This Side Hustle Spotlight Q&A features New York City-based husband-and-wife founders Lee Kojanis, 37, and Daniele Orellana, 34. Kojanis is a board-certified oral and maxillofacial surgeon, and Orellana is a board-certified pediatric dentist. Learn more about how they started and grew their side hustle, Mitts, the brand behind an ergonomic sponge designed to clean delicate glassware. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Mitts. Lee Kojanis and Daniele Orellana.
When did you start your side hustle, and where did you find the inspiration for it?
Orellana: The idea for Mitts was born during the pandemic when Lee was preparing for his Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET) exams. With elective surgeries on hold, he took advantage of the extra downtime to deepen his knowledge of wine — one of his long-time passions. The tasting portion of the certification required a ton of wine sampling at home, which, in turn, meant a lot of wine tasting and a growing collection of delicate, high-end stemware in need of careful cleaning.
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Kojanis: Daniele often took on the task of washing these fragile glasses, but their thin, hand-blown design made them notoriously difficult to clean without breakage — resulting in hundreds of dollars’ worth of shattered stemware. Frustrated by the lack of a cleaning tool that provided both precision and protection, we began brainstorming over a bottle of wine one weekend. That conversation sparked the concept for Mitts: a sponge designed specifically for cleaning delicate stemware, offering improved control and ergonomic handling.
Orellana: We also wanted to make sure it was practical and aesthetic. A lot of the products marketed toward wine and wine glasses were either impractical in terms of use or bulky and looked terrible on our kitchen counter, so we designed something we would want to display on our own counter that served more than one use — which is why the base is key to each Starter Kitt.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Mitts
What were some of the first steps you took to get your side hustle off the ground?
Kojanis: The morning after our idea we came up with Mitts, we immediately started doing market research. Initially, we reached out to multiple engineering firms, more than five in total. After multiple emails and Zoom meetings, we ultimately decided on Creative Engineering, a specialized firm based in New York.
The prototyping process took several months and required multiple iterations to refine the design. Once we finalized a version that fit our vision, we filed a utility patent with the USPTO. From there, we turned our focus to branding, collaborating with Make Super Good, a creative agency that helped us develop our name, visual identity and packaging design.
Are there any free or paid resources that have been especially helpful for you in starting and running this business?
Orellana: Believe it or not, one of the most invaluable resources has been ChatGPT. Coming from healthcare, we had little to no experience navigating the CPG space. ChatGPT became a helpful tool in developing a go-to-market strategy and just answering very basic business questions. Beyond AI-powered support, our engineering, branding and manufacturing partners played big roles in guiding us through unfamiliar territory. They were incredibly helpful and available to us as we were getting ready to launch.
Additionally, the StartupCPG community has been an incredible resource. Everyone there has been supportive by offering networking opportunities and practical advice. Its Slack group has become one of the key places I turn to when I’m unsure or stuck.
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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?
Kojanis: If we could go back and change one aspect of our launch strategy, it would be the timing and management of our product release. We officially launched in November 2024, right in the midst of the holiday rush, without having our full inventory on hand at our 3PL facility. Manufacturing estimates were overly optimistic, and unforeseen shipping delays meant that a significant portion of our product didn’t arrive in time for the holiday season.
In hindsight, we should have either planned far more conservatively for peak-season logistics or delayed our launch until after the holidays, when fulfillment timelines would have been more predictable. Better contingency planning — such as building in extra buffer time for production and shipping — would have saved us significant stress and ensured a smoother rollout. It was a tough but valuable lesson in the importance of timing and supply chain preparedness.
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?
Kojanis: Rejection is constant. Customers will reject you, influencers will reject you, businesses will reject you, and investors will reject you. You have to take criticism well and roll with the punches. What’s helped us is learning to separate emotion from feedback — every rejection is data. If someone says no, we ask why and use that insight to refine our pitch, product or approach. The key isn’t avoiding rejection; it’s using it to get better.
Can you recall a specific instance when something went very wrong? How did you fix it?
Kojanis: We were unable to fill a large portion of holiday orders due to manufacturing and shipping delays. Many customers purchased Mitts in hopes of gifting them to friends and family, and we fell short. In order to make it right, we personally emailed all customers whose orders we were unable to fulfill in time and offered discount codes for future orders.
How long did it take you to see consistent monthly revenue? How much did the side hustle earn?
Kojanis: We are only three months into our launch, and monthly revenue has fluctuated. We have only recently started a consistent marketing campaign and hope to see more consistent sales moving forward. At the moment, the hustle has brought in just over $15,000. We’re projecting about $75,000 in sales this year.
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What does growth and revenue look like now?
Orellana: Growth and revenue for us ideally is tripling our current revenue by the end of the year, and we are slated to be in our first retail space this spring with Pop-up Grocer. We are hoping to add a handful of small retail shops by the end of the year. There is no private capital or investment in Mitts — it’s all us, and we’re committed to slow organic growth.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Mitts
How much time do you spend working on your business on a daily, weekly or monthly basis? How do you structure that time? What does a typical day or week of work look like for you?
Orellana: As doctors, we both have demanding full-time jobs, so we are almost always working either in private practice or on Mitts. Mitts-related work happens throughout the workday and evenings; it happens in between patients, during lunch, on the way to and from work. We respond to emails or hop on Zoom calls throughout the day — anyone who has worked with us has taken a Zoom meeting with us in our scrubs.
Our weekends are also allocated to bigger Mitt-related responsibilities (like photoshoots, videography, etc). We are also really good at allocating and splitting necessary tasks between the two of us. We learned early on in our relationship as a couple that communication is key to a strong and healthy marriage. We use that same mentality with our joint business: Communicate early and often.
What do you enjoy most about running this business?
Kojanis: Mitts has allowed us to work together in ways that would have otherwise never been possible in our regular careers. The best part of this startup is that we get to spend time together working towards shared goals while simultaneously promoting a tangible product that we created from scratch.
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What is your best piece of specific, actionable business advice?
Orellana: Before sinking significant time and money into product development, branding or inventory, do thorough market research. Engage in direct outreach — send samples to your target audience, gather feedback and refine your idea based on real-world data. Also, be strategic about your launch and make sure to build buzz prior to your launch; it makes a huge difference.
Kojanis: For us, that meant creating an early prototype of our stemware sponge, getting it into the hands of wine enthusiasts and bartenders and using their feedback to improve the design before committing to large-scale production. That iterative process gave us proof of concept and a clear path forward.
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