Growing a company that sells miniature construction supplies to $17k a month
Published in 2018, this chronicle by @patwalls details the mechanics of building a profitable, self-funded business without venture backing. Key verified financial milestone: $17k a month.
Core Principles for Independent Builders:
Charging customers from day one acts as the ultimate filter for building software that solves genuine, high-urgency problems.
Keeping fixed overhead low and leveraging lean infrastructure allows founders to stay alive until market tailwinds kick in.
Small, repetitive improvements in customer retention and conversion rates yield massive returns over multi-year horizons.
Community Debate Themes:
The community focused on B2B customer acquisition channels, cold email vs SEO distribution, and balancing full-time employment with side-project development.
CATEGORY Bootstrapping & MRR →
HISTORICAL ERA Cloud & Mobile Era (2014–2019)
COMMUNITY SCORE ★ 740 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 275 comments
Stories like this are inspirational on one hand and on the other completely irrational. Making $17K a month isn't as easy as finding a niche and working an email list.
Anyone who has built a business that has achieved a modicum of success could write a book about all of the challenges they faced, how they addressed them, and how they would have addressed them if only they had the benefit of better experience in the beginning.
There's no secret to success. The key is understanding what success actually means to you, and working smarter or harder (or both) than the next guy to achieve it.
Selling 800+ pallettes of cinderblocks to a niche market once is an achievement. Selling that many every month? That takes knowing more than just how to make them.
After reading the article and going to the site and then to the DIY category and seeing the sample kit [0], my first though was “these would be cool for a fingerboard video”.
I go back to the main site and what do I see further down on the page as I scroll down? “LIKE TO FINGERBOARD? Our real concrete jersey barriers are heavy duty and the perfect obstacle for fingerboarding! Combine with some cinder blocks to create cool ramps and ledges!”
These people have got it figured out! No wonder they are doing well :)
[0]: https://www.minimaterials.com/collections/kits
My friend's mother did custom upholstery for the mega yacht industry. She had some metal button covers left over so she sold them on ebay. They went so fast she decided to go into the button cover business. They were selling $700 - $1000 a day worth of cover buttons out of their house. I did the orders for a couple weeks while they were on vacation. It took me 2 hours a day to get all the orders out. The manufacturer died and the family was going to close the business since nobody wanted to buy it. My friend's mom and the whole family decided they would either have to give up their business or buy all the equipment and do it themselves which is what they did.
"I played around with a ton of different filler materials for the cinder blocks, but pure cement just broke so easily. I finally settled on a secret formula using cement and a few other materials that look and feels identical to real cement."
1. Those that make these, what the secret formula?
I checked MSDS and couldn't find any info on the product, or I maybe need to search again?
2. I don't feel bad got asking. Why--he got a lot of exposure here.
Edit: here's the recipe.
https://m.imgur.com/a/0CzMG
This sort of thing is just killer in the hobbyist market - think people out there making miniature train towns, very-high-setting-realism RPG campaigns, etc. It's not a billion dollar business, and it doesn't have to be.
There's endless potential for lifestyle businesses in the hobby world. There are people out there doing 6 figures selling artisanal mechanical keyboard keycaps.