Crafter’s Shop for Dreadlock Wearers Unlocks $3,500/Month

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

[Music]

Hey there, what's up? This is Side Hustle School, episode 431. I'm your host, Chris Guillebeau. Welcome back, or welcome, if it's your first time. Hey, guess what today is?

For those listening in real time, today is National Cereal Day. That's right, we're celebrating our favorite breakfast cereals. This holiday was no doubt created by the cereal industry, but hey, who doesn't like cereal? And here's my question of the day for you. What is your favorite breakfast cereal?

Or what was your favorite breakfast cereal when you were a kid? For me, the answers are one and the same, how could it not be anything but Honey Nut Cheerios? Everyone loves Honey Nut Cheerios, and if you don't, you're missing out. I think they make like six other kinds of Cheerios, but no one ever buys them. They're just kind of there in the grocery store to take up space and make you look for the Honey Nut.

That's my theory, but hey, let's move on. Today's story has nothing to do with cereal. It has to do with dreadlocks. And by the way, dreadlocks, they're not just the fear of not being able to open a door. I'm talking about the classic Rastafarian, Jamaican influenced kind of dreadlocks.

I don't know if you've ever tried to grow dreadlocks, personally I haven't, but my understanding is that it takes a lot of time. One of the ways you can speed up the process is to not wash your hair. But what if you want to grow dreadlocks and wash your hair? I mean, that's kind of the camp I would be in myself. Except I don't want to grow dreadlocks, but the second part is true.

Anyway, what if you could fast track the process and still wash your hair? That's what today's featured side hustler has come up with. Enter the Insta-lock. That's right, an invention bringing great benefit to society. She's got her own lock accessory store.

She is serving a pretty specific and passionate group of people. She is making money from it. And she's doing this while working her full-time job. My friends, stay tuned for the Insta-lock story. It'll be here in an instant after I say thank you to our sponsor.

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Kay Hill is a marketing manager for a mobile healthcare company based in greater Chicago, Illinois. She's also a lifelong crafter and tinkerer. As a kid, she would take apart her McDonald's happy meal toys to see how they worked. As an adult, she's designed and sewn custom bedding, jewelry, and invitations. Her tinkering and crafting skills came in handy when she started developing her dreadlocks.

And just in case you live on the moon and aren't familiar with humans, dreadlocks are a hairstyle consisting of rope-like strands of hair formed by matting or braiding. If you picture Bob Marley, you get the idea. And even if you live on the moon, you probably know Bob Marley. When Kay was getting started locking her hair, there were a few different methods that people chose from. One involved a tool, which can damage the integrity of the lock.

True story. The other method called palm rolling was a long process. You would twist and retwist the hair until it became a single coil. Then you would wait for the new growth to mat and become a dreadlock. This process could take months, depending on the texture of your hair.

And the only way to make the process happen faster is to not wash your hair. Apparently that speeds things up. And that was not an option for Kay. She has to wash her hair at least weekly. Good for her.

So what does a lifelong crafter and tinkerer do? Well, Kay made her own tool that locks the hair instantly. That tool is called the insta-lock, and it solved both her problems. She could rock her desired hairstyle immediately and her scalp wouldn't suffer in the process. Until a few years ago, there were few products or accessories for people who wore locks.

Kay decided to sell her tool, the insta-lock, along with some other custom produced items she makes herself and items that she sources from manufacturers. Startup costs for the lock accessory store were less than $150. They included domain registration and hosting, a website template, and initial supplies to make more products. $150 startup costs and her gross sales are currently $3,500 to $4,000 a month. The majority of her sales currently come through Amazon, which means that they're bringing her access to customers that she wouldn't know otherwise, and even customers that probably wouldn't find her otherwise.

Kay now has a variety of products on her website. Like I said, some that she's making herself and some that she sources. So for the one she makes herself, she uses her graphic design skills. She draws a 2D mock-up in Adobe Illustrator. Then she'll search on sites like Alibaba to find a manufacturer.

She talks with them to get a sense of their capabilities and based on their responsiveness, she'll select one and move forward. For products she sources, she'll find an existing manufacturer of that good and then buy wholesale from them. That's what she does with products like a shampoo brush or sleeping cap. All right, what's coming up next for Kay? Well, she is currently patenting a new hair tool.

And in fact, she's already received the provisional patent. Now she's working with an industrial designer to get the 3D rendering developed and prototype. She believes this hair tool will have a huge impact in the world of dreadlocks. Of course, we asked for more intel, but unfortunately, we couldn't pry more details out of Kay about this new tool. So we'll all have to wait patiently for its unveiling.

Or should I say, until it's unlocked. All right, let's do a little quick analysis. Got a couple of suggestions for Kay. And I wanna give a shout out to Yolanda, our writer, who worked on this story. Yolanda is a side hustler herself.

And she noticed when she was looking at the website, blackcessories.com, which of course, we'll link up in the show notes. She saw that some accessories are modeled on a head mannequin, but wouldn't it be better to have a real person? Like to have images of actual people wearing those hair accessories. And I thought, well, yeah, that makes perfect sense. Like that would be good.

And she also noticed that Kay said she was getting a little bit overwhelmed with some of her orders. Like she had a lot of demand for her products. I mean, she's doing like $4,000 a month, which is great. But some of those products are really low priced. Like one of them was just $4.

So Yolanda said, maybe she should charge more for that. Since a lot of people are ordering it, there is clear demand for it. And it's taking a lot of her time to fulfill those orders. And that product is currently just $4. It seems to make sense, why not actually charge more?

Like even if you increased it to $6, that's a 50% increase. I almost think like, why not double it? Why not go from $4 to $8? Or if you don't wanna do that, go from four to six, 50%. Just to see what would happen.

Like I bet a lot of people would still purchase it. So we'll see what she does with that advice, but obviously she's doing great with or without it. And like so many of our stories, the vast majority of people we feature on the show, she's doing all this while working a full-time job. Oh, and she also spent $150 to start this business a few years ago. So just as a reminder, you don't have to be an entrepreneur.

This show is not encouraging everybody to go out and quit their jobs. Purpose in making it is to encourage you to start where you are with what you know and with something you can do that will be helpful for others. So whatever you're up to today, whatever you're working on, I hope you do one thing, even one small thing, just to get a bit closer to this freedom that Kay has found that all the other people that we feature on this show have found in different ways. Just like I hope that you consider making something that's helpful to others, I want this show to be helpful to you. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better.

Those show notes I mentioned are online at sidehustleschool.com/431. Thank you for listening. Much more is on the way. I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School. [Laughter]