SUAMICO, Wis. — The pandemic helped Bree Young launch her own side business.
“It kind of started as a COVID-type hobby and kind of grew from there,” said Young.
She designs and makes tumblers adorned with colorful graphics and some extra bling. Young has been making them for about two years.
“Something that I experienced that I thought was really cool that I wasn’t expecting was being out in public and seeing somebody with one of my tumblers and being able to approach them. ‘Where did you get that? Oh I made that,’” she said. “That was kind of a cool thing to see.”
Young is one of about 35 small business owners and artists renting shelf space at Soul Purpose in Suamico.
Andrea Fanta launched Soul Purpose a year ago to connect and help promote smaller businesses and artists in the community.
“It gives them a place to display their craft and their passion, and it gives them a little bit of business exposure,” Fanta said. “It gives them networking opportunities with other business owners. Collaborations happen here all the time. It’s a pretty cool place.”
Fanta sells her own products — Mommy AF — out of the space as well.
A recent Lending Tree survey said about 44% of Americans have some sort of side hustle. Many were started during the pandemic.
“I think a lot of these passion projects were born from COVID and people were able to turn them into successful businesses which I think is really cool,” Fanta said. “Most of the people in here do this as a part-time thing. They have families, some of them home school, some of them have other jobs, but they’re able to create their craft in their free time and keep that passion alive.”
She said one of her goals is that some of the businesses renting from her may eventually open their own stand-alone stores.
Young, who is also the store manager at Soul Purpose, said the store gives her a connection community of a people with similar businesses.
“While we devote as much time as we can to our craft, we can’t devote 100% of our time to our craft,” she said. “It’s just nice to have other people who understand that you can still be passionate about something and work a day job.”