For a year, the secret to Abby Price’s success sat covered in dust in her shop’s basement.
Price started her company Abbode as a graduate student at Parsons School of Design, selling dried floral arrangements to New York locals on Facebook in 2019. By March 2022, she sold bouquets and home decor from a storefront she rented in the city’s Nolita neighborhood — and had enough cashflow to finance a $15,000 embroidery machine, which Price bought “on a total whim,” she says.
Without the expertise or space to actually operate the 100-pound machine, she stored it in her shop’s basement. But when consumer spending dropped after the ensuing holiday shopping season, Abbode started to struggle — until Price hosted a two-day embroidery event at her store in March 2023.
On the event’s first day, Abbode brought in five times the sales of the previous Saturday, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. “That weekend, I knew I had something special on my hands. I knew that nothing was going to be the same,” says Price, the company’s 29-year-old CEO and co-owner. “I was just really early [to a trend].”
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