It’s the era of the side hustle, and if you’ve ever considered starting one to earn some extra cash outside of your 9-5, you’re in good company. These days, more than one-third of U.S. adults have side hustles, and their supplemental gigs make an average of $891 a month, according to recent research from Bankrate. Of course, the most successful side hustlers see much higher earnings, especially when they start a business that brings in nearly as much as — or significantly more than — their full-time sources of income.
Katya Eckert, 41, of Greenwich, Connecticut, is one of them. Learn more about Eckert’s innovative product and how she built her business here. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
Image Credit: Courtesy of A DOMANI. Katya Eckert.
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What was your day job or primary occupation when you started your side hustle?
Business development at Macro Risk Advisors, a FINRA registered broker-dealer specializing in derivatives strategy and trading.
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When did you start your side hustle, and where did you find the inspiration for it?
A DOMANI was born from my own experience with the hormonal crash of postpartum — marked by relentless night sweats and countless middle-of-the-night wardrobe changes. I’d wake up to nurse my daughter, soaked through yet again, cycling through pajama after pajama in search of relief.
One night, after another fruitless purchase, my husband said, “Why not just make your own?” That was the spark. From there, it took about nine months until I started actually digging into if I had a viable business idea, around the time my daughter turned one. This was also in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, when we were all quarantined and had lots of time on our hands.
Image Credit: Courtesy of A DOMANI
What were some of the first steps you took to get your side hustle off the ground? How much money did it take to launch?
The first steps were mostly writing the business plan, researching the opportunity, making connections with experts and learning as much as I could about textiles, sustainability, manufacturing, supply chain, inventory management, ecommerce, marketing, legal and accounting. I’ve found that successful people generally get super excited about sharing their expertise and oftentimes their network as well.
With every conversation, I became increasingly inspired, and then a few things started to happen all at once: I hired a law firm to help me with legal formation and trademarking. I hired a couple of designers to help design the collection and corresponding tech packs, which are a blueprint for the factory that they use to make their patterns. While we were working on the design, I started to source fabric. Because we were in the middle of the pandemic, all of the fabric fairs were virtual, so I would enroll for the fairs online, order fabric swatches and get myself as quickly up to speed as possible on fabric technology. For A DOMANI, the fabric had to be the star. If I wasn’t able to find a fabric that did what I said it did, then I had no business. We also very purposefully designed everything to maximize airflow, flatter the body and eliminate friction points, like itchy tags, scratchy seams and stretched out necklines.
Related: I Revamped a Men’s Product for Women. The Bootstrapped Business Was a Hit — and Pledged $20 Million to Support Women Entrepreneurs.
The garment business is very capital-intensive because right away, a lot of your money is tied up in manufacturing, and you have to commit to large order quantities. I self-funded the company and invested $200,000 into getting it launched.
Image Credit: Courtesy of A DOMANI
If you could go back in your business journey and change one process or approach, what would it be, and how do you wish you’d done it differently?
Starting a business, especially in an industry that you know nothing about, will require a certain amount of “dumb tax” — you simply don’t know what you don’t know, and unfortunately, those mistakes can be costly. Certain costs you don’t know are assumed by the people you hire because they are industry standard: Retouching fees for photoshoots are extremely expensive; sourcing packaging from a factory; tariff and clearance broker costs; and shipping costs (whether it’s container shipping or airplane import, clearance costs or simply shipping samples back and forth). I wish I had left no questions unasked, but you also have to leave a good amount of cushion in your budget for these expenses.
When it comes to this specific business, what is something you’ve found particularly challenging and/or surprising that people who get into this type of work should be prepared for, but likely aren’t?
The order volumes and the bulk of your money are tied up in goods and manufacturing. For any mill or factory to take you seriously, you have to be prepared to order large quantities and have a very solid go-to-market strategy because there’s a lot of stock to turn. The higher the volume, the better the margin, and you need healthy margins to execute on operations and marketing.
Can you recall a specific instance when something went very wrong? How did you fix it?
Things go wrong all the time! My husband jokes that it is a miracle any of us walk around in clothes at all because the garment business is one very long supply chain: If anything along that supply chain gets delayed, everything gets delayed.
I wanted to launch the business in August of 2022 so we would have a good runway for the holiday selling season. This requires getting the fabric ordered, sewn, imported from Portugal to Mexico, manufactured and then imported into the U.S. There is a photoshoot that needs to be planned, a website that needs to be made, etc. In other words, there are a million things that need to happen all at once, and they all rely on each other.
Related: She Quit Corporate Life to Pursue a Side Hustle With Her Sister. They Saw Over $100,000 During Launch Weekend — and Now Have an 8-Figure Brand.
First, the fabric was delayed, then my goods were supposed to be loaded on a container ship to arrive in June, but everything got stuck in the port and didn’t sail until July. We needed to have the garments for the photoshoot, which required a committed date for space, photographer, stylist, models, etc. I pushed the launch back to November and the photoshoot to September, but because the import got pushed, we missed the planned slot in the manufacturing timeline and wouldn’t have the goods for the photoshoot. To help make up for the shortfall, my factory created sample garments in the sizes and colors I needed, and someone from the factory flew up to New York City literally the day before the photoshoot! I met them at JFK for the handoff.
How long did it take you to see consistent monthly revenue? How much did the side hustle earn?
It was a side hustle right up until shortly before launch. I left my job in finance about six months prior because the business was at a point that really required my full attention, and I couldn’t spend time on it in my off hours. In the first two months, we took in $30,000 of revenue, but three months later, a storm hit: I became pregnant after years of IVF, and my mother was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer (I served as her medical proxy and managed her care). Six months later, she passed away at home in hospice, and eight weeks later, I gave birth to my son.
During this time, I essentially had to pull the emergency brake. I let go of all of my consultants and tried to manage as much as I could on my own with the limited bandwidth I had. Because I already had the inventory, my monthly spend was relatively low and manageable. The business continued to have orders and reorders largely through word-of-mouth, and although sparse, it covered the basic costs. It reached a new level of maturity all at once when Oprah Daily and CBS Mornings picked it up in early 2025.
Image Credit: Courtesy of A DOMANI
What does growth and revenue look like now?
A DOMANI was initially a side hustle and passion project, but product sales have surged through word-of-mouth, with a notable 700% increase already in 2025. As a digitally native brand, we see strong growth potential in our DTC channels. In fact, earlier this year, we completed a website redesign to create a stronger UX experience. We’re currently projecting a sales increase of 40x year over year, which would net around $500,000 this year and seven figures by 2026, surpassing $1 million by 2026.
What do you enjoy most about running this business?
I truly love everything about it. I love having a million problems to solve daily. I love creating an actual product. I love that it is a global industry with amazing people that I get to interact with daily. Most of all, I love the customer stories where the product has made such a profound difference in their lives. Pajamas are usually an afterthought, but when all at once your body is unpredictable from the universal experiences of menopause, postpartum and unfortunately for many, cancer treatment, comfort can make a huge difference.
Related: This 34-Year-Old Was ‘Wildly Un-Passionate’ About His Day Job, So He Started a 9-Figure Side Hustle: ‘Be an Animal’
What is your best piece of specific, actionable business advice?
Be very specific and intentional about what you are creating. Have a good grasp of the numbers, who exactly the customer is, what the market size is, if it has room for disruption, who the competitors are, how you will be different and how much startup capital you will need. There are also a lot of legal and accounting bills that need to be paid from the very beginning, which you probably aren’t considering.
