I Launched A Business From My Living Room — Now It Brings In $9 Million A Year

From a young age, I've always found kind of a way to make money. I always knew it was like a stepping stone to something bigger. I'm doing what I truly enjoy and it also happens to be making money.

My name is Jenny, i'm 28 years old and my handbag brand, Freja, has brought in $9 million in one year. Freja is a handbag brand. We specialize in making really classic, timeless and functional pieces to support women in their everyday endeavors.

We originally started as a work bag brand, and then now we have kind of a pretty full collection of everyday bags, shoulder bags, mini bags. I wanted to create a brand that I wanted to see in the world. So doing everything really slow, intentional, being really transparent in everything.

Numbers wise, we have a profit margin of about 20 to 25%. After all our expenses, we had positive cash flow for the first time end of 2023. I started Freja after a really, really stressful night of interview prep when I couldn't find a suitable bag, I didn't really have any great options.

I was trying to bring a change of clothes, I was trying to bring my laptop, my portfolio shoes. So I needed everything to have its own kind of compartment. And I wanted straps that could go over my coat.

Because this was February. I was scheduled for a full day of interviews. I show up in the morning carrying like a cotton tote bag.

Didn't get the job. I had a problem that I wanted to solve and I thought I could do it well. I used that to pay my way through grad school.

And then it was also the seed money I used to start Freja I started googling, you know, sample makers based in New York went through a couple. I found one based in Brooklyn, reached out to her, and then I started sourcing materials. I went to go pick up the sample.

It was not impressive. It was actually very sad. It looked like a kindergartner's art project.

But now I know. At least I know what I'm working with. I'm like, okay, there was a lot that I didn't communicate upfront to and my sketches were honestly like not much to work off of.

So I get it. I'm like, okay, I tried making this in New York. I'm going back to China anyway, let me try finding a sample maker in China.

So I asked around my circle and I got connected with a sourcing agent. There were some requirements. I was like, want to be able to know, like where everything's sourced.

I want to know how much everyone's paid. I want to be able to visit. I wanted Freja to kind of be my way of showing the world this is what Made in China can look like.

I'm really, really proud of it, I'm proud to be Chinese. I don't hide that. We're made in China on our website.

I don't think there's anything to hide, and I'm really proud of that. And then I picked the one that they took the longest to deliver a sample, but they were very communicative, which is something I was looking for. And we were still working with the same factory today, four years later.

I present to you version one of the Linnea tote, and then after a year, this is what it was supposed to look like. I decided to use vegan leather. Animal leather, I didn't really feel confident in sourcing and making sure that no one was harmed in making it, so I decided not to go that route.

We invested about $30K into producing our first batch, so that included all ordering our materials, ordering hardware, paying our factory labor costs, and then shipping the bags to us. Freja actually started as a blog way before we had any product because, you know, we're going to launch We're no name brand. No one knows about us.

There's no reviews. Why would you buy from us? I had to give people a reason to buy into the brand and my story.

So I thought, let me just share exactly what we're doing. Like, let me share every sample. Let me share everything that went wrong.

And like all the changes that we're making to the designs. I think I collected 2,000 emails. I was like, oh, you know, 2,000 people are in line.

I only have 300 bags. Send out an email not a single person buys. I'm like, okay, my launch plan failed spectacularly.

I couldn't afford to not make it work, and I had to find a way to sell those. Customer acquisition wise, I think for Freja, it was really, really slow for the first two years. I think a lot of our initial following, like saw an ad and then clicked into our Instagram profile and started following us, following the story, following our newsletter.

First month was okay we sold like 20 or so. Next month same thing. I had enough to live off of maybe for 1 or 2 years runway.

Our rent I was splitting with my ex at the time. That was $1,200 a month. Honestly, beyond that, and food, like I didn't have any expenses, didn't go out.

I think after six months in we would start breaking even. So I didn't have to dig into the old savings pile anymore. People really wanted more and I didn't have money to produce them.

That really helped me kind of pay for that existing batch because I had a little bit of money. The good thing about Shopify is you'll pay back 17% of everything you make. They'll just take it off the top so you don't really need to worry about it.

Wh en I graduated from grad school, I believe that going salary for a UX designer in New York was approximately like $86K to $90K. So, like, you know what? I'd never had to get a job.

I made my own job, and I will pay myself exactly what I would have made otherwise. I think two years in, I saw someone wearing a Freja in New York City, and that was such a big moment. I ran up to her, we chatted.

I think Freya really came together when I stopped trying to be like other brands, like in the beginning, I would try to emulate a lot of brands that I looked up to and try to speak in their tone. Transparency has been one of our core values from the very, very beginning ever since we started as a blog, why not share exactly how much it costs to make a Freja bag? We did a round of price increases our second year because I didn't really know how to price our products, so I increased everything by $20.

I sent out an email telling everyone like, hey, just letting you know. Like we will be increasing the prices of our bags by this much or we're not going to do that until end of next month. So if you wanted to get your bag now, now's your chance.

Everything we earned was invested like straight back into the business, straight back into more inventory. And then 2023 November, we had a really big Black Friday sale. And then all of the money that we invested into that inventory was like actually profit.

So that was the first time we actually had money in the bank to kind of play around with. It. I think it worked because we were so, so niche in the beginning and we really, really appealed to one specific customer.

Right now, we're definitely expanding our customer base, but our core customer from the beginning was very, very specific. And I think that's what got us through the first couple of years. I didn't start Freja to be acquired.

I started it because I wanted a creative outlet that I could turn into my job. I think now maybe this year I can start calling myself designer, because in the past I was like, I'm not sure if I am yet, but this year I'm like, okay, I think we've hit a stride. I think I can call myself designer now.

If I were to go back in time and tell 24 year old Jenny one piece of advice, I would tell her to really follow her intuition. Trust yourself. You already have everything it takes.

Here I am, year five. Definitely underestimated what we did in the last five years, but I'm just glad we kept going. I want to do a lot more community events, really connecting with the people that make this all possible.

People show up to events with their Freja bag telling me like, hey, this was my birthday present or something like that. I also want to partner with anything that empowers young women to chase their dream. I think that's what Freja embodies.

It's like, hey, you can do it too. You can do what you want, and you can create something as long as it feels meaningful to you.