I quit my £28k job to launch a side hustle – at 1 point I was so broke I was selling stuff on eBay, now it’s worth £100m
A WOMAN has shares she took a massive risk by quitting her job to launch a side hustle which has now massively paid.
The entrepreneur said her business is now worth over £100 million.
Tori Gerbig featured in a YouTube video CNBC Make It detailing her journey.
She said: “My name is Tori Gerbig and I’m the founder and CEO of Pink Lily. In 2014 I walked away from my job making under 40 000 a year and last year on my e-commerce site we brought in over $141 million in revenue.”
Tori and her husband Christ started Pink Lily as a side hustle on eBay.
She explained her and her husband struggled after graduating university in the middle of a recession with over $70,000 worth of debt.
In total the pair invested just £240 in their business online to get it started up.
Tori and Chris started bringing in between £240 to £800 a month with their hustle.
She said: “We sold things from golf clubs to Halloweens masks just about anything that we could, anything we would find going viral on the internet.”
When on maternity leave Tori launched a Facebook group to sell clothes and accessories.
She said: “I was posting items on there daily and it was a huge increase based on the years prior on eBay so the Fakebook group really helped catapult the sales and really ignited the fire in this whole business.”
By 2013 the couple were racking in £400 a day in sales. Tori used the profits to pay off her and Chris’s student loans and invested the rest back into her business.
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Pink Lily was officially launched in 2014
Tori said: “It was time for us to launch this website so we could reach a larger audience and it would also capture sales at any time during the day versus only whenever I was on with Facebook.”
The fourth month after launching the site the pair made £80,000 so Tori decided to quit her job and work on the business full time.
Tori’s husband Chris also quit his job to focus on the business.
It seems the pair made the right choice as the revenue hit over £3 million.
She said: “I remember our goal for the first year was $50 000 in sales so to hit over £4 million our very first year in business was just phenomenal, we were so ecstatic.”
After making over £100 million in one year Tori and Chis opened a retail store.
Tori said: “I do love having a retail store and I don’t think it’s out of the question for the future but it hasn’t been the main focus only because online has grown so fast.”