When His Wife Got Pregnant, He Started a Crafty Side Hustle. 18 Months Later He Hit a Million In Sales: 'I Could Make One for Like $1.50... They Became a Really Hot Item' A former art student with a "punk rock, do it yourself" ethos never imagined how big his creative little business would become.
By Frances Dodds Edited by Mark Klekas
Greg Kerr will be the first to tell you he doesn't have a business degree. But when he was a college art student in an indie pop band, he was already developing skills he'd use to build his side hustle — two decades later. Now that business is making almost $2 million a year, and he's happy to share his playbook with others.
Kerr's initial foray into entrepreneurship was "a bit of an accident," he says. He was 21 years old, living in Philadelphia while touring with his band, and needed a way to pay his bills.
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So he started messing around with resin to create merch for his band. "At the time, those military-style belt buckles were having a moment," he says. "The canvas ones with the little slider. So I figured out how to print a full-color image in a certain size, and to pour the resin." He put his band's logo on the buckles, and started selling them at their shows. They were popular, and other bands began to approach him about making some for them. Within a couple years, he'd made hundreds for the band Thursday, who was on the Warped Tour, and even did some for restaurants like Papa John's.
When he moved across the country to Phoenix around 2006, he started selling screen-printed T-shirts at an art walk, and from there, he developed a small clothing brand that specialized in literature-themed merchandise for indie bookstores. He ran that business on his own for about eight years, and then he and his wife started talking about having a baby. "Once we made that decision, I kind of flipped the switch," he says. "If we can make a little bit of extra money, even a couple hundred a month, we can put it into her college fund."
One product Kerr's company had started offering at bookstores was custom enamel pins, and Kerr had noticed sales were ticking up. "I'd wanted some kind of small item at the checkout counter that could be more of an impulse buy. At the time I could make an enamel pin for, you know, $1.50 or $2, and they could retail for $10. They became a really hot item for us, and friends were asking for help making them. I started thinking, maybe I should offer this as a side business."
Kerr set up a website for his brand, Pin Game Strong (now Alchemy Merch), and taught himself all about enamel pins production. "I started making more and more designs and learning more about the process. At the time, around 2015, enamel pins were getting really popular but there weren't U.S. manufacturers for this specific kind of product. So I had to learn how to work with this factory in China. That can be really challenging, because I don't speak Mandarin."
Kerr had figured out how to handcraft the pins, but manufacturing was very different, and he says there was a steep learning curve with developing a process and templates to keep the quality consistent.
"Because you're making a metal mold there's certain restrictions," Kerr says. "Like the metal has to be a certain thickness, and the ink needs a certain amount of space. So you have to learn how to adapt artwork that somebody sends you to actually be producible. "
To reduce risk, one strategy Kerr has learned is to not worry too much about saving money on big orders until you actually know what sells.
"Cash is everything when you're a small business," he says. "I'm always a proponent of ordering the minimum amount. And I won't try to upsell customers. I'll show them the pricing for the minimum and let them know that yes, they're cheaper per item at 200 versus 100. But if you're a new shop, you can make 50. 'You can always make more' is kind of my motto. It's a good strategy for keeping yourself out of the red and knowing you won't lose money."
Pin Game Strong didn't spend a penny on advertising, Kerr says, but sales went from zero to a million dollars in 18 months. There weren't many competitors in the enamel pin space who worked with artists and small businesses on custom products that were high quality enough to retail. Until that point, pins were mostly "churn and burn" one-size-fits-all products from promotional companies. "There was this huge gap — which I didn't even realize when I started — for a trusted production partner who understood what an artist was looking for," Kerr says.
Around the time Kerr hit a million in sales, an acquaintance suggested that he look into a local accelerator program. "I've always been kind of punk rock, do it yourself," he says. "So I thought, this is not my thing. But I decided to apply and got in, and they gave me a mentor who said, 'Hey, congratulations, you're making really good money. But you realize this isn't sustainable, right?' Because I was reaching the point where I would have to sleep even less or start turning down orders because I was at my max capacity."
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So Kerr began building what would eventually become a six-person team. "It was a gigantic learning curve," he says, "because everything was in my head. I hadn't documented how I did anything. I was literally keeping track of the orders by physically marking X's on a printed-out piece of paper. And learning how to manage people has been one of the more interesting things that I've done."
By early 2020, Kerr says they had started getting a lot of requests for other types of design merch, from tote bags to washi tape, desk mats, and earrings. And he began to think the name Pin Game Strong was pigeonholing them. So he renamed the company Alchemy Merch.
Today, Kerr has created something way bigger than a college fund for his daughter, but the personal objectives of the company have stayed the same. Alchemy Merch has enabled Kerr's family to have financial freedom. When they did have their baby, the business was making enough that his wife could choose not to go back to work.
"My hope for Alchemy is that we can keep growing, and hire on more people," Kerr says. "And then eventually I don't have to be part of the, you know, day to day."
