With our times becoming ever more precarious, it’s more of a responsibility than a mere decision to consider sustainable business practices. This is true in the fashion world, as it is anywhere else – solutions for minimizing waste need to be found.

Matthieu and Justina Soltysiak are well aware of this. They’re the couple behind La Petite Alice, a made-to-order lifestyle brand from Vilnius, Lithuania. In recent years, their business has grown from a couple of orders to more than 36,000 items made, thanks to multiple sales channels, their website being the main one.

Let’s look at how this entrepreneurial couple blended principles with a profit margin, how they found success on the web, and what their vision for the future is.

Early Beginnings

Matthieu and Justina are not your typical fashion brand owners. Neither has a background in sewing or clothing design. What they both have is a vision of how timeless fashion should look.

The business started in 2016 when Justina was struggling to find organic, timeless clothing for her firstborn daughter. “I didn’t like what I could find in the shops, so I decided to create something myself and ordered the first article to be made for Alice. It was great, so I decided to share it with others on Instagram. Instantly, there was interest in the clothes. We didn’t have the goal to have a business – I named it La Petite Alice just for fun.”

Justina put the first item they had on Etsy, an online marketplace for arts and crafts. Someone in Japan bought it and ordered seven pieces. After a couple of years, with sales picking up at an increasing pace, the decision was made for La Petite Alice to go independent and launch a website.

With a background in digital marketing, Matthieu ran a small agency helping clients develop websites. He took on the new business as one of his clients. Soon enough, perfecting La Petite Alice’s online experience occupied almost all of his time, and there was no more reason to work with others. “My wife became my only customer,” says Matthieu.

Initially, the idea for the business was not necessarily motivated by profit. It was more about demonstrating what could be done with some ideas and pieces of linen. “I wanted to offer nice clothes you couldn’t find in shops,” says Justina. But the orders quickly flooded in, and production had to be scaled up.

Made-to-Order vs. Fast Fashion

The Soltysiaks were conscious of sticking to their principles from the beginning. They took a different – ​​made-to-order – approach to operating a clothing business, always keeping sustainability in mind.

“We’ve never produced stocks – it’s not how we imagine the clothing industry should be,” says Matthieu. “We’re trying to get back to the old days when you’d go to a tailor and have a suit made to fit your measurements, something that would last for 10-15 years.”

Pulkit Gupta, La Petite Alice’s strategy and development analyst, notes that changing people’s mindsets about fashion is challenging. “For brands like Zara, it takes four weeks for clothes to appear in the shops – from the idea to the market. And for brands like Shein, it takes even less – only two weeks, which is crazy.”

La Petite Alice takes a more considered approach to clothing production. “We want to do as much as possible with every material, and everything is locally made. We are very proud of this,” notes Matthieu.

Taking Orders as They Come – the Benefits of an Online System

La Petite Alice streamlines processes by only making what is needed. Using an online system, the company can take orders as they come.

The brand has also taken a clever approach to hiring a workforce. Instead of operating a factory, the company employs people such as stay-at-home mothers who can work from home if they so choose. “This way, they can bring back the income to their household,” says Matthieu. “We try to give a chance for people to work in good conditions – not in a factory, but safely at home.”

Creating clothing to order using a remote workforce might seem chaotic, but La Petite Alice has tried to simplify the process. In the past, orders would come via several different channels, and everything had to be managed on schedule.

They developed an order management system that centralizes the different ordering methods by optimizing the order-production-shipping process. To realize it, the developer needed a host with SSH access that would improve the speed of the website. That’s how La Petite Alice discovered Hostinger.

Joining Hostinger

Matthieu was primarily after compatibility with WordPress and WooCommerce. Hostinger offered just that. “I’m not an expert at optimizing a website so it would load very fast, so I was looking for a hosting provider that would contribute to speed and stability. Complete LiteSpeed ​​integration was a game-changer.”

Hostinger has given them the space to innovate and create solutions to issues they’ve identified. “We are trying to centralize orders from many different platforms,” ​​says Matthieu. “We don’t keep a stock and make clothing to order, so we needed to find a way to manage orders and production. The system we’ve developed on our website streamlines the process – maybe other companies could find it useful too!”

Matthieu confesses to initially not liking the Hostinger platform due to his unfamiliarity with the interface. “It wasn’t what I was used to, it was missing a few features. But I’ve come to love the simplicity of the WordPress dashboard — it displays important site aspects without needing to log in.”

He particularly appreciates the WordPress staging tool, which allows him to try out changes on the website before his customers see them. “It saves time, and I don’t have to create a subdomain to try out changes. This is useful”.

Struggles and Lessons

The road to success has not always been smooth for Matthieu and Justina. Despite tripling the revenue of La Petite Alice over the past five years, the war in Ukraine and COVID have significantly impacted sales. This, coupled with their made-to-order business model, has presented significant challenges.

For anyone looking to start a made-to-order business, Matthieu has some advice: take it slowly and be careful. “We burned out a couple of times by taking too many orders and being unable to produce on time,” he says. “We measure our success by increasing sales and, at the same time, by having adaptive resources and capacities to remain a made-to-order brand.”

La Petite Alice is looking to the future with enthusiasm. With an established team of five, the company has plans to introduce people to the concept of the brand and sell spare and unused clothes. “We don’t have plans to open a physical store; they’re so 2005!” jokes Matthieu. “Online shops are the future!”

“Life and a passion for beauty and art brought us here – what happens next is anyone’s guess!”

In these uncharted economic times, wouldn’t it be great if you had a way to make some extra cash — or walk away from that full-time ball and chain completely?

I’ve put my ear to the ground and been following some fascinating folks online who have ditched their 9-5 grind to make money online with their passion project. For some, it’s a lucrative side gig, while others have been able to turn their hobby into a full-time business.

Now it’s time to share the success stories and reveal the top cases I’ve uncovered online. So here they are… everyday people who have grown an original concept into a flourishing new career without a lot of training or investment.

Bento box art

It all started with “Let’s make some lunch for my kids.”

Just for fun, Las Vegas mother of three Jessica Woo started posting videos on TikTok of bento box meals she packed for her kids. When one of those videos hit the big time, racking up millions of views overnight, she knew she had struck gold. Now she posts videos regularly, with creative presentations that turn humdrum kid meals into works of art. She features a variety of dishes from pasta to pancakes, and as a finishing touch, adds little inspirational notes for her kids.

Her TikTok channel now helps support her small business, a digital art studio called Booshkababe as well as a handmade accessories line called Love Juliet.

If you’re hungry for some food inspiration, check out Jessica Woo’s TikTok, and watch her

success story on YouTube.

What do you do for a living?

I can’t get enough of 20-something Daniel Macdonald (aka Daniel Mac). He’s a guy who boldly approaches strangers with fancy cars to ask a simple question, “what do you do for a living?” This creator’s enthusiasm for talking to strangers and learning about them is hard to beat. It’s also fun to learn what success looks like on the street, so to speak. He’s built his community of over 13 million people by being fearless and using his insatiable curiosity to find out more about people that the rest of us might aspire to become one day.

You definitely want to check out Daniel Mac’s TikTok to see who he talks to next, and you can fuel your own drive for success by reading his story on Creator Handbook.

Leave a positive mark on the world

Imagine making a video every day for 1000 days. That’s almost three years! But that’s exactly what Nuseir Yassin did. After quitting his job, he traveled the world making videos. At first, he funded it all out of his own pocket, but eventually, it caught the attention of a company that wanted to sponsor his videos. From there, he grew his Nas Daily brand (‘Nas’ is Arabic for ‘people’) into a huge international hit. With the mission of “Leave a positive mark on the world,” Nuseir now has offices in Dubai and Singapore for its two brands. Nas Academy and Nas Studios.

We know you’ll love to learn more about his success story, and for daily inspiration, be sure to visit his YouTube channel.

Color me… happy

Before she became the ‘Color Queen,’ Courtney Quinn wanted to work in corporate fashion. She started her blog Color Me Courtney to get attention — and then one day she nabbed her dream job at Coach. But that wasn’t enough for her. She kept building her brand, expanding her website and Instagram to be all about her “embracing my curls and curves, celebrating color in a city where everyone wears black, looking on the bright side, and being unapologetically myself.” I don’t know about you, but I’m hooked!

If you want to learn more about Courtney, she tells her story in Teen Vogue, and you can stop by her Insta anytime to see what she’s up to these days.

Fishing for trash and treasure

Back in 2011, Jake Koehler, also known as DALLMYD, started off with a small YouTube channel featuring two of his hobbies — gaming and fishing. On a whim, he started snorkeling and scuba diving in the Chattahoochee River in Georgia and posting videos he took with his GoPro. When he stumbled across an iPhone and then returned it to the owner, he realized he had struck gold. Over the past five years, Jake has become one of YouTube’s superstars, gathering over 13 million followers who eagerly join him on his dives for treasure — and all the trash he picks up along the way.

You can’t help but be swept up in Jake’s passion for cleaning the waterways and finding lost items.. Trust me, you’ll love following his adventures on YouTube, and you can read more about his backstory in Men’s Journal.

As a tech world insider, digital products have always stood out as an ideal revenue stream for both budding entrepreneurs and small business owners looking to diversify. This is especially true since all you need to get going is a laptop, an Internet connection, and a great idea. 

Despite this, I’ve observed reluctance from people with great ideas to pursue their digital product goals. 

That’s why I want to let you in on the secret to creating a successful digital product. I convened my exclusive list of business leaders who launched successful products to get the inside scoop on how exactly they did this, from do’s and don’ts to the lessons they’ve learned along the way. These leaders are: 

• Christopher Fitton, the creator, and host of Sleep Cove podcast, currently the third-largest health and wellness podcast in the world
• Dimi Baitanciuc, Co-Founder and CEO of Brizy, the first multi-platform (WordPress and Cloud) website builder
• Emily Jacob, founder of ReConnected Life® Ltd, trauma-informed coaching for women who want to move past their past, now available to thousands of people
• Anne Gould, owner of the TikTok 1000 for Midlife course, helping students garner millions of TikTok views
• Vee Tanner, creator of the Sew Bee Yourself Online Sewing Programme for budding dressmakers who want to sew gorgeous clothes for themselves
• Sue Revel, Personal Leadership Coach and Host of the Women on a Mission, Listener’s Choice Award runner-up at the Podcasting for Business Awards 2022

“Digital product” is a broad term and can be a little tricky to pin down, but for this article, it will refer to any intangible good or product that exists only in digital form. So, the possibilities for success can really be endless, but don’t let that overwhelm you. 

Read on to find expert tips for creating, launching, and marketing digital products, as well as general advice for making your business work.

How do you come up with a great digital product?

It’s an age-old question for wannabe entrepreneurs everywhere. While there’s no magic formula yet (if there were, I’d know about it!), a clear pattern emerged when liaising with my expert contacts. To create something truly great, you need passion, a unique selling point, and to know your audience. 

Truly believing in your digital product is crucial if you want to persevere and maintain interest in what you’re creating. Because if you don’t, as Christopher Fitton revealed to me:

“Your initial startup interest may wane and your dedication to the product succeeding could drop.”

Next, you must offer something that nobody else does. This doesn’t mean reinventing the wheel and creating a product nobody has ever seen before, but you must bring something new to the table. As Dimi Baitanciuc points out: 

“If you don’t have the product to sustain the marketing and pricing, customers leave. I think that no matter how crowded a space is (in our case, the website building tools space), there will always be room for products of unique quality which solve a problem.”

But when all is said and done, knowing what your potential audience wants and needs will go a long way when creating a successful digital product. Emily Jacob knows this very well:

“It doesn’t matter how good your product, or your marketing, or your pricing, if it’s not answering a need for your customers. Understand your customers, that’s the key.”

Need inspiration to generate your own ideas? Here’s a whole host of website concepts and online business examples to get the wheels in your head turning. 

Don’t wait to launch

A common theme that may surprise those just starting out was the advice to get your product out there as soon as possible — even if it isn’t finished. To my network of savvy and successful business owners, launching a minimally viable product is better than no product. 

Dimi told me that launching a bare-bones product would allow you to “put functionality in the hands of the users” and improve the product as you go. He said you can “test certain things that you might not be sure of, and then adjust, fine-tune and fix along the way.” Dimi is adamant that the ability to be agile is crucial in the competitive startup space.

This is in keeping with what both Anne Gould and Vee Tanner revealed to me during our talks. Anna first offered her course as a low-fee pilot and made the content as she went. This allowed her to learn people’s “stumbling blocks” and refine the course accordingly. Meanwhile, Vee pre-sold her sewing course before creating it and asked customers three onboarding questions at the point of purchase. This allowed her to make content based on their wants and skill levels.

Getting your product out there

Marketing is an integral part of creating a digital product. After all, if nobody knows about it, how will they use it? How you market your product will depend on your specific niche and potential audience. Some good, old-fashioned market research will help with figuring that out. Then you’ll need to evaluate what kind of marketing your audience will respond best to. Should you focus on social media marketing, influencer marketing, or email marketing? Maybe a mix of all three? Whatever you decide, you’ll find everything you need to know in this Online Marketing Guru Guides.

Beyond traditional marketing methods, my sources were adamant that no small business owner should underestimate the power of “word of mouth”. Don’t neglect your existing network — they’ll likely be more fruitful than you’d expect.

Sue Revel said that in the launch week of her podcast, she used all her existing communication channels to promote it.

“I talked to everyone I met about it, way more than anything else I’ve ever launched!”

Vee promoted her course to audiences on Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, and email. As she told us,

“I also reached out personally to everyone in my personal contacts who expressed an interest in learning to sew from me or who I thought this might be a good fit for.”

Emily began her marketing journey by exploring similar Facebook communities, asking people to answer a survey, and then conducting interviews. While she initially grew her audience through successful PR, placing blogs in national online publications, and speaking at activist events. She’s now having great success licensing her product to organizations, with word of mouth becoming integral to her growth. 

Mistakes are part of the process

Every business owner has things they wouldn’t do again, but they needed to make mistakes in order to learn from them. For Emily, this was launching her product to a small audience and speaking to members of an organization who couldn’t agree to sales themselves. Now, she only tries to speak directly to decision-makers.

Creating false expectations is also another big no-no. Dimi learned this the hard way: 

“Because of the excitement, we’ve announced some features and functionalities way ahead of time, creating false expectations. Those developments turned out to be harder to tackle, or delays occurred, and naturally, these created some unwanted negative attention from the community.”

Furthermore, you should always research apparent opportunities before committing to them. Sometimes offers can sound more lucrative than they actually are, as Christopher discovered when a podcast advertising agency wanted to sign him up in the early days of his podcast:

“I had a year contract, and at the time, it seemed amazing that I was going to be able to monetize my podcast with advertising. I soon realized that this agency didn’t deliver on my expectations and frankly weren’t very good.”

Getting specific

While I don’t think budding entrepreneurs can ever get enough general business advice, sometimes it helps to get a bit more specific. If you’ve ever wondered about the best way to get started with launching a podcast, online course, or software, here are some top tips from my resident experts. 

Creating a great podcast

Don’t be afraid of getting help. You can’t be an expert in everything, and by enlisting the assistants of people with years of experience, you can play to your strengths and offer a better product, which is what Sue Revel found:

“For me, the biggest success has been creating a small production team that allows me to work to my strength. I am able to focus on creating inspiring content, based on the questions that clients and other women on a mission need and want answered.”

Having the right tools goes a long way, especially when it comes to producing podcasts. Sue recommends Libsyn for podcast hosting and distribution. She has also found The Podcasters Podcast to be an excellent resource for anyone wanting to learn more about launching and growing their podcast.

Christopher used the free software GarageBand on his Mac computer and a very simple USB microphone to produce his podcasts. It was a steep learning curve, but worth it in the end: 

“It felt very hard at the time, but I now realize that it was quite simple compared to the more complicated types of software out there. Just being able to do these basics gave me the confidence to proceed.”

Top tips for creating an online course

For Vee, starting small and giving students only a few options from the get-go is essential to launching an online course. When she began Sew Bee Yourself, she gave everyone a free choice on the type of garment they wanted to make, which turned out to be a mistake:

“They all chose totally different garments with different challenges/skills to teach. That had an impact on the teaching time within each session which was much longer than I had originally planned, which also impacted the time available to ‘sew along’ and get their garments sewn whilst on the live session. Which meant that nobody finished their garment during the 4 weekly sessions as I had originally envisioned.”

To avoid this sort of impact going forward, she reduced the garment choices and focused on one at a time in each batch of classes.

Getting your software product off the ground

For dipping your toe into the software world, Dimi revealed that being API-driven and opening up for third-party development right from the start is essential:

“Gathering a development community around your product early on, I think, is very important for growth.”

He also advises utilizing sites like AppSumo, a daily deals website for digital goods and services, and using influencer and affiliate marketing to get your product out there. If you plan on operating under a freemium model, preselling a PRO-version with extended functionality is an effective way of funding development and creating “buzz around the product.”

Remember: success is relative

All my liaisons agreed that creating your own measure of success is imperative. No two businesses’ metrics are the same, so comparing yourself to anyone else is a waste of time. Many businesses measure success using key performance indicators such as monthly recurring revenue and customer retention scores. For others, success can’t be quantified by numbers alone. For Sue, simply making an impact and inspiring other women has felt like success to her. 

The time it takes to achieve success can also vary dramatically. Emily launched her coaching program in January 2017, and it didn’t become successful in terms of revenue until Winter 2020/21. But for her, that wasn’t the most important thing: 

“I considered it successful the first time just one person was helped by what I had created.”

Meanwhile, Dimi defines success as: 

“Ease of use for agencies, freelancers and B2B partners to create more websites faster, easier and increase their client turnaround and profits. This would mean we’ve been successful all along.”

For Christopher, success was turning his podcast into a self-sustaining business that allowed him to give up his full-time job.

As you can see, success can encompass a variety of metrics and is individual to every business owner. You’ll need to take the time to figure out what success means to you. In the meantime, this blog post on How To Measure What Matters for Your Business should help you get started.

Don’t let doubt win

The most important thing to remember when creating and launching a digital product is that everyone has doubts sometimes. You might be tempted to give up at some point during the process. Even some of the experts we interviewed were tempted to but stood strong in the face of potential failure. 

For Emily, the initial launch flopped, and she felt very despondent. But she didn’t give up:

“It was a chance conversation with the CEO of a charity who said they would be really interested in offering it to those on their waitlist that helped me to see the bigger potential for helping more people. And then the pandemic encouraged charities to want healing they could offer online.” 

For Vee, engagement dropped during her promotional campaign, and she might have given up if not for the encouragement of her mentor. She made sales up until the final day and realized that people were watching even if they didn’t always engage. 

For Sue, the thought of letting her listeners down keeps her going. When she has doubts or fears, she uses them in her favor: 

“I’ve had many guests talk about the importance of making your mission bigger than your fear. I think that applies here too… keeping my vision for the show (and who I might one day get to talk to!) bigger than my fears definitely keeps me moving forward!”

So, as you go forth into the world of digital product creation and launching a new business, always keep in mind that the difference between success and something that never really gets off the ground is those who were brave enough to keep going.

And if you’re looking for ideas for your next project, be sure to check out some of our favorites!