Ellis Stephens, a husband, father, and self-proclaimed hustler, wakes up well before dawn most days. He makes his way into his garage, turns on the lights, pulls up a chair, and begins creating one-of-a-kind Labubus.
“If I come in here at four in the morning and I just grind it out, I can do seven to eight to nine a day,” he told Business Insider’s Bethany Johnson in a recent interview in San Jose, California.
Stephens buys Labubus, the trendy plush monsters designed by Kasing Lung, in bulk from resellers on the street, customizes them with tattoos, piercings, gemstones, and more, and then upsells them for a major profit.
While the price of the Labubus he buys varies, he was paying $45 per toy at the time of filming in July. He sells standard-sized, customized Labubus for $217 each, but customers can also submit orders for a two-pack or larger-sized Labubus that cost more.
For many years, his day job was as a high school art teacher. He was recently promoted to assistant principal. However, the pay as a teacher wasn’t enough to fund the type of art projects he wanted to do with his students, like 3D printing and using CNC routing to cut and engrave wood and plastic. So, he started side hustling to make some extra cash.
He’s juggled multiple side hustles over the years, from selling burritos on street corners to running a photo booth business and selling custom T-shirts. His Labubus, though, are his most lucrative hustle yet.
He completes about 80 Labubu-related orders a month, which amounts to thousands of extra dollars in revenue.
“It’s crazy how it’s changed my life,” he said.
Discovering his niche
Labubus exploded onto the scene over the last year in large part thanks to celebrities, including Lalisa Manoban, Rihanna, Kim Kardashian, and Emma Roberts, being seen with the toys.
So far this year, the Chinese parent company, Pop Mart, has seen a 667% increase year-over-year in sales largely due to its Labubu toys and related merchandise, according to EMARKETER (Business Insider’s sister company). Pop Mart is on track to sell $1 billion worth of Labubu merch this year.
Stephens is more than happy to ride the little monsters’ trend wave. “People say art’s not going to take you anywhere. I’ve heard that my whole life,” he said, adding it’s now the complete opposite. “I’m able to inspire other lives and show people that art — you don’t have to be a starving artist.”
Stephens started out buying the toys in bulk and reselling them as is, but he was hardly making any profit. Then, for Halloween one year, he made a Scream mask for a Labubu, posted it online and, “people went crazy for it,” he said. However, the masks he sells for about $20 to $30 a piece. The real money is in his customized tattooed Labubus.
When Stephens posted his first tattooed Labubu on Instagram for $60 last year, he was quickly flooded with messages from people who wanted to buy it. Though he sold the collectible for barely above what he’d paid for it, the wide response made him realize there was a hot market for unique versions.
Soon, he was fielding requests for characters with face tattoos, replicas of rappers like Post Malone and Lil Peep, and designs tied to customers’ personal stories.
Stephens has been a tattoo artist for years, but said customizing Labubus has pushed him to refine his skills since the toys are so delicate.
Labubu hands, for example, are the hardest to tattoo, he said, because they’re made of tough vinyl that can sometimes cause the tattoo needle to skip or bend. He said each custom toy can take up to an hour to make.
Aside from fine-line sketching, one of Stephens’s challenges is dealing with customers who sometimes change requests mid-order or grow impatient with shipping delays — but to him, it’s all worth it.
“It’s hard to stop now that people are so into it and my work is being recognized,” he said. “I’m making original artwork and stuff that I enjoy doing.”
How the Labubu trend has changed his life
Stephens’ Labubu business has taken up a lot of his time. He now hustles from 3 a.m. to 7:30 a.m. on weekdays. After that, he leaves for work at school, then he comes home, hustles a little more, eat dinner with his family, and there’s not much time left before bed.
He said he gets around five hours of sleep a night and doesn’t plan to stop because the opportunity has finally given him some financial freedom.
“I don’t have to think like: Oh, I’m going to be short. Let me hustle the photo booth. Let me get some catering gigs. Let me do some custom T-shirts. Let me post and post and post,” he said.
Labubus are a trend, and like any trend, they could fizzle out, writes Business Insider’s Katie Notopoulos. In the meantime, though, Stephens plans to keep capitalizing on Labubu love as long as it lasts.
“Customizing this stuff has seriously changed my life. And if it starts to be exponential, as to what it is now, it could shape my future. I could finally invest in an actual workspace,” he said, adding: “My goal is to have an art building where I just do art and teach people the power of art.”
This story was adapted from Ellis Stephens’ interview with Business Insider for the video “Meet The Teacher Who Wakes Up At 3:30 AM For His Labubu Business.”
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