784
9 min 45 sec

Fire in the Hole! Handcrafted Drumsticks Ignite Into Profits

A woman creates an Etsy store to market her wood-burned artistry wares, specializing in custom, handcrafted drumsticks.
Arts & Crafts Etsy Product Social Media

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What It's About

These drumsticks are on fire!

Business Model
Arts & Crafts
Skills Required
Drawing & Marketing
Complexity
Low
Profit Potential
Medium

Words of Wisdom

Ella's sticks are now in full swing, attracting the attention of celebrity drummers, like Carrie Underwood’s drummer, Garrett Goodwin. Meanwhile, the Instagram posts from the account she created were drawing the attention of both musicians and non-musicians alike.

Her best tip: using time-lapse videos of her work creations. Ella said people love the videos she posts, and often watch them over and over.

Fun Fact

The word pyrography means writing with fire and has been used by ancient Egyptian and African tribes since the dawn of time. It’s been said by pyrographer Robert Boyer that pyrography started when early man “created designs using the charred remains of their fires.”

Notes from Chris

Episode 784
Ella Cordial-Brockelsby is a full-time graphic designer for a large newspaper company. When she’s not busy at her day job, she used to paint and hand letter windows for businesses. Then, in what sounds like another project we need to learn about sometime, she also used to paint race cars.

Ella now spends her evenings and weekends as a pyrographer for her Etsy store, Cordialgreetings.

What’s pyrography you ask? It is “the act of producing drawings on wood or leather by using heated tools or flame.”

Ella stumbled into this line of work when her mother passed away and left her with a lot of art supplies and tools. Digging through the tools awakened Ella’s inner-muse, and before long, that muse led to her burning elegant, eye-catching designs into wooden objects.

She made a wine box as a gift for a relative. Shortly after, another relative requested the same thing.

It was also around this time that Ella’s husband lost his job of 20 years. Needing more household income, she realized that she might be able to monetize her pyrography skills into a profitable project.

At this point, she was mainly selling to family members—$5 here, $20 there—it wasn’t really a moneymaker. So she started thinking outside the wine box.

She knew Etsy was the place to sell handmade goods online, so she figured “why not?” She didn’t know a lot of people in the area and didn’t have a platform to draw from. But with that Etsy shop, she could reach all kinds of people, no matter where they lived.

It took a month and a half to get her first sale, but by early fall of 2017, the holiday season gave her a big boost. People were taking notice … and they weren’t just noticing, they were buying too.

Ella was wood burning everything from signs to plaques to wooden oars. But what truly set her apart in the wood-burning space was her custom drumsticks. In less than a year, she had a percussive bestseller on her hands: those wooden drumsticks were ablaze!

She could hand draw, hand wood burn, and hand paints a variety of designs. This set her apart in the industry because most customized drumsticks were made with machine laser burners. No machine can do what Ella does because of the way she wraps her designs around the drumsticks. While most laser engravers only burn text, Ella offers fancier designs and colors, even hand-painting items upon request.

Ella’s excited and believes she’s just getting started. Her Etsy shop is only a year and a half old. In her words, “Not a lot of people know about me yet.”

She plans to continue marketing to bands and musicians of all genres as well as offering to add logos and signatures on drumsticks. Her long-term goal is for Cordialgreetings to ignite into her full-time work. That’s why she wants to fan the flames and keep stoking the fire.

 
  MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

  • Cordialgreetings: Check out Ella's custom blazing drumsticks (and other pyrographic creations) at her Etsy shop
  SEE ALSO:

Inspiration is good; inspiration combined with action is better. Now get back to work!

Yours in the revolution,

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Quote of the Day
"I would advise you to find your own niche item and not to go with what’s popular on Etsy. Ask yourself what makes you stand out in a saturated market, and remember that customized work gets you noticed."
—Ella Cordial-Brockelsby #SideHustleSchool

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To infinity and beyond,

Chris Guillebeau