At age 12, Bella Lin had a problem. Her guinea pigs were disappearing.
In those days, Lin let her three guinea pigs roam her parents’ grassy, fenced-in backyard just outside of San Francisco. It was better than the alternative, she thought: The two-pound creatures “looked miserable” in their cramped, “prison-barred” cage, Lin, now 17, tells CNBC Make It.
She assumed the first, Snoopy, had escaped and she continued letting her guinea pigs outside — until her dad watched an eagle fly away with another, she recalls. Determined to keep the pets out of traditional cages, she started drawing prototypes.
Lin, a senior at Khan Lab School in Mountain View, California, went through several models and invested roughly $2,000 from her savings to launch her side hustle GuineaLoft on Amazon in November 2022.
It sold nearly 11,000 cages and brought in more than $410,000 last year — roughly $34,000 per month, on average — according to documents reviewed by Make It.
In addition to a full academic course load, extracurriculars and college applications, Lin works about 20 hours per week on GuineaLoft, she says. Here’s how she built a side hustle so successful that she’s considering delaying college to concentrate on her business.
An unprofitable side hustle led to an ‘epiphany’
Lin told her dad, a computer programmer, that she wanted to create a better cage. He had a connection to a family-owned factory in China through a former client, and he made an introduction, Lin says.
After a year of mocking up prototypes, Lin got distracted by a different idea: She wanted to sell athleisure for girls at a lower price point than large, trendy brands. She researched, found another factory in China, connected with it, and made a business plan to sell leggings starting at $23.
That side hustle, called TLeggings, launched in July 2019. It brought in roughly $300,000 in revenue in 2020, she says. It also earned Lin a spot at BizWorld, a project-based entrepreneurship program for 16- to…
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