Welcome to Ghost Business 👻 Turn $1 into thousands building these weird but simple side hustles

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Thousand Dollar Rugs

The rug-a-round… A trend has been happening since 2009. You take an average looking product, then add some spicy designs to it to sell it for 2-5x the usual price. I noticed this company started taking off selling skyline socks, now called Strideline (I copied their model and started doing it myself in college). Most socks at the time were a basic color, but then they added a sweet skyline design to it, and now their company is worth ~$70M.

I noticed this same trend with rugs. What once used to be basic patterns and designs, now turning into beautiful custom pieces works of art.

Google Trends shows that searches for "custom rug" have increased by over 50% in the past five years

A few more rug facts:

• The average price of a custom rug is $1,000

• The most popular size for custom rugs is 8x10 feet

• The most popular shape for custom rugs is round

• They are known to blow your socks off

What is the cost of doing “under the foot” business and how much can you make slanging rugs?

The MVP (Minimum Viable Product)

No rug pull… Rug tufting looks like a fun project to get off the ground. The materials to make your first rug are decently expensive but can be covered after your first sale. Also the tufting gun is the most expensive piece, but is only a one time purchase.

Here’s one of my favorite creators making his first rugs.

Breakdown of upfront costs:

• Tufting gun: $500

• Sheep shears: $70 (say that 5 times fast)

• Projector: $80

• Monk cloth, yarn and frame: $65

• Trimmer and adhesive: $75

  Final Total: $790

This isn’t too bad considering you could sell a rug for $1k. At this point your only reoccurring costs are the monk cloth, yarn and frame which come out to $65.

To get your first customer, reach out to local businesses, friends and family. Offer to do 2 rugs for the price of one IF THEY LEAVE YOU A REVIEW. 

Why would you offer that?

1. You need the practice

2. You need more designs to showcase for future customers

3. Your expenses aren’t that much more for doing a second rug

4. Getting reviews early on will help you land customers in the future

After your first sale, you’re about break even financially 🔥 #norugpull

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Scaling Up

Getting Rugged… Growing your rug empire isn’t costly but it does take time. Making these rugs takes hours of time and needs overnight curing/adhesive time.

This is heavy customer outreach time. Now that you have a few reviews under your belt and some examples of your work, it’s off to the cold calls/emails.

To start your outreach:

1. Reach out to your neighborhood Facebook groups and promote your business

2. Start an ETSY account

3. Sell on OfferUp

4. Sell on FB Marketplace

5. Reach out to local businesses and office buildings

If you’re not getting sales, start making popular brands, sports teams and logos on rugs to sell. This works great because people will recognize the designs, they already have their own following, it’s stuff you can always promote/sell and you get really good at making specific reoccurring designs, saving you time ⏰ 

The End Goal

Snug as a rug… Eventually your rug empire is going to take off. You have 2 sales funnels: residential and business. You have a dedicated sales team to bring in more leads and you’re ready to hire people hourly to apprentice making rugs for you.

There’s one more factor that I would add in. Something that we see with other customized genres. Classes: In-person and online

This is already a proven business with pottery and glass blowing. These classes can charge up to $500 per person for a 2-3hr time slot. This means you’ll be able to have multiple people per class and about 2-3 classes per day, bringing in significant additonal income.

You could also have your apprentices practice and make rugs to sell in your in-person class shop.

You wouldn’t need to lease a space at first, you can do pop-ups in cities by simply booking out a cool location on Peerspace, like Airbnb for venues, one of my favorite ways to book a space.

Viability:

1 [building spaceships] 🚀 to 5 [easy peasy] 😊 

Rugz 4 Sale… The cost is a little higher to get started in this business. But if you’re interested in making your own rug, it would be just as expensive to buy your own supplies and practice making a rug as it would be to just buy a custom one.

This is a relatively low cost business but VERY time consuming. Ideally for folks with more time than money on their hands. If you do this, build in public!

(As usual each business will have it’s own setbacks, and it’s all about the execution and consistency rather than just having the idea 😉)

It’s a great day to be great!

Love, Mike 👋