Abby Misbin.
Courtesy of Abby Misbin
Abby Misbin is the founder of Trending by Abby, an Etsy shop where she sells a variety of hats.
In June 2022, a stylist requested a hat for Beyoncé. After she was seen wearing it, business skyrocketed.
Now Misbin works 12 to 15 hours a day to keep up with the waitlist of 6,000 for the disco-ball hat.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Abby Misbin, a 24-year-old Etsy seller from Pennsylvania, about her business. It has been edited for length and clarity.
In June 2022, I got an inquiry sent to my Etsy shop, Trending by Abby, which I started in 2020. It was from a stylist who came across my shop and said she was working with Beyoncé. She wanted to know if I could make one of my disco-ball cowboy hats for her within a week’s time.
I got back to her right away and said it would be an honor.
Misbin’s disco-ball cowboy hat.
Courtesy of Abby Misbin
As soon as she placed the order that evening, I began work on it in my parent’s unfinished basement in Ambler, Pennsylvania, which I refer to as the “Hat Bunker.”
The hat, which I charged $250 for, took me six hours to complete and required me to manually affix nearly 15,000 mirrored tiles to its surfaces, including the hat’s underside.
The next morning, I shipped it to Los Angeles priority overnight to ensure it would arrive well before it was actually needed.
I was so excited, I told all my friends and coworkers at the local Starbucks where I was working at the time that I’d made a hat for Beyoncé. I’m not sure if they actually believed me or thought I was joking.
Then I went back to business as usual, not knowing how or when the hat might be used.
I didn’t see the hat again for 6 months
In December, Beyoncé dropped a video teaser on social media promoting her album release, and she was wearing the hat.
The clip was only a few seconds long, but I was thrilled and figured that was the end of the story — but it was only the beginning.
The Renaissance World Tour was announced on February 1, and the same stylist who ordered the hat from me posted several images of Beyoncé on social media that day, including one of her wearing my hat.
Source:: Business Insider