This story is part of CNBC Make It’s Six-Figure Side Hustle series, where people with lucrative side hustles break down the routines and habits they’ve used to make money on top of their full-time jobs. Got a story to tell? Let us know! Email us at AskMakeIt@cnbc.com.
In 2018, Josh White went to Home Depot on a mission.
He was teaching his 12-year-old daughter how to replace splintering wooden panels on their deck in Passaic, New Jersey, and wanted a smaller hammer to fit her hands. Aisle after aisle, he couldn’t find any functional, kid-friendly tools, he says.
White, who owns a Boca Raton, Florida-based creative agency called OffWhite Co., decided to sketch and 3D-print his own models. He designed a bird-shaped tape measure — with marked ribbon for a tongue and a droopy googly eye as a level — got prototypes from a factory in China, and listed the product on Amazon under the name Handy Famm in December 2019.
As customer interest grew, White and his Handy Famm team — now four full-time workers, some of whom came over from OffWhite — designed more tot-centric tools, like giraffe hammers and hippo wrenches, he says. Handy Famm brought in $455,000 in sales last year, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.
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Handy Famm, which sells online and in hardware stores — including Home Depot — is on track to reach profitability this year, White projects. It’s grown enough that it may no longer qualify as a side hustle: White spends at least 40 hours per week growing and marketing it, he says.
He started taking a salary from the company earlier this year, though his OffWhite salary still makes up a majority of his income, he says.
Notably, White had an advantage in getting Handy Famm off the ground: After designing for companies like Chobani, Cabbage Patch Kids and AeroPress, he already owned equipment to help him model his ideas. He had relationships with manufacturers in China, and more than two decades of experience using art and products to tell stories, he says.
Still, anyone can create a successful side hustle with the right “motivation,” he says.
Here, White discusses the shortcuts he took to build Handy Famm quickly, cost-cutting strategies and how to learn from your mistakes.
CNBC Make It: Do you think your side hustle is replicable?
White: Yes, but the way I’m doing it, not so much.
There aren’t a lot of people who have the experiences that I’ve gone through in life. Before Handy Famm, I traveled the world and worked with manufacturers on how to make stuff for people, anything from headphones to a Barbie doll. I have the network, I have the connections and I know my way around these areas.
You can go on Alibaba and find a manufacturer there and just hope for the best. But most people have to spend two years in development and negotiation and thousands of dollars prototyping their products with factories in China. I was able to build Handy Famm so fast because I skipped all the steps and went to the sources.
But in terms of identifying [a gap or need] in the market, then figuring out how to make something, I think anyone can do anything — if you have the motivation to do it.
Are there shortcuts new entrepreneurs can use, even without the type of prior experience you had?
I learned early on that you can’t rely on the factory to help you do the creative. You want to keep that part as close to your chest as possible.
The more vision you have, the more research you do upfront, the more time it’ll save you going back and forth. If you just hand over a sketch of an idea, you’re going to get disappointed very fast.
One of my first projects at OffWhite, I designed this airplane-shaped object holder [that] people could put their knickknacks in. I sent my design to a factory, and it came back as a gray pancake.
So, I went ahead and started to build my own model out of clay. You can hire people to help you with the design part too, as long as you have a clear vision — a North Star of what you’re trying to accomplish.
Doing your creative homework upfront seems to contradict some popular Silicon Valley advice, like “launch a minimum viable product” or “move fast and break things.” What’s the merit of slowing down?
The timeframe of “just do it” is fungible [project to project]. Be as smart and educated as you can upfront, but at some point, you have to take the risk. If you want to get something to market, you can’t wait until something’s perfect either, because then you’ll never do anything.
Everything has a different learning curve. When we first launched our first tape measure, parents told us their kids were getting too excited and ripping out the ribbon out of the bird head, so we had to go back in and figure out a way to make it stronger. Before we launched the hammer, the [prototype’s] head was too heavy to be kid-friendly and functional. Even with all my experience, I had to gut it and put it back together.
I think the key point here is: Don’t get frustrated. There are always going to be micro-failures, things that go wrong no matter how much research you do. I call [mistakes] my Harvard education because, often, you have to pay your way in time and expenses [to succeed].
But I’ve learned for the next time, and I get smarter.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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