u/StarlitClefairy

In 2004, a ceramics artist in New Jersey started making dinnerware on the side as a creative outlet while he taught ceramics classes and worked for bigger manufacturers to pay the bills. When he lost his manufacturing job six years later, he took it as a sign and went all in, working around 60 hours a week on it.

The big break came in 2012 when a new luxury hotel in New York ordered over 6,000 pieces in a $100,000 deal. That's when he hired his first full-time employee, bought more equipment, and the business became profitable. Orders from big home retailers followed, and his plates and bowls ended up in hundreds of restaurants and even on the TV show The Bear.

The math on the product is pretty wild...an 8-inch pasta bowl sells for $51 but uses only about $1 worth of clay, though labor is the biggest expense by far. One large gas kiln can fire around 500 dinner plates in a single night, which works out to about $18,000 in potential revenue. Other than three loans of $100,000 to $200,000 each to buy more kilns, the whole thing has been funded by its own cash flow.

When COVID shut restaurants down, he pivoted to selling directly to home cooks, and that now makes up nearly half the business. Revenue more than tripled since 2020, hitting $5.2 million in 2023 and a projected $6.6 million in 2024, with a 30-person team unloading over a thousand pieces a day from 13 kilns.

note: derived from a CNBC article, the full version is here. The summary here is condensed by ai.

A 26-year-old in New York was bouncing between jobs and struggling financially after college when a friend referred her to a company that literally pays people to wait in line for others. Her first gig was a Jimmy Choo sample sale in October 2023 that paid about $74. She thought the job posting was a scam at first, but showed up anyway.

She got hooked immediately. She relooped to the back of the line for a second client that same day and made extra money. The company kept calling her back for more sample sales at places like The Row, Versace, and McQueen. She also started doing Lucali's, the famous Brooklyn pizza spot that doesn't take reservations, at $32 an hour to hold a spot and put someone's name down.

The gigs got bigger from there. She did the Trump trial, lining up from 4 AM to 8 AM (sometimes midnight to 8 AM) before taking the subway to her day job. She also sat for the Daniel Penny trial, the Luigi Mangione trial, and the Diddy trial. She's waited in line for press, lawyers, and members of the public, and sometimes clients fly her to other cities and cover all the travel costs.

Hourly rates range from $25 to $50 depending on the event, and she's been earning commission since getting promoted to manager in March. She said the biggest lesson is that people will pay a premium for two things: convenience and being first.

note: derived from a Business Insider article, the full version is here. The summary here is condensed by ai.

A woman who had been a comedy writer and stay-at-home mom came up with the idea for a single-use cotton underwear alternative because she was tired of the same problem every woman in leggings deals with. Visible panty lines are annoying, thongs are uncomfortable for workouts, going commando has its own issues, and panty liners just ball up after a couple miles. She wanted something cotton that gave full coverage and could actually keep up.

She started hand-cutting them at her kitchen table and personally delivering them to women she knew. The connections were great but the business was barely breaking even. Then at 36, after learning her grandmother had passed of breast cancer at 40, she got a mammogram and they found a pre-cancerous growth. Within weeks she had a double mastectomy and reconstruction.

When she woke up in the hospital, she thought about the things that made her happy, and the business was unexpectedly on the list alongside her family. She put down a deposit on a manufacturing mold before she was even discharged. Making a massive health decision gave her confidence to go all in on something she'd been treating as a hobby.

She officially launched in September 2024, started selling on TikTok where her comedy background helped with engagement and hit $60,000 in sales in a single month. The company now has eight employees, and she specifically hires moms who've been out of the workforce.

note: derived from a Business Insider article. the full version is here. The summary here is condensed by ai.

This whole thing works kinda like DoorDash but for laundry. Customers put in a request on a laundry platform app, you accept or decline, pick up their dirty clothes, take them home, wash, dry, fold everything neatly, bag it up in clear trash bags, weigh it, and deliver it back by 8 pm the next day. This woman in Pennsylvania does anywhere from 20 to 60 loads a month and a small order of one bag takes about two hours start to finish.

At $0.75 a pound it works out to roughly $13 to $14 an hour plus tips, which honestly isn't amazing. She covers all her own supplies and gas on top of that... buys five containers of Tide Pods at a time for about $60 total which breaks down to like $0.29 per load. Her dryer heating elements also burn out way faster from heavy use, though she taught herself how to replace them to save money.

Based on the laundry app, she's currently ranked 30th in her state, which means she sees new orders in her area before lower-ranked people do. She's built up so many regulars at this point that she rarely has time to take on new clients... one small business sends her 3 to 4 orders a week alone.

She said she tried DoorDash before this and made a bit more money but the wear on her car and being away from home wasn't worth it. The revenue ceiling here seems low compared to most hustles on this sub but the barrier to entry is basically zero if you already own a washer and dryer.

Anyone here tried a laundry platform? Curious if the tips make the math work better than the base rate suggests.

note: this was sourced from a Business Insider article, original is here