A 17-year-old teenager is making nearly £15,000 a month with his personalised sticker business - thanks to a craft kit he got for Christmas from his mum.
Caelan McDonald was given a £150 Cricut Joy - a digital drawing, cutting and printing machine - for Christmas two years ago by mum Karen Newsham, 49.
He started printing transfers which he stuck on glassware and acrylic - and when he shared them on Facebook he started getting commissions for personalised items.
At the start of 2024 he was selling around 200 personalised items a month - featuring the transfers he made at home - working three hours a day after college.
He's quit school - investing in huge industrial printers - and since July he's sold £74,000 of goods on TikTok shop and other platforms.
Caelan's best seller this Christmas is a bauble featuring personalised angel wings, and last year it was snow globe tumblers.
The lad - who works 16 hour days six days a week - is on track to make £100,000 worth of sales by the end of the financial year, he says.
Caelan McDonald was given a £150 Cricut Joy - a digital drawing, cutting and printing machine - for Christmas two years ago by mum Karen Newsham, 49.
He started printing transfers which he stuck on glassware and acrylic - and when he shared them on Facebook he started getting commissions for personalised items.
At the start of 2024 he was selling around 200 personalised items a month - featuring the transfers he made at home - working three hours a day after college.
He's quit school - investing in huge industrial printers - and since July he's sold £74,000 of goods on TikTok shop and other platforms.
Caelan's best seller this Christmas is a bauble featuring personalised angel wings, and last year it was snow globe tumblers.
The lad - who works 16 hour days six days a week - is on track to make £100,000 worth of sales by the end of the financial year, he says.
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FunTranscript
00:00Hi, my name's Caelan. My mum bought me a sticker machine two years ago and now I have a six-figure
00:11business. So it was just something to distract me from all my mental health struggles, something
00:15fun for me to do. I started off by just making little keychains with names on, little cups
00:20with names on, just posting them on Facebook, and then I noticed after that there was a
00:24massive demand for this type of thing. About two months later I ended up actually upgrading,
00:29putting all the money back into me selling little bits on Facebook and upgrading into
00:33a bigger machine, which then led to me moving over to printing onto tumblers,
00:38selling on TikTok shop, and it just snowballed really from there. If you would have told me I
00:43was getting this volume of orders in January I would have laughed at you. It's daily, well weekly,
00:48there must be at least 400 orders come through the door. I'm here all the time printing,
00:54getting orders prepped, getting the printers sorted, and it's just mental.
00:58The upgrade after that one was about two years later and it was this one over here,
01:02it's a UVDTF printer. They print transfers like this that go around all different glass cans,
01:07tumblers, cold cups, and I sell them to other businesses. If you want to set up your own
01:12business make sure you pick something that you really enjoy because when you have something
01:15you really enjoy it doesn't feel like work at all.