From NYC side hustle to luxury scarf business [Video]

Two weeks before her side hustle’s launch party, Olivia Cleary did the math: At five minutes per inch of fabric, she was running out of time to sew 20 polyester scarves.

She started working on the scarves from 7 p.m. until midnight, and 5 a.m. to 8 a.m. — when she had to leave for her full-time architectural design job. She finished the edges of her “crappy little scarves” on a $100 sewing machine that sat atop a folding TV table in the New York apartment she shared with two roommates, she says.

That was in June 2022. Today, her business — called The Clearly Collective — sells silk scarves featuring iconic architectural landmarks. It hit six figures in annual revenue for the first time in October 2023, and its sales have been relatively steady since then, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

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Cleary left her full-time job …