This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hello, friends, what's up? Welcome back to another episode of "Sidus Old School." Did I mention yesterday, in fact, I'm pretty sure I did, that we have just completed 3,400 episodes. This one is in fact 3,401, 3,401. Thank you so much for being out there all this time, or even if you're new, thanks for joining us. I'm excited to bring you new stories every day.
Today, an art director turns passion for puppets into profit. Passion for puppets into profit. She is, in fact, an advertising executive who discovers the world of puppet fabric and unlocks an all new career. She turns her passion for puppets into payables. I should have put that in the title as well.
Payables, profit, whatever it is, she's found a way to do something she enjoys and get paid for it, which is, if we're gonna be really simple and reductive, the entire point of "Sidus Old School." I want you to be able to do something you enjoy and get paid for it, okay? So when you hear these stories, think about how you might apply this kind of thinking or the practical steps that the person took, how you might apply that to your own idea, your own side hustle idea, your next business idea, something you're working on. And of course, it could be completely unrelated to the topic at hand. Maybe you're not into puppets. Yesterday, we had a story about a Hoboken, New Jersey blog, like a very specific regionally targeted blog that had something like 25 employees now, which is crazy, right, for a blog.
And so maybe you're not in New Jersey, maybe you're not into puppets, but there's something you can do as well. And so that's why I'm giving you all these different stories. Without further ado, art director turns passion for puppets into profit or payables, profit and payables, let's say, both of those. The story is coming right up. [Music]
Lori Nickerson, an advertising art director, knew she didn't want to work behind a desk.
Eight hours a day, staring at a computer screen, left her sad, sore and searching. She wanted a job that was creatively fulfilling, one that allowed her to share her love for arts and crafts with others. And seeing as she couldn't find one, she decided to create it. Lori and her justice creative mom, Cindy, began renting studio space where they could teach classes and offer other services such as long arm quilting. And when she wasn't at work, Lori found she spent more and more of her spare time at the studio.
She also picked up an exciting side project, puppet making. Lori loved the process of making puppets because every stage of the process was done by hand. There was no puppet by numbers system. There was no puppet AI. You just had to do the work from scratch yourself.
Now this was fun. And one of the most fun yet challenging aspects was dyeing the puppet fabric. She felt like it was the perfect blend of science and art, trying to get the colors to stick properly and turn out just how she wanted. You see, puppets are made from a fabric called Antron Fleece. And when you purchase this fleece, it only comes in pure white and the puppet maker needs to dye it to the color they want.
Even in small quantities, this can be notoriously difficult to do in your bathroom or kitchen. But at the studio, Lori had more than enough space to create all the puppet fabrics she needed. Much to her surprise, Lori found other people in the puppet making community didn't enjoy dyeing their fabrics anywhere near as much. In fact, for many of them, it was a burden. On one particularly frustrating day at work, she's sitting at her agency and Lori's mind keeps wondering to how she had the space and the love of the process to solve this problem for others.
So when she got home that day, she decided to make a simple website. You know, we love those. And she called this site Puppet Peltz. Puppet Peltz, you can still see it now. PuppetPeltz.com posting photos of fabric in several different colors for sale.
She then shared the link with a couple of puppet groups she was in to see if there were any takers. Now there was an instant demand for this service and puppeteers kept coming back weeks and months later to ask for more. That was when Lori knew she had a new business on her hands. Still, not one to rush in too quickly. Lori started small when creating the next run of the fabric.
She bought 50 yards from her fleece distributor, Larry, and used simple craft dyes to create the colors. This allowed her to keep the cost low and focus on just a few options. Not too much customization. And if you want to know more about Larry, well, there's a fun fact about Larry, but I'll get to that in the wrap up. For now, the small production was enough for the initial growth of the business, but it came with some drawbacks.
The dyes they used were tricky to work with. They often didn't bind or create the right color, which is a problem when you're trying to dye to a specific color. Also, making smaller, more frequent pieces was time consuming. So to start creating more pieces at scale, Lori and Cindy would need to use acid dyes. Now that might sound sinister, acid dyes, you know, but they're actually normal.
They produce much less waste than what they were previously using. So to use those dyes, they would also need some specialist equipment in the form of a 60 gallon soup pot. The soup pot, which I don't think is also used for soup, it is just for the acid dyes. It allows them to create color blends without any nasty chemical reactions or damaging anything else in the studio. All right, let's talk about pricing.
Lori and Cindy chose the pricing for their fabric based on how much they wanted to earn per hour after the cost of raw materials. And they wanted professional puppet makers to get the highest quality products possible, but they also wanted affordable options that hobbyists could buy. One of the most frustrating parts of this business is that everything moves at a snail's pace. It can take four months from ordering fabric to receiving it, but Lori doesn't mind it too much. She says, it's only puppets.
Nobody dies if the shipment is late, which I think is a pretty good life philosophy. Now at the time of our last feature, puppet pelts was averaging around $9,000 a month in revenue, and more importantly, had freed Lori from the shackles of her nine to five job. Looking to the future, puppet pals plan to expand into offering a complete range of colors, fabrics, and accessories. They also recently relocated from Las Vegas to Orchard, Massachusetts, and we're looking forward to the challenge of working from a bigger and better space. [Music]
Well, it's been a while since we talked about Lori and the puppet pelts business.
I went to visit the website, which is still operating. All kinds of stuff you can buy, order, learn about. But it also looks like the National Fiber Technology Company is the proud new owner. So they're getting up to speed. So it seems like Lori's business has been acquired.
Well done. It seems like a fun business to start and then build and then sell off to somebody else. But as I said, it's still up and running. So you can check out some fabric samples. You can learn, well, just learn all about the world of puppet fleeces and puppet fleece, I guess I should say.
And then the fun fact that I mentioned about Lori, well, I mentioned about Larry. Larry is Lori's fabric distributor. He is in fact the only person in the world who distributes Antron fleece. He was originally approached by Jim Henson to create the fabric for the Muppets. And then he ran the world's only puppet fleece mill.
So he has no website, only a telephone number. And if you don't know him, apparently you can't order fleece in bulk. So that was something I learned in the reporting for this episode. I'm not sure if there's a new supplier yet or not, but for a while at least it seems he had the market cornered listeners. I hope you enjoyed this story.
I hope it got you thinking inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. I hope you hear these stories and ideas, listener questions and so on, and go away thinking about your own hustle, your own business idea or something you want to make or create, just something creative you want to do, but something that helps advance your goals, like whatever it is you want to do in life, what's something you can do to get closer to that? That's what I always want to encourage you to be thinking about. I try to think like that myself. I've got a lot to learn too.
I'm here on this journey with you. But of course new episodes come out every day. In the meantime, we've got 3,400 episodes in the archives. Download or stream those for free at sidehustleschool.com. And I hope you'll continue to listen.
My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
