online shop.

And that first year they made around a thousand dollars. They tapped into a niche audience they didn't realize would be so supportive. And supportive is an understatement. The Doxy community, that's Doxy for Doxent, is vast and tight knit. That first thousand bucks made Claire and Chris wonder, could we build this brand beyond beanies?

Short answer, yes, they could and yes, they would. So let's talk about how. While they were getting Bean Beanies off the ground, Claire quit her full-time job to explore a master's program. Realizing quickly that it wasn't the right road, she quit the program and focused on some freelance work to fill the gap. Quick little side note here.

If grad school is not working for you, just stop. Don't do it. Okay, back to the show. Freelance work isn't always consistent and Claire found herself with an abundance of free time as well as uncertainty about what to do. By applying for unemployment, she actually came upon a small business program.

She decided to join that program and focus on Bean Goods full-time. She dove in expanding the product assortment to include graphic tees, tanks, accessories for Doxies and their owners. Now Chris was still working a full-time day job, but he made some additional product designs and that year they earned $16,000. They continued to make improvements and in year three, they made over $90,000, $93,000 in fact. And that was the moment when Chris decided to quit his full-time gig to focus on Bean Goods.

With the duo now dedicated to their own business, the next couple of years, they consistently brought over $100,000 a year in profits and Claire wanted to push it beyond what seemed like a bit of a plateau. So she decided to take an online course about Facebook ads and that was a game changer because it allowed them to grow their audience and drive more traffic to the site. Two tips from her. Number one, learning how to target certain Facebook pages that have similar interests, which is especially helpful when your audience is so niche. And then two, using Instagram polls by serving up new designs and asking which users like best.

It gives them instant feedback to decide how to grow an inventory. With the help of that course, Bean Goods made over $150,000 the next year, which was their best year yet. And in fact, the best part of the experience for Claire and Chris is definitely the freedom, freedom from the Sunday night anxiety of treading the day job, freedom to learn new skills, to invest in a project you love, freedom to have a work-life balance unlike any other. At the time of our story, it was still just Claire and Chris running Bean Goods full-time. The next steps included looking at the idea of hiring a virtual assistant, they were also shifting their shop from a previous platform to Shopify to have more features, more SEO capabilities, more social functionality.

Bean the Datsun was still doing well, and he also had a brother named Van. Both dogs actively involved in executive decision-making. And in fact, we could say the business is barking up the right tree. [Music]

BeanGoods.com, still operational, rad goods for doxy lovers, that's the tagline, not your grandma's wiener dog shop. That's a little subtitle.

In fact, they've served over a hundred thousand customers, a hundred thousand happy pups and people, which is just so remarkable, right? For a small business, this is why I love small businesses. People out there that have found a niche, found a way to serve a specific audience, a community really, is a group of people who all share similar values. And if you're not into Dachshunds, like last week I was talking about renting chickens, if that's not your thing, the whole point is there is a thing for you. You need to figure out what is the thing?

Who are the other people who like this thing? Not just like, but are passionate about that thing. And that might be the ticket to your first or next Side Hustle. Perhaps even a small business, perhaps something even life-changing. You never know, there's something for everyone.

That's the whole point of Side Hustle School. Thank you for listening today. Complete archive of the podcast, 3,287 plus episodes available for free. Download or streaming on the website, sidehustleschool.com. Always free as well wherever you get your podcasts.

My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]

- From the Onward Project.