Side hustle-turned-business brings in millions

It only took two hours for Krista Ray to sell $25,000 worth of needlepoint canvases after her side hustle, Penny Linn Designs, launched in September 2020.

It seemed like an impressive number on the surface, but LeRay and her dad had done the math prior to the site’s launch. Each 4-inch-by-4-inch cotton canvas, which sold for $50 each, took six hours to paint over the course of four months. After $7,000 spent on supplies, her profits came out to roughly $2 an hour, she says.

“It made me think this could never be my job, just because it’s so labor intensive,” LeRay, 33, tells CNBC Make It.

LeRay, then a lifestyle blogger living in New York earning up to $242,000 per year, made more money in less time posting about her brand partnerships on social media, she says. She kept painting simply because she loved the hobby. But somewhat unexpectedly, demand kept growing.

In late 2022, the side hustle became her full-time job. In 2024, Penny Linn Designs brought in $4.43 million in sales of canvases, threads and accessories, or roughly $369,000 per month on average, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

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The company’s production has become more efficient as it has grown: It achieved a 36% profit margin last year, which enabled LeRay to take a $80,000 salary, she says.

The rest of those proceeds go toward expanding the business, she adds. Penny Linn Designs now has 34 total employees and, in March, opened a 5,000-square-foot retail location in Norwalk, Connecticut — roughly 50 miles northeast from the apartment where it started.

The shop’s canvases, now made by a variety of designers that align with Penny Linn Design’s “coastal preppy” aesthetic, feature champagne bottles, Cape Cod salt-and-vinegar chips, and Taylor Swift quotes.

LeRay benefited from being early to a trend, she says: Crafts like needlepoint saw a resurgence during the pandemic, when many people looked for new ways to occupy time spent mostly indoors. Interest in such hobbies has remained solid, at least online. While the fabric store Joann recently announced the closing of its remaining stores, virtual marketplace Etsy brought in a record $2.8 billion in annual revenue.

Needlepointing specifically is having a moment, LeRay says. She suspects the recent boom traces back to a rise in social media interest, especially after needlepointed Christmas ornaments went viral on TikTok in 2023, she says.

She captures her customers, most of whom are under 35, she adds, by focusing on patterns that are accessible, both in terms of difficulty and pop culture relevance.

LeRay was originally introduced to needlepointing by her grandmother. She picked the skill back up in early 2020, when her usual fashion and beauty content felt inappropriate for her to post during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“It felt insensitive to be like, ‘This is what I’m wearing,’ when people were dying,” she says. “I enjoyed the creative process of [needlepointing] during a time where everything else felt really scary.”

She posted about needlepointing items, like belts and pillows, before she eventually started painting and selling her own, she says. For about 10 months, LeRay says she painted, packed and shipped orders from her New York apartment while bingeing TV shows like “Schitt’s Creek” in the background.

LeRay’s Penny Linn Design salary still doesn’t match what she made at the height of her blogging career — but her priorities have changed, she says. She became less interested in sharing her life online anyway after she and her husband moved to Connecticut in December 2020 and then had a son.

And while she isn’t sure if running her needlepoint business will ever be as personally lucrative as blogging was, the business and the community around it fulfills her creative needs.

Penny Linn Design’s brick-and-mortar store opened at 10 a.m. on March 1. Customers from all over the country, ranging from 12 to 90 years old, started lining up at 5 a.m., many wearing the brand’s signature cornflower blue, according to LeRay. Some waited for over two hours to get in, she says.

The experience affirmed her beliefs that her company has a large enough base to keep growing, and that needlepointing, at least in some capacity, is here to stay.

“It was a huge shock to me. We have 50,000 followers [on Instagram], but that’s always felt sort of imaginary,” LeRay says. “I was unprepared to see our online community show up like that in real life.”

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