50-year-old nurse turns a quilting hobby into a $1.4 million a year side business – DMNews
Mike O’Dell is no ordinary nurse anesthetist.
He’s also the innovator behind a lucrative side hustle that reeled in over $1.4 million last year, turning his love for quilting into a profitable business venture.
The 50-year-old Oklahoma City resident transformed his knack for creating artful quilt designs into Legit Kits, a thriving enterprise that balances his healthcare career and passion for craft.
O’Dell’s journey into the world of quilting began in 2018 when he decided to make a quilt for his sons.
His first design was a Star Wars stormtrooper, drawn on a 5-by-6.5-foot sheet of graph paper laid out on his kitchen floor.
This process included cutting the pattern into smaller sections and sewing fabric onto the paper, before stitching these pieces together on a sewing machine and discarding the leftover paper.
This technique is known as “foundation paper piecing”, and O’Dell found it surprisingly straightforward for a beginner.
He realized that if he could streamline this process with the assistance of hired help, he could create and sell quilting kits featuring licensed images of nature scenes, animals, and characters.
Thus, Legit Kits was born in 2020.
The company has seen significant success, reporting sales of more than $1.25 million through Shopify last year, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.
In addition, O’Dell estimates an additional $150,000 of revenue from selling quilt kits at Joann Fabrics and Crafts.
Despite the bankruptcy liquidation announcement by Joann on Feb. 23 leading to the closure of all its approximately 800 stores, O’Dell continues to balance his role as Legit Kits CEO and creative director with his full-time job as a nurse anesthetist.
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