This 45-year-old makes $39,000 a month selling vintage buttons as necklaces — and only works 20 hours a week. (via CNBCMakeIt)
Nicole Tocci started flipping vintage Chanel buttons into necklaces in 2016. This year, she's brought in more than $352,000 from the side hustle.In 2016, Nicole Tocci carefully removed the buttons off her vintage Chanel clothing, spent about three hours polishing them, added a hook and attached them to thin silver and gold chains.
"Sometimes, your intuition is dead-on right," Tocci, 45, tells CNBC Make It. "I started testing the necklaces at my boutique and gathering feedback from high-end clientele. I knew immediately that they were a winner." After graduating, Tocci worked a couple of sales jobs and ran a closet-organizing business for almost four years. But Tocci lost clients during the Great Recession in 2008, so she decided to pivot. It was a long process, but two years later, she finally used $30,000 from her savings to open Nikki Tans, a storefront for spray tans, styling and beachwear.