A teenager who spent the coronavirus lockdown learning embroidery has managed to quit her supermarket job after starting a personalised tote bag company.
Maisie Crompton, 19, from Cambridge, worked at Waitrose during lockdown, but began embroidery as a hobby to prevent boredom while stuck at home.
She posted her designs on social media app TikTok and discovered lots of people were interested in them, reports the DailyMail.
Maisie went on to buy materials on Amazon with £25 her grandmother gave her and debuted her sell out range on Depop.
She said: “I bought needles, embroidery hoop, embroidery thread and tote bags for £25 all off Amazon. Obviously since then I've changed my suppliers.
“Each [design] would take me about one to three hours but I had the time, there was nothing else to do during lockdown.”
Now, she makes up to £12,000 a day on her website that sells personalised bags and her own embroidery designs costing from £15 each.
Maisie, who has over 176,000 TikTok followers, @totesforyouu, runs her business full time as well as running a YouTube and Instagram page.
In a vlog, the young woman said: “In the first lockdown I had just finished my A-Levels. I was working in a supermarket, so I was counted as a key worker and I was really bored in my free time. I had an idea to start embroidering.
“I started a series on TikTok where I basically just shared the journey with everyone and it went down well, better than I expected.
“I documented the process from getting the idea, creating the ideas to getting the materials to starting the website. Everything.”
Maisie even admitted that she knew nothing about running a business except that she needed to make more money than she spent.
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Maisie found that her GCSE in Business did not help so she had to do her own research to run her business, but getting over 60,000 views on her first embroidery video helped!
She bought a second hand embroidery machine to speed up her production and launched her own website that made 13 sales on the first day.
Maisie noted: “I was so happy, I was buzzing. We made around £4,000 in a month, I had never seen money like that come in.”
Since then the young entrepreneur has added sweatshirts, t-shirts and stationary to her range – and admitted it can be “overwhelming”.
But, she’s now saving up to buy her own house and live “somewhere nice”.
What’s your dream business? Tell us in the comments section…
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