ON THE CASE
I turned my side hustle into a six-figure business – I now work just two hours a day from the beach in Australia
LIKE everyone else, Hannah was stuck at home with little to do during the pandemic.
The then 16-year-old had just finished her GCSEs and was waiting for her sixth-form classes to begin in the Autumn.
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So she occupied herself with arts and crafts, often wasting time doing fun little doodles.
Little did she know those doodles would become the basis of her six-figure phone case business, which has now received more than 11,000 orders in just two years.
Hannah Cowley, now 18, currently runs remotely from Australia and has hired her mum Andrea and sister Grace to keep the fulfilment side of things going in the UK.
She spends her time focusing on new designs and marketing the brand on social media - but often while sitting on the beaches of the Gold Coast.
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Speaking exclusively to Fabulous, she said: “I was so bored in lockdown. Plus I was really sick of being too young to have a job.
“I wanted to be out there working and starting to earn money for myself, instead of just getting pocket money from my parents.
“I wanted to prove to people that you can start young, and you can do what you want before you’re an adult.
“Now, to date, I think I’ve had about 11,000 orders.
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“Sometimes I’ve been walking down Oxford Street in London and walked past someone with one of my cases. That is insane.
“It’s something I never thought I’d be able to achieve, given I was so young.
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“But I think I’ve proved to myself and to others that it is possible to do things outside of the typical nine-to-five jobs.”
It all started when Hannah asked her parents for an iPad - and they’ve since supported her in growing the business further.
“I wanted to start doing digital pieces of art, and then potentially use them to sell and build a business from [there].
“And so a few months into having an iPad, I kind of got to grips with it and started properly designing.
“So I started looking at ways that I could customise different things, and I stumbled across the idea of phone cases.
“I was like, this is the perfect product to bring out with my art on it because you see people with their phones every single day.’
“They’re in people’s mirror selfies when someone’s on the phone in public.
“So at the beginning of December 2020, I told my parents the idea.”
At this point, Hannah knew she needed money to buy supplies, so her mum Angela suggested she sell off old costume jewellery they had in storage.
Within two weeks, Hannah had enough to buy all the equipment she needed to launch her brand, By The People.
She added: “I launched my first case on the 11th of December in 2020 on Depop.
“I was predominately aiming my cases towards girls aged 11 to 25, and the whole point of my business was for it to be affordable.
“I was only getting £20 of pocket money a month, so I wanted to bring out a product that younger girls who maybe didn’t get much pocket money could treat themselves to at the end of the month.”
By April 2021, Hannah had received more than 700 orders, and so decided to bring out a range of other products including tote bags, stickers, prints and pins.
They’re all decorated with Hannah’s unique designs and all come in at under £18.
She also launched her website which she built single-handedly in a week. During its first two live days, she gained more than 180 orders.
Hannah said: “From then on, the business really started to grow and the number of orders I was getting was increasing every single month.
I wanted to be out there working and starting to earn money for myself, instead of just getting pocket money from my parents.
Hannah Cowley
“In August 2021, I launched my second best-seller, which was the Face 2 Face cases.
“I think I got 120 orders within the space of two and a half hours. By the end of the weekend, I had 400 orders to pack.”
Hannah currently runs her business from the By The People Headquarters - a furnished wooden cabin in her parent's garden.
But on this occasion, the business owner had to rent a local hall and rope in her aunt and cousins to help get all the orders out on time.
The teen, originally from Cambridge, has now hired her mum Andrea, 49, and her sister Grace, 15, to work as part of the family business.
She admits that without them, and particularly her mum’s support, she wouldn’t have the same scale business.
And now, thanks to their teamwork, the three of them work fewer hours than ever, despite the fact the business is ‘booming.’
“Right at the beginning, I was spending every waking minute thinking about it.
“I was posting a TikTok daily and I was putting so much effort into this by sending them to influencers, finding the trends on .
When I’m at the beach, I’ll have my sketchbook out, coming up with ideas.
Hannah Cowley
“Obviously I was at sixth form at the time, but it was online schooling and so sometimes I’d be doing ordered and social media marketing in the middle of a lesson.
“But now, we’re only packing orders once a week.
“I’d say I spend a couple of hours a day over here - it depends like if an idea strikes me, I like to get that down.
“When I’m at the beach, I’ll have my sketchbook out, coming up with ideas.”
Looking to the future, Hannah would like her brand to become well-known across the world, and feature in stores like Urban Outfitters.
Another dream is to also collaborate with other budding artists, in order to give them a foot in the door.
But what’s her advice to those that want to launch their own business?
“As long as you go with your gut feeling and just get on and do it, it’s possible.
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“I’m funding the rest of my life through my own creativity, and I want to prove to my generation that it is possible.
“You don’t have to get a degree in this and you don’t have to do all this training in order to be good at something.”
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