The 33-year-old gave 7,000 US

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Before Krista Leray started her side hustle and bustle, she paints a single 4-inch cotton canvas with a fine brush at her kitchen table for six hours.

“I would wake up all day until 2 a.m. and paint” [around the brush] all day. “

The result: a canvas produced for needlepoint, a craft that essentially paints with numbers for embroidery. Needlepoint was Leray's college hobby and after resuming it during the Covid 19 pandemic, she decided to sell her designs on the side.

Leray spent $ 7,000 for supplies and used money that she had earned as a full-time lifestyle blogger, and started a Shopify website for Penny Linn Designs in September 2020, she says. It was unintentional to a trend: when the pandemic raged, Nadelpoint -Lieber searched for online canvas sellers, and Leray was the first. She announced Penny Linn's existence in her blog and Instagram account and her first 500 screens, which were sold in two hours, she says.

Since then, the business has steadily built dynamics. Penny Linn brought more than 4.4 million dollars into canvas, thread and accessories According to documents that have been checked by CNBC, sales last year do it. The company was profitable in 2024 with a margin of 36%, says Leray. It has 10 full-time and 24 part-time employees and a 5,000 square meter retail location in Rowayton, Connecticut.

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The company's canvases, which have now been produced by a variety of designers, range from around $ 30 to $ 100 for each “coastal adberett” pattern blue-white chinoiserie vas, weakened sun hats and italics prints of phrases such as “Your email was not good.”

Initially, Leray feared that the secondary employment would not be worth their time. Although it sold a lot of canvases, it was time and labor-intensive while “publishing a tiny Instagram story and earning a few hundred dollars,” she says.

“I earned really good money with blogging. It was my pension plan,” she adds.

But fashion and beauty posts felt insensitive to her on the summit of pandemic, and after she had her son in 2022, she felt less pleasant to publish her personal life on the Internet. Later this year she took her full-time team after exceeding an annual turnover of $ 416,000.

Here Leray explains whether your business is reproducible, how to monetize a hobby and thick skin you need to run an online business.

CNBC MAKE IT: Do you think that your Nadelpoint vine – or some kind of successful craft business – is reproducible?

Leray: I would say yes to both. I am definitely a kind of IS More type of person. I think there is space for everyone and everything, especially in a needle point, as there are much less physical business than before.

Lately there have been many criticisms online about monetization of your hobby. Of course you don't have to, but if you are really passionate about it and have a unique perspective, why not?

Before Penny Linn, they were a successful blogger. What skills help you to monetize your hobbies?

I am very personable. I know how I can connect to our customers online, partly because I am our customer. I know which products to create and how you can apply to social media.

I also have the type of thick skin you need to run a business. I was selected as a blogger so that I can now distinguish between constructive criticism and hurtful criticism.

I give myself 24 hours to be upset. In these 24 hours I can cry and pout and eat biscuit dough. I can be annoyed and sad and angry and disgusted and injured as I want. I speak to my husband, my mother, my therapist, with my best friend.

Then, the next morning after I slept well, I say to myself: This is behind us. We gave him the attention it needed. Time to continue.

Handicraft trends can and flow. Do you think it is risky to commit to a product that could lose popularity?

The popularity of Nadelpoint always goes into waves. I think Millennials caught during pandemic – we all wanted to do our phones away from our telephones, and a little more peaceful for our minds. The result was a lot of new needle point designers.

The great thing about Needlepoint is that you involve someone who does it as a hobby, not because it looks cool on Tikok -that it is difficult to put it down. That's why people embroider in their 90s. You can create gifts for your friends, your spouse, your children and grandchildren.

It is something you can lay down and always come back. At the moment we have a customer rate of 60%.

How do you stand out from your competition?

I remember that I went to a needle point shop before Penny Linn was even a sparkle in my eye. It was strongly marketed to a certain older generation. When I created my shop, I concentrated on canvases that I would want.

I did some with pop culture. I have made them younger, fresh and more affordable than going to these shops, and they have massive tapestries that cost the $ 1,000 dollars and need it forever to do them.

I only wanted to access projects such as an “EW, David” sweater and something that represents my love for New York's coffee.

This interview was processed for length and clarity.

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