Rodney Melton used to work 12-hour days at a pet care manufacturer for $31 per hour.
It was a good living, says Melton, 55, but it doesn't measure up his earnings today making and selling pet memorials.
The Alma, Arkansas, resident started his side hustle in for two reasons. His friend's dog Molly died, and he happened to own a $15,000 engraver for his stone-carving hobby. Molly's concrete headstone turned out well, and Melton decided to open an Etsy shop in March 2021.
A few initial orders turned into a handful of positive reviews, which turned into more orders. Melton added granite carvings to his repertoire, and bought new equipment to cut down his production time. In May 2022, he sold nearly $20,000 worth of engraved memorials. By month's end, he still had 230 orders still left to fill.
So, he quit his job and enlisted his wife to help him make pet headstones full-time. Last year, he hired his daughter and daughter-in-law, too. The store brought in $207,000 in 2022 revenue, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. About 65% of that was profit, Melton estimates.
Each member of the four-person team works roughly five hours per day, leading to a total average of 50 pet memorials per week, Melton says. And though they depend on his technical expertise, local granite sources and willingness to invest in the business, Melton swears there's nothing special about his store's success.
"Anybody can do this," he says.
A machinery-based side hustle
Melton's stone-engraving hobby relied on a computer-controlled carving tool known as a CNC router. He'd use it to carve family names or street addresses into rocks for his neighbors' yards. There's room for such lawn accessories in Alma, a town of 6,000 people that sits at the edge of the Ozark Mountains.
At first, he only could only fulfill 16 Etsy orders per month. The cement fillings sat in molds for two days before Melton could engrave and glaze them, a roughly five-hour process. His wife finished each memorial, filling the letters with epoxy glue.
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The extra cash was great, he says, but he wanted to shorten his lead time. After researching online, he discovered that his process was somewhat obsolete. Three months after opening his store, he spent $7,000 from his savings on sandblasting equipment, because an expert online told him he'd "be crazy" not to, he says.
The equipment cut his production time down to 45 minutes. In the second half of the year, he brought in between $5,400 and $8,300 per month.
Local connections, major payoffs
In January 2022, Melton decided to add granite headstones — a more durable, expensive and premium product — to his Etsy shop. The problem: Granite wasn't easy to find.
A local monument company had a nine-month-long waiting list, but told Melton they needed someone with a laser engraver to etch photographs onto granite headstones in cemeteries. Two doors down, a countertop manufacturer offered to sell him black, champagne and speckled granite scraps.
Melton bought the scraps and, sensing opportunity, invested $38,000 — from both his savings and the previous year's proceeds — in a laser engraver, further cutting down his production time.
Combined with a higher-quality product, Melton's sales soared. He brought in $23,200 that June, the month after he left his full-time job.
Around that time, he started buying discarded countertops on Facebook Marketplace, he says. The slabs were cheaper, but required more equipment: Melton bought a $3,000 granite saw to shape the stone and a $3,500 machine to chisel the edges, giving the memorials a natural look.
In total, Melton has spent about $66,500 on stone tools, he says. His store has brought in nearly $383,000 in revenue in two and a half years.
Maintaining the family business
Working with his wife, daughter and daughter-in-law helps Melton be more efficient and creative, he says. They communicate well with each other, and when a customer orders, it now only takes about nine days for them to design, make and ship their memorials, Melton says.
It also raises the stakes of his business. If the shop doesn't bring in money, his entire family is in trouble. And earnings can fluctuate dramatically, Melton says. Sometimes, his store gets buried in Etsy's search results for reasons he can't entirely explain. (An Etsy spokesperson declined to comment.)
It usually rebounds within a month or two, says Melton. But during one such slowdown, his daughter started looking for part-time jobs, in case business never picked back up.
The fluctuations worried Melton too, until he realized that the only thing he could control amid those uncertain times was the consistency of his work, he says.
"Pets are such an integral part of our lives," Melton says. "They're like family, to say the truth. To be a part of making something that helps people means a lot to me."
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